For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.
How Did THAT Get in My Tub? ~1990
I like mornings. If I don’t have a morning swim practice to attend, I’ll still get up and take my time fixing breakfast, reading the paper, etc. before it’s time to go to work. I would hate to be one of those folks who frantically have to scramble to do all their morning chores within the 15 minutes between when they awaken and when they’re supposed to be at work.
One morning, though, I ended up having to spend a little bit of time on an unplanned activity.
I lived on the bottom floor of the apartment complex. I hadn’t lived there long, so I didn’t know any of my neighbors.
-- OK, it doesn’t matter how long I’d lived there…I’m a socially-challenged introvert, and probably would not have met them ever, unless they dropped by sometime to ask me to turn down the Ted Nugent records I was playing. (C’mon, you try listening to “The Great White Buffalo” at low volume – it just ain’t right.)
Anyway, as I prepared to take my morning shower, I noticed that there was already water in the tub. “Hmm,” I thought, “isn’t that peculiar?” I checked the position of the drain handle – seemed to be in the correct position. The bathtub spout was not dripping. By everything I knew about the science of plumbing, the tub should have been draining. It should have been empty.
But as I watched, I noticed that the water level seemed to be rising. “That’s odd,” I thought. “I must consider this phenomenon whilst I go to retrieve the morning paper.”
A few minutes later, the water level had risen dangerously high. “My goodness,” I thought to myself, “If it fills up much more, it could run over onto the bathroom floor. What should I do?”
I went into the kitchen closet and got the bucket I intended to use if I ever decided to mop the linoleum (which was about as likely as winning Lotto a dozen times in a row). I filled the bucket by dipping it in the tub, and then strolled outside to dump the water into the apartment’s garden. “Not bad,” I thought. “I’ll be able to empty the tub, and water the plants at the same time. It’s a win-win situation.”
After about two more buckets-full, it became apparent that the tub was filling faster than my one-man bucket brigade could dump out. Looking around frantically, I noticed my laundry basket. For some reason, when I had gone shopping for apartment fixin’s, the solid-sided Rubbermaid containers were on sale for less than the flimsy criss-crossed ones, so I had bought the one that turned out to be leak proof. My current little bathtub emergency made it clear that I had made a wise purchasing decision.
I dumped my dirty clothes onto the bed, grabbed the tub and headed for the bathroom. Shortly thereafter, I was frantically running to and from the apartment, carrying a full liquid load, and worry about the poor drowning garden plants on the way back in. As more people in the apartment complex were waking up and doing their morning business, it became apparent that a good portion of whatever went down their drains was surfacing up through mine.
I will spare you a description of the mixture that was filling my tub, but it was indeed a foul batch of stuff. I did NOT want it running onto the floor of my apartment. After a couple of particularly athletic trips to the garden, I had gained a small advantage on the growing flood – so I took time to start making phone calls.
The apartment managers weren’t on duty yet, of course. And the recording on the maintenance “emergency” line assured me that someone would call back “as soon as possible”. I also called Roto-Rooter, just in case the apartment staff didn’t call back in time. Of course, these calls were sandwiched in between my dip n’ fill/dump and run round trips to the garden.
My arms were starting to get tired. Even though I was an athlete in the prime of youth, it’s still a challenge to even pick up a full-sized laundry basket full of, uh, “liquid”, much less running frantically up the steps from the garden level and out to a spot far enough away from the apartment that I wouldn’t have to smell it. A new strategy was called for.
I started yelling at the doors of my neighbors as I went up the steps, and of course, my clomping alone was creating a pretty decent racket. After a couple such screaming and clomping trips, one of the other apartment doors opened, and a sleepy-eyed young lady peeked out. “Man, you gotta help me…” I pleaded. “We’ve got a bit of an emergency here.”
Thank goodness that she was able to overlook the fact that I was a half-dressed and wild-eyed maniac with a bucketful of sewage. She ducked back into her apartment, hastily pulled on a bathrobe, and then accompanied me on my next circuit, which gave me a chance to explain.
Within minutes, she had pounded on every door in the complex and had told people to stop their showers, quit flushing their toilets, and refrain from brushing their teeth. At about that time, the emergency maintenance guy returned my call, and promised to “zip over” in a heartbeat.
It was nice to know that most of the neighbors had the courtesy to respect the “no drainage” request, at least for a little while. But everyone was up by now, and there were some who felt that their biological and employment-oriented needs outweighed the needs of the aching-armed nerd from the garden level. My tub’s fill rate decreased, but did not stop. I continued to haul sludge while my neighbor continued to place frantic phone calls.
The maintenance guy finally showed up and diagnosed the problem as “a clog somewhere”. He said he’d go get some tools and be back in about 15 minutes. “NO!” I shouted. “Before you go anywhere, you need to turn off all the water in the building. NOW!”
He made the “I didn’t think of that” face, and then nodded agreement. Within minutes, the water was shut off, and with nothing to fill toilets or to come out of faucets, people stopped contributing to my problem. A couple more trips with the laundry bucket, and I could finally take a rest break.
Shortly thereafter, the Roto-Rooter guy showed up and worked his magic. When asked what the problem had been, he simply responded “roots” (which I guess is to be expected from a Roto-Rooter guy).
The drains were running freely, and the water supply was restored within a very short period. All was well again.
EPILOG
As far as I know, everyone in the building was still able to perform their morning ablutions and to make it to where they were going without being too late. The management hired a crew to come in and clean my bathroom thoroughly, though it still smelled a bit for the next couple of weeks. Sadly, my workhorse of a laundry basket was unable to recover – but instead got a hero’s sendoff and was lovingly consigned to the nearest dumpster. My helpful neighbor and I began saying “hi” when we saw each other in the hallways. After a while, I even got up the courage to ask her for a date, but she declined, saying that the memories were simply too much to overcome. Sigh.
When my lease ran out, I decided to move to the complex across the street. Those adventures are described elsewhere.
Monday, December 08, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.
The Bargain Apartment Phone ~1990
Whenever I’ve lived alone in an apartment, I’ve chosen the “Garden Level”. It’s cheaper, there are generally fewer steps to negotiate, and it’s tougher for the Commies to beam microwaves at you from space when you’re shielded by the floors above.
Oh sure, the people above can be annoying with all their tromping around in lead snowshoes, and with their 3am Barry Manilow karaoke – but you’re gonna hear noises from neighbors if you’re on the top floor, too. Might as well save the extra few bucks each month. You can always sleep with earplugs, or wear your stereo headphones to bed. (If I’m in the mood for soothing sleep music, it’ll be Blood Sweat & Tears, or maybe Alice Cooper. If I want text, it’ll be Frank Zane’s dihoctic motivation tapes.)
Anyway, most of my bottom floor experiences have been mostly pleasant and non-traumatic. I did have one cross-the-hall neighbor who dealt drugs, and had all sorts of unsavory characters calling upon him at all hours of the night. One day, I had just installed a used portable phone that I’d bought at a garage sale from my buddy Harp. He charged me $10 for it, which seemed like a good deal at the time – cordless phone technology was in its infancy, and such luxurious devices were pretty pricey. Anyway, when I came home from a quick trip to the store, I was not surprised to see a couple of uniformed police officers standing by the apartment door.
“Good!” I thought, “They’ve finally come to arrest the drug dealer.” But, no, as it turned out, they were here to see ME.
Thankfully, it was not to arrest me for having accidentally “forgotten” to return the Martin Marietta stapler that had somehow made its way home from work with me one day. And it was not to harass me about my connection with radical Lyndon LaRouche supporters that I had inadvertently chatted with one day at the airport.
It was because the piece of crap phone that Harp had sold me had spontaneously dialed “911” while I was out. Since there was no voice on the line, the dispatcher had immediately scrambled a team of officers to discover the problem.
It took a few minutes to straighten out the situation. The officers went into my apartment first, perhaps expecting to find the remains of a victim I’d mutilated before running off to King Soopers to buy my gallon of milk and 10-pack of Top Ramen. They apparently thought that I had not finished the job before I left, and the poor hacked-up creature I had left behind had somehow found the strength to dial 911 before they expired.
But, no. The apartment was clean. (Well, clean in the sense of not being the scene of a violent crime – certainly not clean by the Felix Unger definition.) But over in the corner of the room, the renegade telephone was happily clicking away, dialing who knows what numbers. For all I knew, it was scheduling appointments for carpet cleaning, enrolling me in the “Cheese of the Month” club, and making donations to Greenpeace…with only an occasional emergency call to the cops.
Anyway, after a brief investigation, the extremely polite officers simply suggested that maybe I ought to discontinue using that particular telephone device. They watched as I unplugged it, but left before I took a hammer to it and mashed it into a zillion shards.
Final footnote: Though the cops didn’t seem very interested in my assertion that my neighbor was a felon, they did quietly listen to what I had to say. A few days later, I noticed that the apartment across the hall was now empty, and I never saw the guy again. Whether he was taken away, or simply decided to move to Sheboygin, I never did find out. But I did start sleeping better.
The Bargain Apartment Phone ~1990
Whenever I’ve lived alone in an apartment, I’ve chosen the “Garden Level”. It’s cheaper, there are generally fewer steps to negotiate, and it’s tougher for the Commies to beam microwaves at you from space when you’re shielded by the floors above.
Oh sure, the people above can be annoying with all their tromping around in lead snowshoes, and with their 3am Barry Manilow karaoke – but you’re gonna hear noises from neighbors if you’re on the top floor, too. Might as well save the extra few bucks each month. You can always sleep with earplugs, or wear your stereo headphones to bed. (If I’m in the mood for soothing sleep music, it’ll be Blood Sweat & Tears, or maybe Alice Cooper. If I want text, it’ll be Frank Zane’s dihoctic motivation tapes.)
Anyway, most of my bottom floor experiences have been mostly pleasant and non-traumatic. I did have one cross-the-hall neighbor who dealt drugs, and had all sorts of unsavory characters calling upon him at all hours of the night. One day, I had just installed a used portable phone that I’d bought at a garage sale from my buddy Harp. He charged me $10 for it, which seemed like a good deal at the time – cordless phone technology was in its infancy, and such luxurious devices were pretty pricey. Anyway, when I came home from a quick trip to the store, I was not surprised to see a couple of uniformed police officers standing by the apartment door.
“Good!” I thought, “They’ve finally come to arrest the drug dealer.” But, no, as it turned out, they were here to see ME.
Thankfully, it was not to arrest me for having accidentally “forgotten” to return the Martin Marietta stapler that had somehow made its way home from work with me one day. And it was not to harass me about my connection with radical Lyndon LaRouche supporters that I had inadvertently chatted with one day at the airport.
It was because the piece of crap phone that Harp had sold me had spontaneously dialed “911” while I was out. Since there was no voice on the line, the dispatcher had immediately scrambled a team of officers to discover the problem.
It took a few minutes to straighten out the situation. The officers went into my apartment first, perhaps expecting to find the remains of a victim I’d mutilated before running off to King Soopers to buy my gallon of milk and 10-pack of Top Ramen. They apparently thought that I had not finished the job before I left, and the poor hacked-up creature I had left behind had somehow found the strength to dial 911 before they expired.
But, no. The apartment was clean. (Well, clean in the sense of not being the scene of a violent crime – certainly not clean by the Felix Unger definition.) But over in the corner of the room, the renegade telephone was happily clicking away, dialing who knows what numbers. For all I knew, it was scheduling appointments for carpet cleaning, enrolling me in the “Cheese of the Month” club, and making donations to Greenpeace…with only an occasional emergency call to the cops.
Anyway, after a brief investigation, the extremely polite officers simply suggested that maybe I ought to discontinue using that particular telephone device. They watched as I unplugged it, but left before I took a hammer to it and mashed it into a zillion shards.
Final footnote: Though the cops didn’t seem very interested in my assertion that my neighbor was a felon, they did quietly listen to what I had to say. A few days later, I noticed that the apartment across the hall was now empty, and I never saw the guy again. Whether he was taken away, or simply decided to move to Sheboygin, I never did find out. But I did start sleeping better.
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.
The Dim-Witted Apartment Manager, Part 2 ~1979
When it was time to move into my first post-collegiate apartment, I was delighted to find a brand new complex in a location that was convenient to my job, my swim team, and many fine retail establishments. I had assumed that, as a previously-unoccupied establishment, everything would be in A-1 unmolested operating condition. Sparkling shiny appliances; pristine paint on the walls, and window coverings that would glide smoothly into their appointed positions. Right?
Since everything I owned could easily fit into the back seat of my 1978 Ford Pinto, it didn’t take long to move in. My temporary roommate, Brent, owned little more than a duffel bag, so we spent very little time on assuming occupancy and got right to work on the important stuff – cooking a frozen Tony’s pizza. The oven worked, and the freezer light came on to show that there was room enough for 7 such pizzas. After a trip to the local Dillon’s store, the freezer was stocked up and life was good.
Since Brent and I both started our day by swimming and then showering at the Wichita Swim Club, we had no immediate reason to test the apartment’s pre-fab bath/shower combo unit. The water worked, and the toilet flushed, so we assumed things were just peachy.
The next evening, though, Brent came out of the bathroom with a puzzled look on his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked. He thought about it a moment, then answered. “My sock is wet.”
Good Lord, I thought, I’m rooming with a guy who pees on himself. At the very best, this makes me question his competence with his male equipment; and at the worst represents what could become a serious hygiene challenge. “Good Lord,” I said, “How could you pee on yourself?”
“I don’t know,” he said, continuing to look confused. “My sock is wet on the bottom. If I peed on myself, wouldn’t it be wet on the top?” He looked at me as if expecting me to unravel this perplexing mystery.
Rather than replying, I got up and walked into the bathroom. “Aw, man. There’s water all over the place.”
A quick observation of the shape and position of the puddle left no doubt that it was not the result of any sort of toiletry accident, but in fact, was a leak coming in from underneath the wall. Brent and I were both relieved; I sopped up the water with a towel, and he simply wore one sock for the rest of the evening.
The next day, I reported the incident to Joyce, our dependable apartment manager. She let out a deep sigh and shook her head. “I’ll bet the guy next door let his tub overflow.” She nodded as if agreeing with herself. “That happens sometimes.” She nodded some more.
I hesitated a moment to see if she was going to continue with the thought, but finally concluded that she thought she was done. “Um,” I said, “could you maybe see what you could do to prevent the problem from happening again? Please?”
“Oh, sure. Yeah. I guess. Um, I guess I probably ought to talk with the guy. Yeah. No problem.” I thanked her and left, anticipating no future puddles.
The next day, it took two towels to sop up the flood from under the wall. Joyce said that she’d talk to the gentleman again. I took a trip to the laundry room to run a load of towels, just in case. (Most of my towels were pretty low on the absorbency scale. I had received them as “gifts” of the University of Kansas Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, and most of them still had faint remnants of the “HPER” stamp on them, but some were pretty threadbare.)
The next time I reported a bathroom flood, Joyce was indignant. “Hmmph!” she snorted. “That guy told me he was going to be out of town all week, and yet here he is filling up his tub until it runs over and soaks the floor again, even though he’s not even supposed to be there.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “there may be some other problem – like a malfunction with the plumbing.” I mean, after all, how many people do you know who overfill the bathtub until it runs under the neighbor’s wall – over and over again? It just didn’t sound right.
“No, I’m sure it’s simply a repetitive bathtub overfill problem.” She was quite sure of herself. “I’ll give him a good talking-to when he gets back in town.”
“But if he’s out of town, and we’ve just been flooded…” I began, but then stopped when I realized that she’d already forgotten I was there. Sighing deeply, I walked back to my apartment.
After that, I carefully watched the parking lot for the return of the neighbor who shared my bathroom wall. We’d never met before, but I made a point of zipping out to meet him as he prepared to enter his apartment. When I introduced myself as his neighbor, he immediately said, “So you’re the SOB who fills his tub until it overflows so that it leaks into my bathroom. What the hell is wrong with you?”
After a brief but enlightening discussion, my new friend and I were unable to conclude whether Joyce was actually evil, or just abominably stupid – but we did agree on the next course of action. It ended up requiring a call to the investment group who actually owned the apartment complex, but we finally got some action. A carpenter came by and knocked a hole in my bathroom wall, revealing a quarter inch puncture in one of the main pipes in the system feeding the showers for not only our two adjacent apartments, but also the two above us. Whenever any of the four tenants turned on the shower, the feed pipe spurted water into the space between the adjacent unit walls, which would eventually leak out into both of our bathrooms.
Whatever made Joyce think she could solve the problem by telling each of us the same lame “neighbor is a psycho” story remains a mystery. Shortly after the repairs were made, the management company replaced her* with another manager, and the remainder of my tenure in this complex was comparatively blissful.
While I was there, though, I did have some interesting episodes with the cute girls across the hall, and at the McDonalds adjacent to the complex parking lot. But those stories will have to wait until later…
The Dim-Witted Apartment Manager, Part 2 ~1979
When it was time to move into my first post-collegiate apartment, I was delighted to find a brand new complex in a location that was convenient to my job, my swim team, and many fine retail establishments. I had assumed that, as a previously-unoccupied establishment, everything would be in A-1 unmolested operating condition. Sparkling shiny appliances; pristine paint on the walls, and window coverings that would glide smoothly into their appointed positions. Right?
Since everything I owned could easily fit into the back seat of my 1978 Ford Pinto, it didn’t take long to move in. My temporary roommate, Brent, owned little more than a duffel bag, so we spent very little time on assuming occupancy and got right to work on the important stuff – cooking a frozen Tony’s pizza. The oven worked, and the freezer light came on to show that there was room enough for 7 such pizzas. After a trip to the local Dillon’s store, the freezer was stocked up and life was good.
Since Brent and I both started our day by swimming and then showering at the Wichita Swim Club, we had no immediate reason to test the apartment’s pre-fab bath/shower combo unit. The water worked, and the toilet flushed, so we assumed things were just peachy.
The next evening, though, Brent came out of the bathroom with a puzzled look on his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked. He thought about it a moment, then answered. “My sock is wet.”
Good Lord, I thought, I’m rooming with a guy who pees on himself. At the very best, this makes me question his competence with his male equipment; and at the worst represents what could become a serious hygiene challenge. “Good Lord,” I said, “How could you pee on yourself?”
“I don’t know,” he said, continuing to look confused. “My sock is wet on the bottom. If I peed on myself, wouldn’t it be wet on the top?” He looked at me as if expecting me to unravel this perplexing mystery.
Rather than replying, I got up and walked into the bathroom. “Aw, man. There’s water all over the place.”
A quick observation of the shape and position of the puddle left no doubt that it was not the result of any sort of toiletry accident, but in fact, was a leak coming in from underneath the wall. Brent and I were both relieved; I sopped up the water with a towel, and he simply wore one sock for the rest of the evening.
The next day, I reported the incident to Joyce, our dependable apartment manager. She let out a deep sigh and shook her head. “I’ll bet the guy next door let his tub overflow.” She nodded as if agreeing with herself. “That happens sometimes.” She nodded some more.
I hesitated a moment to see if she was going to continue with the thought, but finally concluded that she thought she was done. “Um,” I said, “could you maybe see what you could do to prevent the problem from happening again? Please?”
“Oh, sure. Yeah. I guess. Um, I guess I probably ought to talk with the guy. Yeah. No problem.” I thanked her and left, anticipating no future puddles.
The next day, it took two towels to sop up the flood from under the wall. Joyce said that she’d talk to the gentleman again. I took a trip to the laundry room to run a load of towels, just in case. (Most of my towels were pretty low on the absorbency scale. I had received them as “gifts” of the University of Kansas Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, and most of them still had faint remnants of the “HPER” stamp on them, but some were pretty threadbare.)
The next time I reported a bathroom flood, Joyce was indignant. “Hmmph!” she snorted. “That guy told me he was going to be out of town all week, and yet here he is filling up his tub until it runs over and soaks the floor again, even though he’s not even supposed to be there.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “there may be some other problem – like a malfunction with the plumbing.” I mean, after all, how many people do you know who overfill the bathtub until it runs under the neighbor’s wall – over and over again? It just didn’t sound right.
“No, I’m sure it’s simply a repetitive bathtub overfill problem.” She was quite sure of herself. “I’ll give him a good talking-to when he gets back in town.”
“But if he’s out of town, and we’ve just been flooded…” I began, but then stopped when I realized that she’d already forgotten I was there. Sighing deeply, I walked back to my apartment.
After that, I carefully watched the parking lot for the return of the neighbor who shared my bathroom wall. We’d never met before, but I made a point of zipping out to meet him as he prepared to enter his apartment. When I introduced myself as his neighbor, he immediately said, “So you’re the SOB who fills his tub until it overflows so that it leaks into my bathroom. What the hell is wrong with you?”
After a brief but enlightening discussion, my new friend and I were unable to conclude whether Joyce was actually evil, or just abominably stupid – but we did agree on the next course of action. It ended up requiring a call to the investment group who actually owned the apartment complex, but we finally got some action. A carpenter came by and knocked a hole in my bathroom wall, revealing a quarter inch puncture in one of the main pipes in the system feeding the showers for not only our two adjacent apartments, but also the two above us. Whenever any of the four tenants turned on the shower, the feed pipe spurted water into the space between the adjacent unit walls, which would eventually leak out into both of our bathrooms.
Whatever made Joyce think she could solve the problem by telling each of us the same lame “neighbor is a psycho” story remains a mystery. Shortly after the repairs were made, the management company replaced her* with another manager, and the remainder of my tenure in this complex was comparatively blissful.
While I was there, though, I did have some interesting episodes with the cute girls across the hall, and at the McDonalds adjacent to the complex parking lot. But those stories will have to wait until later…
*Footnote: I have no idea what other complaints the apartment management company may have received about Joyce’s incompetence, but here’s one additional look at her “problem-solving” skills:
My apartment was on the “garden” level, which meant that my apartment was not completely underground, but that you did have to descend stairs in order to enter. The apartments on the “1st” floor, then, could have balconies, which were only a few feet off the ground, but gave the illusion of being luxuriously elevated.
The problem was that birds found the underside of those balconies to be an inviting spot to build a home. Unfortunately, the acoustics of the support beams channeled any bird noises directly into my bedroom, which made it very difficult to get any sleep. The constant directed peeping and chirping, while considered soothing to some people, served to deprive me of rest and drive me into the depth of annoyance. I asked my good buddy Joyce if it would be possible to relocate the nest.
“No. We can’t do that,” she said. But the next day, I saw her approaching the nest with a box of matches. Apparently, she was going to burn them out, assuming of course that the chemical-soaked wood of the balcony structure and the pressboard siding of the building would remain immune to any flames that happened to flare up.
I’m not sure if she thought better of the idea, or if she just couldn’t get a match lit, but she ended up not going through with her original plan. By this time, I had more or less gotten used to the bird sounds, and figured that they’d be moving on soon anyway, and pretty much forgot about it.
However, when I returned from a weeklong trip, I discovered that there was now an additional board covering the spot where the bird’s nest had been, and all was quiet. I’m not sure if the birds had vacated the nest, or if perhaps the nest had been moved to a more acceptable spot…but my suspicion is that she boarded the baby birds up inside the beam gap just like characters in an Edgar Allen Poe story. Since she disappeared shortly after the resolution of the “overflowing bathtub” problem, I was never able to find out what really happened.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.
The Dim-Witted Apartment Manager -- Part 1 ~1979
Have you ever noticed how someone might appear to be attractive, until you get to know them?
I suppose that’s where the phrase “beauty is only skin deep” comes from, but I never quite figured out how that’s supposed to work. If this oft-used expression is talking about physical beauty, well, yeah, I guess it makes sense – if you didn’t have skin you’d be all gross and muscle-y, with blood oozing out all over the place, like those bug-eyed half-skeleton guys whose picture you see pasted on the walls of the doctor’s office. Not the classic definition of beauty, at all… But if you’re talking about inner beauty, then the expression makes no sense at all – cuz inner beauty is, well, inner, you know? The beauty wouldn’t even start until you got below the skin.
Anyhow…when I first moved to Denver, I had a list of what I thought I wanted in a woman. I suspect it pretty closely matched the lists that most shallow guys have – you know, a certain color of hair, just about so tall, eyes the color of limpid pools (whatever the hell those are), and a body like a brick house (whatever that means). Well, I was stunned when I met my “list girl” at my new-hire orientation on the first day at my new job. She was stunning, and I was pretty sure that she was “the one”.
The only problem was that she was a vapid reefer addict who had no interest in anything I cared about. She looked great, but my wind-up set of chattering teeth provided more interesting company. Our “relationship” lasted about 3 days.
I should’ve known better, because I’d learned the lesson once before. Here’s what had happened:
During my last couple of college years I had lived in apartments. But I never really considered it “independent living” for several reasons. 1) I had a roommate, 2) I still came home to my dad’s house every summer, and used that address as my “permanent residence” on legal forms, and 3) my dad was still paying nearly all my expenses. Therefore, when I finally got a real job (after the whole “joining the Army” thing didn’t work out) I was pretty excited about finding (and subsequently paying for) an apartment of my own.
The place I was looking for had to be 1) cheap, 2) not too far from the Wichita Swim Club pool, and 3) reasonably free of rats, roaches, Communists, and other vermin. Then, if I found several complexes where all other factors were equal, I’d opt for the place with the best looking chicks.
Shortly after I started looking at apartments, I decided to take on Brent Barnes as a summer roommate. He’d be going back to school at the end of the summer, so his needs didn’t play a major factor in the decision, but he came along on the fact-finding tour.
We stopped at a brand-new complex at the corner of 13th & Woodlawn. Two advantages were immediately obvious; 1) it was new, and therefore unlikely to be vermin-infested, and 2) the parking lot abutted the parking lot of a McDonalds. In the likely event that we’d find our not-quite-responsible selves with an empty fridge on a Friday night, having a McDs right next door was a definite plus. After all, it was well-known among swimmers at the time that the Big Mac was the highest rated “performance food”.
But those factors alone wouldn’t seal the deal. We needed more. OK, the price was right…and guess what? The manager was a cute chick.
Well, OK, she was older than dirt, probably getting close to 30, but she had a nice smile, Farrah Fawcett hair, and was wearing a flimsy shirt that somehow didn’t quite button at the top. Even before talking to her, we concluded that she was not only a super-nice person, but that we could trust her to the ends of the earth.
And therein lies the lesson, my friends. This woman (to whom I’ll refer only as “Joyce”) was a pinhead. Oh, she knew how to instruct us in the finer details of filling out the rental paperwork, all right… but we were about to find out how totally clueless she was about anything beyond those simple duties.
“We’d like to look at a one-bedroom apartment, please,” I said. She raised an eyebrow, and appeared to be doing some complex math in her head. After a lengthy pause, she frowned and said, “…but there’s two of you.” I explained that the apartment would actually be for only me, but that Brent would be staying as a paying guest throughout the summer. Since he was still in college, and I had but recently gained my freedom, we were both comfortable with the cramped lifestyle necessitated by frugality.
“Oh,” she said, nodding. “You’re homos, then.”
“No,” I said. “We’re poor. And Brent is only staying for a couple of months. I don’t want to be stuck with a two-bedroom obligation after he’s gone.”
“I’ve had lots of girlfriends,” Brent added.
“You guys can be as queer as you want in a two-bedroom,” Joyce said, “but at least it would look proper.” She wrinkled her brow. “Two guys in one bedroom just don’t look right.”
“Look,” I said. “Just think of us as university roommates. Guys share dorm rooms all the time, and it’s no problem. It’s just like it was at college.”
“Call – idge?” Apparently the concept was beyond her grasp. I imagined that at any moment, there’d be smoke coming out of her ears from all the brain circuits that were frying. The skin of her forehead was twitching.
“Hey, I read Playboy!” Brent said. “I’ve got a copy in the car. Want me to get it?” When no one answered him, he continued, “Well, at least I’m sure I’m not a homo.” Then he looked at me with a newfound suspicion.
This wasn’t going well.
I put on my most mature and comforting smile. “Joyce,” I said, “I’ll tell you what…why don’t you just lease me the apartment and forget about our manly friend over here?” I waved my hand at Brent in the universal “shush” sign, and after a moment’s confusion, he seemed to catch on. He stayed quiet from that point on.
I think she actually did forget about him, and the rental process went smoothly after that. I signed a 6-month lease on a “garden level” one-bedroom apartment. (There wasn’t a garden at that level, or anywhere else on the premises for that matter, but it sounded better than saying that our new place was at “coffin depth” or that the windows had an “ankle-high view”.)
It didn’t take long to move in. My furniture consisted of a TV, a lamp, a twin bed, and one of those saddle-shaped pillows that’s designed to support your back on a sofa, but actually works pretty well as a makeshift chair when leaned against the wall. I had a couple of boxes of random kitchen items – most had “accidentally” found their way into my possession after various visits to the campus cafeteria – and a couple of handfuls of clothing. The clothing was all of the “wad up and stuff into a drawer” variety; none of this fancy “hang it in a closet” stuff for me. I had enough underwear that I could go for several weeks without doing laundry – three pair.
I stored everything in the same dresser that I’d had as a kid. (Though I no longer have it, I regret having let it get away. It was a classic, with intricate woodworking and ornate brass fixtures. I’m quite certain that if I had it today and were to take it on the Antiques Roadshow, a delicately-accented Sotheby’s employee would astonish me with his analytical conclusion that my beloved childhood dresser was a rare example of poorly-painted cheap pinewood crap.)
Brent and I began our free-wheeling lives as independent bachelors. We both swam every day, and I went to work at Beechcraft while Brent stayed home to study the “articles” in his magazines. As far as I know, though, our bachelor pad was severely underused for the kind of fun ‘n’ games romping that most bachelor pads were used for in the late 70’s. In other words, there was no hanky panky going on there, heterosexual or otherwise.
Well, OK, there was this one time. I brought a girl to the apartment with the intention of giving hanky panky a solid shot. But Brent would not leave us alone. I tried subtle hints, such as “we’d just like some quiet time”…followed by less subtle hints such as “leave us alone, Brent”. But he attended to us like a dog watching the chef at a barbecue. Finally, several hours later, he picked up on my implied meaning when I said, “Brent, GO THE HELL AWAY!”
Well, he performed a very convincing fake yawn and said he was tired. He went into the bedroom and shut the door, leaving the young lady and I free to entangle ourselves in the uncrowded living room. I figured I was in for some serious tongue-wrestling at the very least, and maybe a lot more.
But no. She said it was late, and that she was tired. She probably meant that she simply was not attracted to me, but I blamed Brent and his failure to vacate at a decent hour. She may not have wanted to make out with me, but she couldn’t have used the “it’s too late” excuse if my idiot roommate had vanished a little bit earlier. I hurled mental curses at the closed bedroom door.
Later, after parting company with my guest, I silently crept into the bedroom to try to get some shuteye. Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised; Brent was wide awake and sitting up in his bed. I’m pretty sure he’d been listening at the door for the never-to-come sounds of whoopee being made, but when none were forthcoming, had decided to interrogate me about the results. “Whad ya get?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“C’mon, tell me. Whad ya get? How far did she go?” He was practically levitating in his excitement to hear the filthy details of my “so much better than his” sex life.
Lacking anything heavier, I threw my pillow at him. “You @#!$%! Idiot!” I yelled. “Absolutely NOTHING happened! And you know why?” I could see his wide eyes, even in the dark. “Because you are an idiot!”
I then proceeded to pummel him with pillows for the next 15 minutes, stopping occasionally to explain that his voyeuristic haunting of our s'posed-to-be-private moments had vacuumed any potential romance from the situation, and that he was an idiot, his relatives were all idiots, and that his children would be idiots, except that he’ll never have any children because no girl would ever even go out with such an idiot!
Geez.
Anyway, I was supposed to be talking about the dim-witted apartment manager. I’m certainly not done with that story. I guess the saga will have to continue later.
To be continued…
The Dim-Witted Apartment Manager -- Part 1 ~1979
Have you ever noticed how someone might appear to be attractive, until you get to know them?
I suppose that’s where the phrase “beauty is only skin deep” comes from, but I never quite figured out how that’s supposed to work. If this oft-used expression is talking about physical beauty, well, yeah, I guess it makes sense – if you didn’t have skin you’d be all gross and muscle-y, with blood oozing out all over the place, like those bug-eyed half-skeleton guys whose picture you see pasted on the walls of the doctor’s office. Not the classic definition of beauty, at all… But if you’re talking about inner beauty, then the expression makes no sense at all – cuz inner beauty is, well, inner, you know? The beauty wouldn’t even start until you got below the skin.
Anyhow…when I first moved to Denver, I had a list of what I thought I wanted in a woman. I suspect it pretty closely matched the lists that most shallow guys have – you know, a certain color of hair, just about so tall, eyes the color of limpid pools (whatever the hell those are), and a body like a brick house (whatever that means). Well, I was stunned when I met my “list girl” at my new-hire orientation on the first day at my new job. She was stunning, and I was pretty sure that she was “the one”.
The only problem was that she was a vapid reefer addict who had no interest in anything I cared about. She looked great, but my wind-up set of chattering teeth provided more interesting company. Our “relationship” lasted about 3 days.
I should’ve known better, because I’d learned the lesson once before. Here’s what had happened:
During my last couple of college years I had lived in apartments. But I never really considered it “independent living” for several reasons. 1) I had a roommate, 2) I still came home to my dad’s house every summer, and used that address as my “permanent residence” on legal forms, and 3) my dad was still paying nearly all my expenses. Therefore, when I finally got a real job (after the whole “joining the Army” thing didn’t work out) I was pretty excited about finding (and subsequently paying for) an apartment of my own.
The place I was looking for had to be 1) cheap, 2) not too far from the Wichita Swim Club pool, and 3) reasonably free of rats, roaches, Communists, and other vermin. Then, if I found several complexes where all other factors were equal, I’d opt for the place with the best looking chicks.
Shortly after I started looking at apartments, I decided to take on Brent Barnes as a summer roommate. He’d be going back to school at the end of the summer, so his needs didn’t play a major factor in the decision, but he came along on the fact-finding tour.
We stopped at a brand-new complex at the corner of 13th & Woodlawn. Two advantages were immediately obvious; 1) it was new, and therefore unlikely to be vermin-infested, and 2) the parking lot abutted the parking lot of a McDonalds. In the likely event that we’d find our not-quite-responsible selves with an empty fridge on a Friday night, having a McDs right next door was a definite plus. After all, it was well-known among swimmers at the time that the Big Mac was the highest rated “performance food”.
But those factors alone wouldn’t seal the deal. We needed more. OK, the price was right…and guess what? The manager was a cute chick.
Well, OK, she was older than dirt, probably getting close to 30, but she had a nice smile, Farrah Fawcett hair, and was wearing a flimsy shirt that somehow didn’t quite button at the top. Even before talking to her, we concluded that she was not only a super-nice person, but that we could trust her to the ends of the earth.
And therein lies the lesson, my friends. This woman (to whom I’ll refer only as “Joyce”) was a pinhead. Oh, she knew how to instruct us in the finer details of filling out the rental paperwork, all right… but we were about to find out how totally clueless she was about anything beyond those simple duties.
“We’d like to look at a one-bedroom apartment, please,” I said. She raised an eyebrow, and appeared to be doing some complex math in her head. After a lengthy pause, she frowned and said, “…but there’s two of you.” I explained that the apartment would actually be for only me, but that Brent would be staying as a paying guest throughout the summer. Since he was still in college, and I had but recently gained my freedom, we were both comfortable with the cramped lifestyle necessitated by frugality.
“Oh,” she said, nodding. “You’re homos, then.”
“No,” I said. “We’re poor. And Brent is only staying for a couple of months. I don’t want to be stuck with a two-bedroom obligation after he’s gone.”
“I’ve had lots of girlfriends,” Brent added.
“You guys can be as queer as you want in a two-bedroom,” Joyce said, “but at least it would look proper.” She wrinkled her brow. “Two guys in one bedroom just don’t look right.”
“Look,” I said. “Just think of us as university roommates. Guys share dorm rooms all the time, and it’s no problem. It’s just like it was at college.”
“Call – idge?” Apparently the concept was beyond her grasp. I imagined that at any moment, there’d be smoke coming out of her ears from all the brain circuits that were frying. The skin of her forehead was twitching.
“Hey, I read Playboy!” Brent said. “I’ve got a copy in the car. Want me to get it?” When no one answered him, he continued, “Well, at least I’m sure I’m not a homo.” Then he looked at me with a newfound suspicion.
This wasn’t going well.
I put on my most mature and comforting smile. “Joyce,” I said, “I’ll tell you what…why don’t you just lease me the apartment and forget about our manly friend over here?” I waved my hand at Brent in the universal “shush” sign, and after a moment’s confusion, he seemed to catch on. He stayed quiet from that point on.
I think she actually did forget about him, and the rental process went smoothly after that. I signed a 6-month lease on a “garden level” one-bedroom apartment. (There wasn’t a garden at that level, or anywhere else on the premises for that matter, but it sounded better than saying that our new place was at “coffin depth” or that the windows had an “ankle-high view”.)
It didn’t take long to move in. My furniture consisted of a TV, a lamp, a twin bed, and one of those saddle-shaped pillows that’s designed to support your back on a sofa, but actually works pretty well as a makeshift chair when leaned against the wall. I had a couple of boxes of random kitchen items – most had “accidentally” found their way into my possession after various visits to the campus cafeteria – and a couple of handfuls of clothing. The clothing was all of the “wad up and stuff into a drawer” variety; none of this fancy “hang it in a closet” stuff for me. I had enough underwear that I could go for several weeks without doing laundry – three pair.
I stored everything in the same dresser that I’d had as a kid. (Though I no longer have it, I regret having let it get away. It was a classic, with intricate woodworking and ornate brass fixtures. I’m quite certain that if I had it today and were to take it on the Antiques Roadshow, a delicately-accented Sotheby’s employee would astonish me with his analytical conclusion that my beloved childhood dresser was a rare example of poorly-painted cheap pinewood crap.)
Brent and I began our free-wheeling lives as independent bachelors. We both swam every day, and I went to work at Beechcraft while Brent stayed home to study the “articles” in his magazines. As far as I know, though, our bachelor pad was severely underused for the kind of fun ‘n’ games romping that most bachelor pads were used for in the late 70’s. In other words, there was no hanky panky going on there, heterosexual or otherwise.
Well, OK, there was this one time. I brought a girl to the apartment with the intention of giving hanky panky a solid shot. But Brent would not leave us alone. I tried subtle hints, such as “we’d just like some quiet time”…followed by less subtle hints such as “leave us alone, Brent”. But he attended to us like a dog watching the chef at a barbecue. Finally, several hours later, he picked up on my implied meaning when I said, “Brent, GO THE HELL AWAY!”
Well, he performed a very convincing fake yawn and said he was tired. He went into the bedroom and shut the door, leaving the young lady and I free to entangle ourselves in the uncrowded living room. I figured I was in for some serious tongue-wrestling at the very least, and maybe a lot more.
But no. She said it was late, and that she was tired. She probably meant that she simply was not attracted to me, but I blamed Brent and his failure to vacate at a decent hour. She may not have wanted to make out with me, but she couldn’t have used the “it’s too late” excuse if my idiot roommate had vanished a little bit earlier. I hurled mental curses at the closed bedroom door.
Later, after parting company with my guest, I silently crept into the bedroom to try to get some shuteye. Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised; Brent was wide awake and sitting up in his bed. I’m pretty sure he’d been listening at the door for the never-to-come sounds of whoopee being made, but when none were forthcoming, had decided to interrogate me about the results. “Whad ya get?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“C’mon, tell me. Whad ya get? How far did she go?” He was practically levitating in his excitement to hear the filthy details of my “so much better than his” sex life.
Lacking anything heavier, I threw my pillow at him. “You @#!$%! Idiot!” I yelled. “Absolutely NOTHING happened! And you know why?” I could see his wide eyes, even in the dark. “Because you are an idiot!”
I then proceeded to pummel him with pillows for the next 15 minutes, stopping occasionally to explain that his voyeuristic haunting of our s'posed-to-be-private moments had vacuumed any potential romance from the situation, and that he was an idiot, his relatives were all idiots, and that his children would be idiots, except that he’ll never have any children because no girl would ever even go out with such an idiot!
Geez.
Anyway, I was supposed to be talking about the dim-witted apartment manager. I’m certainly not done with that story. I guess the saga will have to continue later.
To be continued…
Thursday, July 31, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.
Moonies ~1979 (Warning: contains scenes of regrettably damp violence)
Have you ever noticed those spider webs that sometimes occur in relationships? Sometimes known as the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, this phenomenon suggests that we are all closely connected. And it’s absolutely true.
During the summers, those of us in the Wichita Swim Club would compete in several swim meets. Some were road trip adventures to exotic places such as Bartlesville or Omaha…and some were held at the Wichita East Branch YMCA. Kids would decide which meets to attend based on how tough the competition was expected to be, whether the team needed their support to score points, and how much money their parents were willing to spend in shipping their ungrateful offspring all around the planet just so they could swim back and forth in a cement pond.
Most of the kids only went to the big meets – the Air Capital Meet, the Region 8 Championships, etc. But those of us who weren’t quite up to that rarefied level often attended less competitive meets; Winfield, for example, or maybe Manhattan.
No, not Manhattan, New York – Manhattan, Kansas. Home of Kansas State University, which is where kids went if their grades weren’t good enough to get them in to KU, Wichita State, or Butler County Community College (BuCo JuCo). (OK, maybe I’m being unfair. K-State actually has a pretty good reputation as an agricultural college – in fact my brother in law went there, and his IQ is approaching the double digits.)
Anyway, the Manhattan swim meet was a place where less-than-elite swimmers could go to tune up and gain experience that would come in handy as their expertise increased. Some competition venues would only accept swimmers who had already made certain qualifying time standards (known as “A” times). But Manhattan would let anybody in. Even me.
We got there early, and as was our habit, we wandered around the pool grounds trying to scope out our competition. My little group consisted of myself, the Ant, Doug Smith, and Tom Jackson (no, not the former Broncos linebacker and broadcaster). We were pretty good at strutting around, acting cocky, and giving the evil eye to any other kids we ran into. Most of our opponents, subjected to our haughty glares, would duck their heads and sheepishly wander off in another direction.
But our little gang soon met its match. One group did not back down. In fact, they puffed themselves up and strutted right up to us. “We’re from Lawrence,” their leader bragged.
“I’m sorry,” Jackson said, shaking his head sadly. “Perhaps some day you’ll be able to join a good team.”
I’m pretty sure that the Lawrence spokesman growled a little bit. He was a big fellow, with platinum blond hair, brutishly handsome features, and a chiseled physique. When we talked about him later, we always referred to him as “Muscle Beach”, due to his resemblance to the Hollywood ideal of a bronze god. He responded to Tom’s insult. “I swim butterfly. I have my ‘A’ time.”
Since almost every swimmer from our team had reached the “A” time standard in nearly every event, there wasn’t much reaction to Beach’s proclamation. We smiled, but no one said anything.
“How many ‘A’ times do you have?” asked Muscle Beach.
Tom responded. “Well, all of them,” he said matter-of-factly.
There was a collective gasp from the Lawrence group. “Ha!” said Beach. “No one has all their ‘A’ times.” He snorted, then turned and walked away with his gang following close behind.
We laughed about that one for days afterward. But what does that have to do with Kevin Bacon? Well, the next year at school, I developed an unrequited crush on a goddess in my psychology class named Sherilyn Barnes. She was an angel, and I eventually got up enough courage to make a few misguided attempts to talk with her. She had no use for me, of course, since this was before I discovered the secrets. And besides, she already had a boyfriend; yeah, that’s right…Muscle Beach.
It turns out that his name was Randy Johnson (no, not the pitcher), and he turned out to be a really nice guy. Well, he was really good friends with Sherilyn’s brother Brent, who later swam on the team at KU and became good friends with my buddy, Doug Smith. To make a long story short, Brent came to Wichita a couple of summers later to swim with WSC, and needed a place to live. I was about to move into my own apartment, so Brent and I decided to share the rent.
Brent had very few possessions, and not too many changes of clothes, either. But he did have the “Frampton Comes Alive” double album, and a pressure-operated fire extinguisher. You know the kind I’m talking about; it’s essentially nothing more than a big steel can with a pump handle that you crank to get the water to squirt out. You don’t see too many of those any more, but they used to be in a cubby hole in every wall in every public school. In fact, I think this one might have come from just such a cubby hole…
Though there have been times in my life when I’ve been bored enough to have long conversations with anyone who happened to knock upon my door, I did not have that experience while living with Brent. We always had something going on. And so when a young man and young woman from the Unification Church stopped by to enlighten me regarding their religion, I politely told them I was not interested.
As they were walking away, Brent was just entering the apartment hallway. He glanced over his shoulder at the departing evangelists, and asked me who they were. “Churchers,” I responded. “Moonies, I think.”
“No kidding?” He got excited. “Moonies? Really? Moonies?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, we gotta get ‘em.”
“Get ‘em?”
“Yeah. C’mon. Get the car keys.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant until he opened the closet and pulled out the fire extinguisher. He tucked the can under one arm and grabbed the nozzle in his other hand. “Let’s go!” he said.
“Dude, we can’t go squirting these people. Their all dressed up and stuff.”
“Yeah, but they’re Moonies. Moonies!”
Well, you gotta admit that there’s no way to argue with that kind of logic. We piled into my Pinto and took off down the street in search of the pious duo. While I shifted gears, Brent pumped the extinguisher like mad.
Our quarry hadn’t gone far. I pulled over to the curb a dozen feet behind them, and Brent leapt out of the car. He tip-toed up to point-blank range and, grinning like a maniac, shouted “HEY, MOONIES!” Then he let fly with everything that extinguisher had.
The Moonies felt the spray on their back, and, of course, turned around to see what was happening. Brent was sort of hopping up and down and laughing while he held the sprayer full on them. I expected his victims to react in some way, but they just kinda stood there watching their clothing turn dark from the water. So he kept spraying. The whole incident probably only took seconds, but it actually went on long enough that Brent became rather bored – especially since his targets had such a deer-in-the-headlights response. Finally, he quit shooting and jumped back in the car. I popped the clutch and peeled out.
I think it’s safe to say that Brent enjoyed that moment more than anything else that happened during that summer. Oh, sure, he easily achieved all his “A” times, and he probably made out with half the girls on our swim team at some point. I also think that his sister and Mr. Muscle Beach became happily married that summer – but the only thing Brent still enjoys talking about is the day he heroically stood up for the honor of non-cult members everywhere in vanquishing the minions of the evil Dr. Moon.
And the town of Lawrence still beams with pride.
Peace be with you, my children.
Next: The Dim-Witted Apartment Manager
Moonies ~1979 (Warning: contains scenes of regrettably damp violence)
Have you ever noticed those spider webs that sometimes occur in relationships? Sometimes known as the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, this phenomenon suggests that we are all closely connected. And it’s absolutely true.
During the summers, those of us in the Wichita Swim Club would compete in several swim meets. Some were road trip adventures to exotic places such as Bartlesville or Omaha…and some were held at the Wichita East Branch YMCA. Kids would decide which meets to attend based on how tough the competition was expected to be, whether the team needed their support to score points, and how much money their parents were willing to spend in shipping their ungrateful offspring all around the planet just so they could swim back and forth in a cement pond.
Most of the kids only went to the big meets – the Air Capital Meet, the Region 8 Championships, etc. But those of us who weren’t quite up to that rarefied level often attended less competitive meets; Winfield, for example, or maybe Manhattan.
No, not Manhattan, New York – Manhattan, Kansas. Home of Kansas State University, which is where kids went if their grades weren’t good enough to get them in to KU, Wichita State, or Butler County Community College (BuCo JuCo). (OK, maybe I’m being unfair. K-State actually has a pretty good reputation as an agricultural college – in fact my brother in law went there, and his IQ is approaching the double digits.)
Anyway, the Manhattan swim meet was a place where less-than-elite swimmers could go to tune up and gain experience that would come in handy as their expertise increased. Some competition venues would only accept swimmers who had already made certain qualifying time standards (known as “A” times). But Manhattan would let anybody in. Even me.
We got there early, and as was our habit, we wandered around the pool grounds trying to scope out our competition. My little group consisted of myself, the Ant, Doug Smith, and Tom Jackson (no, not the former Broncos linebacker and broadcaster). We were pretty good at strutting around, acting cocky, and giving the evil eye to any other kids we ran into. Most of our opponents, subjected to our haughty glares, would duck their heads and sheepishly wander off in another direction.
But our little gang soon met its match. One group did not back down. In fact, they puffed themselves up and strutted right up to us. “We’re from Lawrence,” their leader bragged.
“I’m sorry,” Jackson said, shaking his head sadly. “Perhaps some day you’ll be able to join a good team.”
I’m pretty sure that the Lawrence spokesman growled a little bit. He was a big fellow, with platinum blond hair, brutishly handsome features, and a chiseled physique. When we talked about him later, we always referred to him as “Muscle Beach”, due to his resemblance to the Hollywood ideal of a bronze god. He responded to Tom’s insult. “I swim butterfly. I have my ‘A’ time.”
Since almost every swimmer from our team had reached the “A” time standard in nearly every event, there wasn’t much reaction to Beach’s proclamation. We smiled, but no one said anything.
“How many ‘A’ times do you have?” asked Muscle Beach.
Tom responded. “Well, all of them,” he said matter-of-factly.
There was a collective gasp from the Lawrence group. “Ha!” said Beach. “No one has all their ‘A’ times.” He snorted, then turned and walked away with his gang following close behind.
We laughed about that one for days afterward. But what does that have to do with Kevin Bacon? Well, the next year at school, I developed an unrequited crush on a goddess in my psychology class named Sherilyn Barnes. She was an angel, and I eventually got up enough courage to make a few misguided attempts to talk with her. She had no use for me, of course, since this was before I discovered the secrets. And besides, she already had a boyfriend; yeah, that’s right…Muscle Beach.
It turns out that his name was Randy Johnson (no, not the pitcher), and he turned out to be a really nice guy. Well, he was really good friends with Sherilyn’s brother Brent, who later swam on the team at KU and became good friends with my buddy, Doug Smith. To make a long story short, Brent came to Wichita a couple of summers later to swim with WSC, and needed a place to live. I was about to move into my own apartment, so Brent and I decided to share the rent.
Brent had very few possessions, and not too many changes of clothes, either. But he did have the “Frampton Comes Alive” double album, and a pressure-operated fire extinguisher. You know the kind I’m talking about; it’s essentially nothing more than a big steel can with a pump handle that you crank to get the water to squirt out. You don’t see too many of those any more, but they used to be in a cubby hole in every wall in every public school. In fact, I think this one might have come from just such a cubby hole…
Though there have been times in my life when I’ve been bored enough to have long conversations with anyone who happened to knock upon my door, I did not have that experience while living with Brent. We always had something going on. And so when a young man and young woman from the Unification Church stopped by to enlighten me regarding their religion, I politely told them I was not interested.
As they were walking away, Brent was just entering the apartment hallway. He glanced over his shoulder at the departing evangelists, and asked me who they were. “Churchers,” I responded. “Moonies, I think.”
“No kidding?” He got excited. “Moonies? Really? Moonies?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, we gotta get ‘em.”
“Get ‘em?”
“Yeah. C’mon. Get the car keys.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant until he opened the closet and pulled out the fire extinguisher. He tucked the can under one arm and grabbed the nozzle in his other hand. “Let’s go!” he said.
“Dude, we can’t go squirting these people. Their all dressed up and stuff.”
“Yeah, but they’re Moonies. Moonies!”
Well, you gotta admit that there’s no way to argue with that kind of logic. We piled into my Pinto and took off down the street in search of the pious duo. While I shifted gears, Brent pumped the extinguisher like mad.
Our quarry hadn’t gone far. I pulled over to the curb a dozen feet behind them, and Brent leapt out of the car. He tip-toed up to point-blank range and, grinning like a maniac, shouted “HEY, MOONIES!” Then he let fly with everything that extinguisher had.
The Moonies felt the spray on their back, and, of course, turned around to see what was happening. Brent was sort of hopping up and down and laughing while he held the sprayer full on them. I expected his victims to react in some way, but they just kinda stood there watching their clothing turn dark from the water. So he kept spraying. The whole incident probably only took seconds, but it actually went on long enough that Brent became rather bored – especially since his targets had such a deer-in-the-headlights response. Finally, he quit shooting and jumped back in the car. I popped the clutch and peeled out.
I think it’s safe to say that Brent enjoyed that moment more than anything else that happened during that summer. Oh, sure, he easily achieved all his “A” times, and he probably made out with half the girls on our swim team at some point. I also think that his sister and Mr. Muscle Beach became happily married that summer – but the only thing Brent still enjoys talking about is the day he heroically stood up for the honor of non-cult members everywhere in vanquishing the minions of the evil Dr. Moon.
And the town of Lawrence still beams with pride.
Peace be with you, my children.
Next: The Dim-Witted Apartment Manager
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.
How I Became a Country/Western Disc Jockey ~1979
It’s hard for me to imagine this nowadays, but there was a time in my life where I actually experienced boredom. Sometimes (especially on weekends), I’d say to myself, “Gosh, what should I do this afternoon?”
I know…it’s a tough memory for me to grasp, especially since the most common thing I say these days is “Auuggghhh! There’s never enough time! I have too much to do!” But, there was a time in my youth when I would sit in my apartment and pray for anything that could disrupt the tedium of my dull and boring life.
It got so bad that one day I actually invited a door-to-door insurance salesman to come into my apartment.
Good gravy! A door-to-door insurance salesman? C’mon! Now that’s boredom, my friends…when a conversation with an annoying and pushy stranger is more appealing than anything on TV, any book on the shelf, or even another game of solitaire. (Remember, though; this was pre-Internet & Windows® – the only thing we had were those “real” decks of cards with that mutant old-timey bicyclist on the box. It’s a wonder that humanity could even survive in those oh-so-primitive times.)
Anyway, this guy knocks on my door and asks me if I’ve had a recent “Insurance Needs Checkup”. (Such a question ranks right up there with “Have you recently bathed in sulphuric acid?” or “Have you recently spent 12 consecutive hours listening to William Shatner record albums?” – the answer should ALWAYS be “No, I haven’t. Now, begone before I release the hounds!”)
“I have not, my friend,” I said. “Please come in and tell me all about it.”
He was a handsome black kid, probably in his early 20s, and I’m sorry to say that I’ve forgotten his name. He had the kind of charisma that could easily make him a successful insurance salesman, but I don’t think his heart was really in it. After about 2 minutes, he had confessed to me that what he really wanted was a career in radio. “What a coincidence!” I said, “I happen to have an FCC 3rd Class Broadcasting License, myself.”
“Oh, man,” he replied, “If you’ve got your ticket, well then, have I got an opportunity for you…”
Explanatory interlude: One of the benefits of my Radio/TV/Film education at the University of Kansas was that I had passed the FCC exam that allowed a person to go on the air. I’m not at all sure this requirement still exists, but back then, you weren’t allowed to host a radio program unless you had at least passed the “3rd class” test. To obtain this license, you had to demonstrate knowledge of radio basics (the difference between AM and FM, how to perform a test of the Emergency Broadcast System, and why the knobs only went up to “10”, for example*). In addition, you had to know how to do all the technical tasks involved in running the transmitter – reading meters, calculating voltages, and finding the “off” switch in case of a meltdown.
(Related question: at one time, the Emergency Broadcast System was tested on a regular basis. And for a while, one of the test spots included a jazzy little song in a “Nelson Riddle Singers” mode. It ended with a duck quacking for some reason, and it was more fun than most of the lame music that was being played at the time. Does anybody know what happened to that jingle? Please let me know. Thanks.)
Anyway, the insiders referred to the FCC license as your “ticket”, and if you had one, then you could be considered for an on-air job. It turned out that my insurance-selling friend knew someone who knew someone who knew that one of the local stations was looking for a DJ. He gave me a name and a phone number, and suggested that I call.
That boredom-induced chat turned out to be the best insurance sales experience I’ve ever had. The kid left feeling good about himself, and I had a solid contact for a potential entry into the exciting world of commercial broadcast radio.
I called the station first thing Monday morning. I got the impression that they were desperate to find someone quickly, because we set up an interview for my lunch hour that very day.
The station was KICT, 95.7 Stereo Country/Western. It was located, appropriately enough, on the western edge of town. It was quite a drive from my office at Boeing, but I told my co-workers that I might be late getting back from lunch, and headed out.
The interview didn’t last long. They asked me to do a cold-reading of some news copy, demonstrate that I knew how to use the audio board, and how to cue up a record on the turntable. Basically, I turned a few knobs, said a few words into a microphone, shook a few hands, and drove back to my office. During the drive, of course, I thought about all the mistakes I’d made during the interview, and mentally listed all the reasons that they wouldn’t hire me.
There was a message waiting on my phone when I returned to my desk. “This is David over at KICT”, it said. “Can you start this Saturday? Call us back. Thanks.”
How ‘bout that? And I didn’t even have to display my vast knowledge of the Emergency Broadcast System. Pretty cool. I called David and told him I’d be happy to start whenever they needed me. And thus began my illustrious career as a country & western DJ.
I’ll share my KICT tales of hilarity and depravity in other installments. But for now, I’ll conclude by saying this: If you’re ever bored to death on a weekend and an insurance salesman drops over, by all means, invite him in.
Next: Moonies
* Licensed radio stations are only permitted to have knobs that go up to 10. Why? Because "11" would just be too darn loud.
How I Became a Country/Western Disc Jockey ~1979
It’s hard for me to imagine this nowadays, but there was a time in my life where I actually experienced boredom. Sometimes (especially on weekends), I’d say to myself, “Gosh, what should I do this afternoon?”
I know…it’s a tough memory for me to grasp, especially since the most common thing I say these days is “Auuggghhh! There’s never enough time! I have too much to do!” But, there was a time in my youth when I would sit in my apartment and pray for anything that could disrupt the tedium of my dull and boring life.
It got so bad that one day I actually invited a door-to-door insurance salesman to come into my apartment.
Good gravy! A door-to-door insurance salesman? C’mon! Now that’s boredom, my friends…when a conversation with an annoying and pushy stranger is more appealing than anything on TV, any book on the shelf, or even another game of solitaire. (Remember, though; this was pre-Internet & Windows® – the only thing we had were those “real” decks of cards with that mutant old-timey bicyclist on the box. It’s a wonder that humanity could even survive in those oh-so-primitive times.)
Anyway, this guy knocks on my door and asks me if I’ve had a recent “Insurance Needs Checkup”. (Such a question ranks right up there with “Have you recently bathed in sulphuric acid?” or “Have you recently spent 12 consecutive hours listening to William Shatner record albums?” – the answer should ALWAYS be “No, I haven’t. Now, begone before I release the hounds!”)
“I have not, my friend,” I said. “Please come in and tell me all about it.”
He was a handsome black kid, probably in his early 20s, and I’m sorry to say that I’ve forgotten his name. He had the kind of charisma that could easily make him a successful insurance salesman, but I don’t think his heart was really in it. After about 2 minutes, he had confessed to me that what he really wanted was a career in radio. “What a coincidence!” I said, “I happen to have an FCC 3rd Class Broadcasting License, myself.”
“Oh, man,” he replied, “If you’ve got your ticket, well then, have I got an opportunity for you…”
Explanatory interlude: One of the benefits of my Radio/TV/Film education at the University of Kansas was that I had passed the FCC exam that allowed a person to go on the air. I’m not at all sure this requirement still exists, but back then, you weren’t allowed to host a radio program unless you had at least passed the “3rd class” test. To obtain this license, you had to demonstrate knowledge of radio basics (the difference between AM and FM, how to perform a test of the Emergency Broadcast System, and why the knobs only went up to “10”, for example*). In addition, you had to know how to do all the technical tasks involved in running the transmitter – reading meters, calculating voltages, and finding the “off” switch in case of a meltdown.
(Related question: at one time, the Emergency Broadcast System was tested on a regular basis. And for a while, one of the test spots included a jazzy little song in a “Nelson Riddle Singers” mode. It ended with a duck quacking for some reason, and it was more fun than most of the lame music that was being played at the time. Does anybody know what happened to that jingle? Please let me know. Thanks.)
Anyway, the insiders referred to the FCC license as your “ticket”, and if you had one, then you could be considered for an on-air job. It turned out that my insurance-selling friend knew someone who knew someone who knew that one of the local stations was looking for a DJ. He gave me a name and a phone number, and suggested that I call.
That boredom-induced chat turned out to be the best insurance sales experience I’ve ever had. The kid left feeling good about himself, and I had a solid contact for a potential entry into the exciting world of commercial broadcast radio.
I called the station first thing Monday morning. I got the impression that they were desperate to find someone quickly, because we set up an interview for my lunch hour that very day.
The station was KICT, 95.7 Stereo Country/Western. It was located, appropriately enough, on the western edge of town. It was quite a drive from my office at Boeing, but I told my co-workers that I might be late getting back from lunch, and headed out.
The interview didn’t last long. They asked me to do a cold-reading of some news copy, demonstrate that I knew how to use the audio board, and how to cue up a record on the turntable. Basically, I turned a few knobs, said a few words into a microphone, shook a few hands, and drove back to my office. During the drive, of course, I thought about all the mistakes I’d made during the interview, and mentally listed all the reasons that they wouldn’t hire me.
There was a message waiting on my phone when I returned to my desk. “This is David over at KICT”, it said. “Can you start this Saturday? Call us back. Thanks.”
How ‘bout that? And I didn’t even have to display my vast knowledge of the Emergency Broadcast System. Pretty cool. I called David and told him I’d be happy to start whenever they needed me. And thus began my illustrious career as a country & western DJ.
I’ll share my KICT tales of hilarity and depravity in other installments. But for now, I’ll conclude by saying this: If you’re ever bored to death on a weekend and an insurance salesman drops over, by all means, invite him in.
Next: Moonies
* Licensed radio stations are only permitted to have knobs that go up to 10. Why? Because "11" would just be too darn loud.
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.
Special Effects – Exposure to “Creative Geography” ~1974
I actually liked most of my college teachers. (In fact, I had a major crush on my Spanish Composition teacher, but that’s another story…) Oh, sure, there were a few weird ones, like the Calculus teacher who wore the same pair of pants every day for a year without washing them, and the philosophy professor who had the strange obsession with Stonehenge…but most of them were pretty cool, and pretty decent teachers.
Two of my favorites were Dr. Gadd and Dr. Dart of the Radio/TV/Film Department. Dale Gadd was the radio expert, and he had a memorable catch phrase that we’d often beg him to rattle off for us. In his most mellow top-40 DJ’s voice, he’d introduce himself as “The Round Mound of Sound, with More Sound per Pound than Any Mound Around”. He said it really fast, and we were all impressed. Most of us worked on our top-40 DJ voices until we could say just about anything at 100 miles per hour, while keeping our voices perfectly melodious. It really is an art, and Gadd was one of the masters.
Dr. Peter Dart was the film guy. Oh sure, he could do radio and TV, but it was the celluloid that brought out his highest energy levels. And, like Gadd, he had a wonderful sense of humor, even sharing with us the story of his tormented childhood nickname of “Peter-Eater Dart-Fart”. Kids can be so cruel…
Which reminds me, don’t you think that almost any toupee looks WAY worse than a nice, shiny bald head? Nothing wrong with a clean head. The only thing a toupeé doesn’t look worse than is a comb over, right? Well, I’m usually pretty quick to notice when a guy is wearing a rug. And I’ll usually find myself wondering why he has made such a poor fashion choice when a clean scalp can be a thing of beauty.
Anyway, there was this one lecture where Dr. Dart was showing us slides that demonstrated the subtleties of lighting technique. He was talking about how a cinematographer must watch his frame for shiny objects that might reflect studio lights with too much intensity… “Like this,” he said, yanking off his hair to show his sparsely populated skull. I just about fainted. I wasn’t prepared for that – I almost thought he had pulled off his entire head. I had no idea that he was wearing fake hair. I don’t remember any of the rest of the lecture, since I was in shock trying to deal with the fact that my favorite professor had purposefully deceived my fashion sense for almost an entire semester…could I ever trust anything else he said from then on?
Well, eventually I got over it, and I started paying attention again. I learned an awful lot from Dr. Dart, but the one thing that I subsequently used in just about every film I ever made was the concept of “creative geography”. It’s based on a simple idea; that a film audience doesn’t know the details of the location you’re shooting. In other words, the building exterior you show doesn’t have to be the same building as where you shoot the interior scenes. The audience won’t know the difference, and won’t care.
Doug Smith and I used this technique in each of our films. The exterior shot showed Detective Breathwaite walking into the Police Department building, and the next shot showed him at his desk (which happened to be in my dad’s life insurance office). The house balcony I climbed seemed to lead into the inside of an office building, which actually was in a completely different part of town. When James Bond and Felix Lighter walked into the gas station bathroom, we next saw them inside the Smith’s garage. Nobody ever cared or questioned these geographic inconsistencies, because they had no way of knowing the difference.
So what does this have to do with special effects, you ask? Well, this: we used the concept to soup up James Bond’s car.
The exterior of the car looked like a standard 1960-something Toyota Corolla. You may remember those – very small, very boxy – one of the crummy el-cheapo cars that were imported when “Made in Japan” was still an insult. The one we used belonged to Doug’s dad, and it was totally white, and in a word, bland.
The manufacturer was inordinately proud of the fact that this “modern” model of engineering excellence featured an automatic transmission, which had been given the brand name of “Toyoglide”. And since the word "Toyoglide" was emblazoned on the size panel of the car using larger letters than the actual model name, we all referred to the vehicle by the transmission’s brand name. “Dad?” Doug would ask, “May we use the Toyoglide for our movie?”
“Why, certainly, son,” DuaneR would say in his best Ward Cleaver voice. “Just bring it back in one piece, heh, heh.” He didn’t smoke a pipe, but if he did, that would be the point where he’d put the pipe back in his mouth and return to reading his newspaper. (Doug was later to cause his father no small amount of stress through his reckless disregard for the structural integrity of the Toyoglide, but that’s another story.)
So how does a car qualify for “creative geography”? Well, when it came time for our version of "Q" to show James Bond the engine compartment of the Toyoglide, we cut in some footage of Bruce Brown’s 12-cylinder Jaguar XKE sports car, making it appear that the tiny Corolla had a massive hi-tech engine with gleaming chrome pipes and complicated electronics. (Bruce understood money. When the rest of us were looking for our first entry-level post-collegiate jobs, Bruce bought himself a Porsche dealership. But that, too, is another story.)
Well, once we’d established that this innocent looking tin can of a car had a powerplant worthy of NASA, we were morally bound to write a chase scene into the script. We decided that after 007 had used his plastic explosive to escape from Dr. Thunderfinger’s giant closet-sized microwave oven, he would discover the clue that revealed the evildoer’s hideout. By the time we filmed the scene, we were running low on time, money, and creativity…so we just had Bond pick up a matchbook that had been dropped by an evil henchman. And, of course, that matchbook just happened to have Thunderfinger’s home address printed on it. (Hey, all megalomaniacs have everything monogrammed, don't they?). So, with the crucial clue in his possesion, our intrepid secret agent makes a quick check with Directory Assistance to get directions, then hops in his Toyoglide and takes off to save the world.
The original plan was to shoot the drive at slow film speed, which would make it look fast when shown at the normal frame rate. But then Doug showed up with a new toy.
He’d paid $45 for a suction-cup camera mounting device. And since $45 was about equivalent to the entire budget for the rest of the film, we figured we’d better get our money’s worth out of the device. We stuck in on the front fender of the Toyoglide, pushed the camera’s "start" button, and drove. Then we stuck it on the hood of the car and shot some more driving. In fact, we stuck it on just about every surface we could find, the less horizontal, the better. We had to get our money’s worth, you know.
Well, we ended up with thousands of feet of film of, well, driving. We had the Toyoglide going east, the Toyoglide going west, and an interminable close-up shot of the Toyoglide’s front tire zipping past blurry pavement. We risked the $500 camera by sticking it onto the side of a speeding vehicle with a $45 suction cup, and we risked lives by having the camera operator hanging out the window during the filming. Somehow, both equipment and personnel survived.
Our “fast-motion” shots turned out pretty good – it really looked like the Toyoglide was going over 100 mph. The only problem was that all of the other cars on the road were zipping by with equal enthusiasm. If we’d have shot on an isolated road, we’d have had some good stuff…as it was; we had a lot of cartoonish footage that was destined for the trashcan.
Some of the suction-mounted stuff was of sufficient quality, but after watching it for just a few minutes, it became obvious that we didn’t need very much of it to make our point. The vast majority of our fancy camerawork ended up on the cutting room floor. In the finished film, Bond spends about 15 seconds in his super-duper car, which was just about right. What’s really important is the big fight scene that follows; nobody really cared much how he got there.
I have no idea if Doug still has his suction-cup camera mount. It’s probably in the back of a closet somewhere. So I can't make any guarantees, but if you ever need to cinematically demonstrate the speed of a boxy little foreign car with a 12-cylinder fire-breathing engine, well…give Doug a call.
Special Effects – Exposure to “Creative Geography” ~1974
I actually liked most of my college teachers. (In fact, I had a major crush on my Spanish Composition teacher, but that’s another story…) Oh, sure, there were a few weird ones, like the Calculus teacher who wore the same pair of pants every day for a year without washing them, and the philosophy professor who had the strange obsession with Stonehenge…but most of them were pretty cool, and pretty decent teachers.
Two of my favorites were Dr. Gadd and Dr. Dart of the Radio/TV/Film Department. Dale Gadd was the radio expert, and he had a memorable catch phrase that we’d often beg him to rattle off for us. In his most mellow top-40 DJ’s voice, he’d introduce himself as “The Round Mound of Sound, with More Sound per Pound than Any Mound Around”. He said it really fast, and we were all impressed. Most of us worked on our top-40 DJ voices until we could say just about anything at 100 miles per hour, while keeping our voices perfectly melodious. It really is an art, and Gadd was one of the masters.
Dr. Peter Dart was the film guy. Oh sure, he could do radio and TV, but it was the celluloid that brought out his highest energy levels. And, like Gadd, he had a wonderful sense of humor, even sharing with us the story of his tormented childhood nickname of “Peter-Eater Dart-Fart”. Kids can be so cruel…
Which reminds me, don’t you think that almost any toupee looks WAY worse than a nice, shiny bald head? Nothing wrong with a clean head. The only thing a toupeé doesn’t look worse than is a comb over, right? Well, I’m usually pretty quick to notice when a guy is wearing a rug. And I’ll usually find myself wondering why he has made such a poor fashion choice when a clean scalp can be a thing of beauty.
Anyway, there was this one lecture where Dr. Dart was showing us slides that demonstrated the subtleties of lighting technique. He was talking about how a cinematographer must watch his frame for shiny objects that might reflect studio lights with too much intensity… “Like this,” he said, yanking off his hair to show his sparsely populated skull. I just about fainted. I wasn’t prepared for that – I almost thought he had pulled off his entire head. I had no idea that he was wearing fake hair. I don’t remember any of the rest of the lecture, since I was in shock trying to deal with the fact that my favorite professor had purposefully deceived my fashion sense for almost an entire semester…could I ever trust anything else he said from then on?
Well, eventually I got over it, and I started paying attention again. I learned an awful lot from Dr. Dart, but the one thing that I subsequently used in just about every film I ever made was the concept of “creative geography”. It’s based on a simple idea; that a film audience doesn’t know the details of the location you’re shooting. In other words, the building exterior you show doesn’t have to be the same building as where you shoot the interior scenes. The audience won’t know the difference, and won’t care.
Doug Smith and I used this technique in each of our films. The exterior shot showed Detective Breathwaite walking into the Police Department building, and the next shot showed him at his desk (which happened to be in my dad’s life insurance office). The house balcony I climbed seemed to lead into the inside of an office building, which actually was in a completely different part of town. When James Bond and Felix Lighter walked into the gas station bathroom, we next saw them inside the Smith’s garage. Nobody ever cared or questioned these geographic inconsistencies, because they had no way of knowing the difference.
So what does this have to do with special effects, you ask? Well, this: we used the concept to soup up James Bond’s car.
The exterior of the car looked like a standard 1960-something Toyota Corolla. You may remember those – very small, very boxy – one of the crummy el-cheapo cars that were imported when “Made in Japan” was still an insult. The one we used belonged to Doug’s dad, and it was totally white, and in a word, bland.
The manufacturer was inordinately proud of the fact that this “modern” model of engineering excellence featured an automatic transmission, which had been given the brand name of “Toyoglide”. And since the word "Toyoglide" was emblazoned on the size panel of the car using larger letters than the actual model name, we all referred to the vehicle by the transmission’s brand name. “Dad?” Doug would ask, “May we use the Toyoglide for our movie?”
“Why, certainly, son,” DuaneR would say in his best Ward Cleaver voice. “Just bring it back in one piece, heh, heh.” He didn’t smoke a pipe, but if he did, that would be the point where he’d put the pipe back in his mouth and return to reading his newspaper. (Doug was later to cause his father no small amount of stress through his reckless disregard for the structural integrity of the Toyoglide, but that’s another story.)
So how does a car qualify for “creative geography”? Well, when it came time for our version of "Q" to show James Bond the engine compartment of the Toyoglide, we cut in some footage of Bruce Brown’s 12-cylinder Jaguar XKE sports car, making it appear that the tiny Corolla had a massive hi-tech engine with gleaming chrome pipes and complicated electronics. (Bruce understood money. When the rest of us were looking for our first entry-level post-collegiate jobs, Bruce bought himself a Porsche dealership. But that, too, is another story.)
Well, once we’d established that this innocent looking tin can of a car had a powerplant worthy of NASA, we were morally bound to write a chase scene into the script. We decided that after 007 had used his plastic explosive to escape from Dr. Thunderfinger’s giant closet-sized microwave oven, he would discover the clue that revealed the evildoer’s hideout. By the time we filmed the scene, we were running low on time, money, and creativity…so we just had Bond pick up a matchbook that had been dropped by an evil henchman. And, of course, that matchbook just happened to have Thunderfinger’s home address printed on it. (Hey, all megalomaniacs have everything monogrammed, don't they?). So, with the crucial clue in his possesion, our intrepid secret agent makes a quick check with Directory Assistance to get directions, then hops in his Toyoglide and takes off to save the world.
The original plan was to shoot the drive at slow film speed, which would make it look fast when shown at the normal frame rate. But then Doug showed up with a new toy.
He’d paid $45 for a suction-cup camera mounting device. And since $45 was about equivalent to the entire budget for the rest of the film, we figured we’d better get our money’s worth out of the device. We stuck in on the front fender of the Toyoglide, pushed the camera’s "start" button, and drove. Then we stuck it on the hood of the car and shot some more driving. In fact, we stuck it on just about every surface we could find, the less horizontal, the better. We had to get our money’s worth, you know.
Well, we ended up with thousands of feet of film of, well, driving. We had the Toyoglide going east, the Toyoglide going west, and an interminable close-up shot of the Toyoglide’s front tire zipping past blurry pavement. We risked the $500 camera by sticking it onto the side of a speeding vehicle with a $45 suction cup, and we risked lives by having the camera operator hanging out the window during the filming. Somehow, both equipment and personnel survived.
Our “fast-motion” shots turned out pretty good – it really looked like the Toyoglide was going over 100 mph. The only problem was that all of the other cars on the road were zipping by with equal enthusiasm. If we’d have shot on an isolated road, we’d have had some good stuff…as it was; we had a lot of cartoonish footage that was destined for the trashcan.
Some of the suction-mounted stuff was of sufficient quality, but after watching it for just a few minutes, it became obvious that we didn’t need very much of it to make our point. The vast majority of our fancy camerawork ended up on the cutting room floor. In the finished film, Bond spends about 15 seconds in his super-duper car, which was just about right. What’s really important is the big fight scene that follows; nobody really cared much how he got there.
I have no idea if Doug still has his suction-cup camera mount. It’s probably in the back of a closet somewhere. So I can't make any guarantees, but if you ever need to cinematically demonstrate the speed of a boxy little foreign car with a 12-cylinder fire-breathing engine, well…give Doug a call.
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.
Special Effects – Turning Knobs and Flipping Switches ~1974
Prior to my accidental discovery of the “Secrets to Success with Women”, the only useful things I learned in college all came from my Radio/TV/Film curriculum. For example, in my radio classes I learned how to turn volume knobs up and down. They’re really called “potentiometers”, you know – we insiders call them “pots” – so when you wanted something to be louder, you’d “pot it up”. We also learned how to “cue up” records and how to play looped eight-track cartridges, which we called “carts”. The transition between songs was called a “segue”, which is pronounced “segway”, and is French for “transition between songs”. Those of us who went “on the air” were known as “DJs”, which was industry jargon that meant “annoying loudmouth with an over inflated ego”.
(Note to slack-jawed young gen-x whippersnappers: back then, there were no CDs or MP3s. Music was recorded onto vinyl “phonograph records”, which were played on a spinning platter known as a “turntable”. A sharp, pointed device – known as a “needle” – was inserted into the record’s spiral “groove”, and would pick up and translate the groove’s fluctuations back into sound waves. It was this process that was the genesis of the hippie term “groovey”, which meant “good music”, or something like that.)
(Note to un-hip old farts: Ooops, I forgot that all the kids today still know about turntables because of that infernal “rap” music and the sacrilegious practice of “scratching”, where guys with names like “Baa Das Dood” and “Slick 5 Koolmaster” ruin records by putting their fingers on them and pushing backward against the turntable’s spin, creating the hideous screeching sounds that pass for music among this decadent and morally-deficient generation. Sigh.)
The radio station where I interned was originally an AM station using the call letters “KUOK”. (Some said that it meant that KU was “OK”…others claimed that it meant “Kool University of Kansas”, but I’m not sure which was true.) During my Freshman year, they didn’t actually have a transmitter, but somehow used the University phone system as their antenna. If you lived in one of the dorms, you could receive the station by wrapping your phone cord around your radio receiver. (Yes, I’m serious.) Very few people knew about this, and even fewer were actually willing to do it, so the audience was tiny (or as we in the “biz” called it, “highly targeted”).
The next year, the school applied to the FCC for a license to use the airwaves instead of the phone system. It turned out that the letters “KUOK” belonged to a small station in the Gulf of Mexico that broadcast 3am wave height readings, or some such nonsense, and they refused to give up the letters. So we went with our second choice and became KJHK (short for “Kansas Jayhawk”, but you knew that, didn’t you?). Working mostly under cover of darkness, the station “engineers” (ie, interns whose voices were not suited to being DJs) climbed up one of the local telephone poles and “installed” our transmitter. Shortly thereafter, KJHK went live, broadcasting in the FM band with a full 9 watts of power. Now the station could be heard across the entire campus, and if the atmospheric conditions were right, all the way down to the Gibson’s store on Iowa Street. Our audience grew into double digits.
I hosted the early morning jazz show from 6am until 8am. No one else was in the station at that hour, so I had the freedom to play any kind of jazz I wanted. The station had an entire wall full of album-covered shelves, featuring Herbie Hancock, Yngvie Malmstein, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sun Ra, among others. I sometimes played those artists, but mostly brought in my own Maynard Ferguson, Benny Goodman, Les Brown, and Glen Miller records. Heck, there were even times when I’d play a little Blue Oyster Cult, Roy Clark, or BTO. (Seriously, BTO had some jazzy stuff on some of their records. Check it out.)
No one ever complained about my eclectic definition of jazz. One morning, I found out why.
The station was running a call-in contest. The grand prize was quite attractive – something like 30 albums of your choice from the station’s collection – so I assumed that interest among listeners would run high. When it came time for me to run the contest, I went on the air and said, “OK, it’s time to unlock the KJHK ‘Mystery Prize Vault’. The tenth caller will have a chance to unscramble the secret combination and win the 30-album library. The number is …” Then I put on “ME-262” by BOC, and reached over to answer the phone.
It didn’t ring.
After the song, I flipped on my mike and potted up. “OK, I’ll take the first caller to play the Mystery Prize Vault game.”
When the next song finished, I said, “Look, folks, your chances of winning are pretty darn good. Somebody call in, and take your shot.”
“My”, I thought to myself, “these early morning jazz aficionados are not the aggressive, outgoing folks I had thought them to be.” Perhaps they were simply shy about appearing on a radio show with such a wide-ranging listenership.
Or perhaps nobody was listening at all.
After another 10 minutes of on-air pleading, cajoling, and promising to allow cheating, well, I finally picked up the phone and dialed my brother’s number. He wasn’t really awake yet, but he agreed to go on the air and play the game.
Needless to say, after that day I no longer lived under any illusions about my massive popularity as a media icon in the city. And I was able to let go of my dreams of being mobbed by DJ groupies whenever I popped over to Texas Tom’s for a Giant Tenderloin® sandwich.
And I never again felt guilty about playing Jimi Hendrix during the jazz program.
Next: How I Learned About “Creative Geography”
Special Effects – Turning Knobs and Flipping Switches ~1974
Prior to my accidental discovery of the “Secrets to Success with Women”, the only useful things I learned in college all came from my Radio/TV/Film curriculum. For example, in my radio classes I learned how to turn volume knobs up and down. They’re really called “potentiometers”, you know – we insiders call them “pots” – so when you wanted something to be louder, you’d “pot it up”. We also learned how to “cue up” records and how to play looped eight-track cartridges, which we called “carts”. The transition between songs was called a “segue”, which is pronounced “segway”, and is French for “transition between songs”. Those of us who went “on the air” were known as “DJs”, which was industry jargon that meant “annoying loudmouth with an over inflated ego”.
(Note to slack-jawed young gen-x whippersnappers: back then, there were no CDs or MP3s. Music was recorded onto vinyl “phonograph records”, which were played on a spinning platter known as a “turntable”. A sharp, pointed device – known as a “needle” – was inserted into the record’s spiral “groove”, and would pick up and translate the groove’s fluctuations back into sound waves. It was this process that was the genesis of the hippie term “groovey”, which meant “good music”, or something like that.)
(Note to un-hip old farts: Ooops, I forgot that all the kids today still know about turntables because of that infernal “rap” music and the sacrilegious practice of “scratching”, where guys with names like “Baa Das Dood” and “Slick 5 Koolmaster” ruin records by putting their fingers on them and pushing backward against the turntable’s spin, creating the hideous screeching sounds that pass for music among this decadent and morally-deficient generation. Sigh.)
The radio station where I interned was originally an AM station using the call letters “KUOK”. (Some said that it meant that KU was “OK”…others claimed that it meant “Kool University of Kansas”, but I’m not sure which was true.) During my Freshman year, they didn’t actually have a transmitter, but somehow used the University phone system as their antenna. If you lived in one of the dorms, you could receive the station by wrapping your phone cord around your radio receiver. (Yes, I’m serious.) Very few people knew about this, and even fewer were actually willing to do it, so the audience was tiny (or as we in the “biz” called it, “highly targeted”).
The next year, the school applied to the FCC for a license to use the airwaves instead of the phone system. It turned out that the letters “KUOK” belonged to a small station in the Gulf of Mexico that broadcast 3am wave height readings, or some such nonsense, and they refused to give up the letters. So we went with our second choice and became KJHK (short for “Kansas Jayhawk”, but you knew that, didn’t you?). Working mostly under cover of darkness, the station “engineers” (ie, interns whose voices were not suited to being DJs) climbed up one of the local telephone poles and “installed” our transmitter. Shortly thereafter, KJHK went live, broadcasting in the FM band with a full 9 watts of power. Now the station could be heard across the entire campus, and if the atmospheric conditions were right, all the way down to the Gibson’s store on Iowa Street. Our audience grew into double digits.
I hosted the early morning jazz show from 6am until 8am. No one else was in the station at that hour, so I had the freedom to play any kind of jazz I wanted. The station had an entire wall full of album-covered shelves, featuring Herbie Hancock, Yngvie Malmstein, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sun Ra, among others. I sometimes played those artists, but mostly brought in my own Maynard Ferguson, Benny Goodman, Les Brown, and Glen Miller records. Heck, there were even times when I’d play a little Blue Oyster Cult, Roy Clark, or BTO. (Seriously, BTO had some jazzy stuff on some of their records. Check it out.)
No one ever complained about my eclectic definition of jazz. One morning, I found out why.
The station was running a call-in contest. The grand prize was quite attractive – something like 30 albums of your choice from the station’s collection – so I assumed that interest among listeners would run high. When it came time for me to run the contest, I went on the air and said, “OK, it’s time to unlock the KJHK ‘Mystery Prize Vault’. The tenth caller will have a chance to unscramble the secret combination and win the 30-album library. The number is …” Then I put on “ME-262” by BOC, and reached over to answer the phone.
It didn’t ring.
After the song, I flipped on my mike and potted up. “OK, I’ll take the first caller to play the Mystery Prize Vault game.”
When the next song finished, I said, “Look, folks, your chances of winning are pretty darn good. Somebody call in, and take your shot.”
“My”, I thought to myself, “these early morning jazz aficionados are not the aggressive, outgoing folks I had thought them to be.” Perhaps they were simply shy about appearing on a radio show with such a wide-ranging listenership.
Or perhaps nobody was listening at all.
After another 10 minutes of on-air pleading, cajoling, and promising to allow cheating, well, I finally picked up the phone and dialed my brother’s number. He wasn’t really awake yet, but he agreed to go on the air and play the game.
Needless to say, after that day I no longer lived under any illusions about my massive popularity as a media icon in the city. And I was able to let go of my dreams of being mobbed by DJ groupies whenever I popped over to Texas Tom’s for a Giant Tenderloin® sandwich.
And I never again felt guilty about playing Jimi Hendrix during the jazz program.
Next: How I Learned About “Creative Geography”
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Special Effects – Why I’m Bleeding After Jumping Off the Roof, Part 2 ~1973
Read Part 1 (below) First
This may come as a surprise to readers who have never made their own movies, but…sometimes parts of the same scene are shot on different days. At the major studios, the effort to match the shots from different days is called “continuity”. It is someone’s full-time job to microscopically observe every shot and make sure that if the drink is in the actor’s right hand in shot one, it darn well better be there in shot two, also.
For a kung fu film, it’s more about making sure the dead guys haven’t rolled over between cuts. If one of the henchmen went down face first in the Messner’s flowerbed, then he’d better still be eating posies when we finish the shot next week.
This is harder than you might think. When we made “The Tiger and the Dragon”, we were never sure if we could get the actors to come back after lunch, much less after a two-week vacation. In fact, we ended up cutting Chris Bogue out of the film completely, even though he had the most menacing snarl of anyone on the team…but he couldn’t make it to the set often enough.
We solved most of our continuity problems by having all the henchmen wear our swim team T-Shirt. I don’t know who designed the shirt, but I can pretty much guarantee that they aren’t working in the fashion industry today; alternating horizontal red and gray stripes made the wearer look like a sunburned bumblebee. But at least everybody on the team had one. Are you playing a bad guy? Put on your team shirt.
(In later films, we tried to stick with the same sort of technique. When Doug Smith played James Bond, we made sure he wore the same shirt in every scene. The only problem we ran into was when we filmed the first half of the climactic fight scene in August, but were unable to film the rest until December. If you look closely, you’ll notice that at the end of the fight, Doug is wearing the same James Bond shirt, all right, but he has a half-dozen undershirts on beneath it.)
Anyway, this story is about how I got my bloody ribcage wound in the scene right after I jumped off a 30-foot roof to land on Rickey Harris’s head. Here’s how it happened:
Our swim team coach (the amazing Bill Spahn) had left town to go to the National Championship meet with Mike Ulffers and Robin Messner. Normally, when Bill was absent, one of the assistant coaches would fill in for him. If they were all busy, then Ulffers got the assignment. But when they were all gone at the same time, Bill turned the workout over to the person who was not only the next best swimmer, but was also the oldest. You’d think he’d also be the most mature, but…
We’re talking about Roger Neugent, here. One of the most delightfully unique individuals I’ve ever met, Roger is not only an incredibly talented athlete, but also a free-thinking philosopher who was never afraid to challenge conventional wisdom. Either that or he was some kind of brain-damaged weirdo. (I prefer the first explanation, but considering that he once jumped out of a fifth story window holding a fire extinguisher – when there was no fire – has led some people to the second conclusion. But I digress…)
When Roger was put in charge of the workout, you knew that our standard workout format would go out the window. We had filmed the roof-jumping scene a few days earlier, and were scheduled to finish shooting over the weekend. On this particular day, though, we weren’t thinking about the film; we were just looking for something fun to do at swim practice. Roger came up with a dandy idea.
Ever an observer of detail, Roger noticed a couple of things about the pool. One, that the pool deck was nothing more than a long, smooth, stretch of concrete…and two, that the gate at the end of the pool deck was large enough to pass an automobile. The next step was obvious…car skiing!
Roger drove his ancient Buick onto the deck. It was a beat-up pile of cerulean junk that he affectionately called the “Blue-Ick”, but it ran well enough. Somebody found about 35 feet of rope, and we were in business.
One end of the rope was held by a kid riding shotgun in Roger’s car; the other by a kid on a kickboard in the pool. Roger would drive from one end of the pool to the other, and the kid on the kickboard would enjoy the best surfing experience he could possibly get within the confines of an Olympic-sized pool. We took turns, and everybody got a chance for a serious thrill ride.
We thought the only danger was that the kid being towed needed to watch out for the pool wall, since the car was pulling from a significant angle. We were careful to coach everyone on how to avoid a collision with the wall. But we didn’t think the kid in the car had anything to worry about. But he did.
Naturally, I was the one who discovered the problem. It was my turn to hold onto the tow rope from the passenger side of the Blue-Ick. Wearing nothing but a Speedo, I didn’t have much protection when I lost my grip on the rope. There was a soft buzzing sound as the whizzing rope buzzed its way along my side until the entire length had been left behind on the deck outside the car. The kid we were towing was yelling about being gypped out of his ride, and I was bleeding all over Roger’s car. Serious ribcage rope burn.
Well, if you know anything about teen-agers, you know that if it didn’t require hospitalization, it wasn’t serious enough to stop the current activity. But we weren’t stupid; we figured out that the rope-holder was actually a flaw in the system. Solution? Tie the rope onto the door handle. OK, who’s next?
I jumped back in the pool, figuring that a good dose of chlorine would heal that gash right up. And it was a big enough pool that the blood didn’t really tint the water much at all. No worries.
But for the next couple of weeks, I had a big, red, welt across the side of my body. Even if we’d have had makeup (which we didn’t), it would’ve been hard to disguise the wound for those shirtless close-up kung fu scenes we needed to film. Time to improvise.
When we returned to the Messner’s house to film the remaining fight sequence, we hastily wrote up a scene where I entered the front door of the house. The camera does not follow me in, but the audience can hear the sound of an attack with some sort of weapon. When I come out of the house, I’m dripping blood from the wound in my side. We never explained what happened inside, and no one ever asked.
We used a product called “Vampire Blood”, which I believe was left over from the filming of “The Return of Nocto, the Boy Vampire”. It was a bit too bright to be believable, but hey, I’d just jumped off the dang roof, so deal with it, OK?
(A couple of years later, Doug and I started a project called “Hit Man”. It was a true splatter-fest, so we needed gallons of blood. The Vampire Blood product was too expensive in those quantities, so we did some experimentation and learned how to make realistic blood out of food coloring and Karo Syrup. It was sweet and tasty, too.)
There are no longer any signs of my car-surfing wound; I’m all healed up. Roger was never again allowed to coach unsupervised. And we did get the rest of the fight scenes shot before the rainstorms moved in. But that is another story.
Moral of the story: Surround yourself with creative people, and there will never be a dull moment.
Live a full life, my friends.
Terry
Special Effects – Why I’m Bleeding After Jumping Off the Roof, Part 2 ~1973
Read Part 1 (below) First
This may come as a surprise to readers who have never made their own movies, but…sometimes parts of the same scene are shot on different days. At the major studios, the effort to match the shots from different days is called “continuity”. It is someone’s full-time job to microscopically observe every shot and make sure that if the drink is in the actor’s right hand in shot one, it darn well better be there in shot two, also.
For a kung fu film, it’s more about making sure the dead guys haven’t rolled over between cuts. If one of the henchmen went down face first in the Messner’s flowerbed, then he’d better still be eating posies when we finish the shot next week.
This is harder than you might think. When we made “The Tiger and the Dragon”, we were never sure if we could get the actors to come back after lunch, much less after a two-week vacation. In fact, we ended up cutting Chris Bogue out of the film completely, even though he had the most menacing snarl of anyone on the team…but he couldn’t make it to the set often enough.
We solved most of our continuity problems by having all the henchmen wear our swim team T-Shirt. I don’t know who designed the shirt, but I can pretty much guarantee that they aren’t working in the fashion industry today; alternating horizontal red and gray stripes made the wearer look like a sunburned bumblebee. But at least everybody on the team had one. Are you playing a bad guy? Put on your team shirt.
(In later films, we tried to stick with the same sort of technique. When Doug Smith played James Bond, we made sure he wore the same shirt in every scene. The only problem we ran into was when we filmed the first half of the climactic fight scene in August, but were unable to film the rest until December. If you look closely, you’ll notice that at the end of the fight, Doug is wearing the same James Bond shirt, all right, but he has a half-dozen undershirts on beneath it.)
Anyway, this story is about how I got my bloody ribcage wound in the scene right after I jumped off a 30-foot roof to land on Rickey Harris’s head. Here’s how it happened:
Our swim team coach (the amazing Bill Spahn) had left town to go to the National Championship meet with Mike Ulffers and Robin Messner. Normally, when Bill was absent, one of the assistant coaches would fill in for him. If they were all busy, then Ulffers got the assignment. But when they were all gone at the same time, Bill turned the workout over to the person who was not only the next best swimmer, but was also the oldest. You’d think he’d also be the most mature, but…
We’re talking about Roger Neugent, here. One of the most delightfully unique individuals I’ve ever met, Roger is not only an incredibly talented athlete, but also a free-thinking philosopher who was never afraid to challenge conventional wisdom. Either that or he was some kind of brain-damaged weirdo. (I prefer the first explanation, but considering that he once jumped out of a fifth story window holding a fire extinguisher – when there was no fire – has led some people to the second conclusion. But I digress…)
When Roger was put in charge of the workout, you knew that our standard workout format would go out the window. We had filmed the roof-jumping scene a few days earlier, and were scheduled to finish shooting over the weekend. On this particular day, though, we weren’t thinking about the film; we were just looking for something fun to do at swim practice. Roger came up with a dandy idea.
Ever an observer of detail, Roger noticed a couple of things about the pool. One, that the pool deck was nothing more than a long, smooth, stretch of concrete…and two, that the gate at the end of the pool deck was large enough to pass an automobile. The next step was obvious…car skiing!
Roger drove his ancient Buick onto the deck. It was a beat-up pile of cerulean junk that he affectionately called the “Blue-Ick”, but it ran well enough. Somebody found about 35 feet of rope, and we were in business.
One end of the rope was held by a kid riding shotgun in Roger’s car; the other by a kid on a kickboard in the pool. Roger would drive from one end of the pool to the other, and the kid on the kickboard would enjoy the best surfing experience he could possibly get within the confines of an Olympic-sized pool. We took turns, and everybody got a chance for a serious thrill ride.
We thought the only danger was that the kid being towed needed to watch out for the pool wall, since the car was pulling from a significant angle. We were careful to coach everyone on how to avoid a collision with the wall. But we didn’t think the kid in the car had anything to worry about. But he did.
Naturally, I was the one who discovered the problem. It was my turn to hold onto the tow rope from the passenger side of the Blue-Ick. Wearing nothing but a Speedo, I didn’t have much protection when I lost my grip on the rope. There was a soft buzzing sound as the whizzing rope buzzed its way along my side until the entire length had been left behind on the deck outside the car. The kid we were towing was yelling about being gypped out of his ride, and I was bleeding all over Roger’s car. Serious ribcage rope burn.
Well, if you know anything about teen-agers, you know that if it didn’t require hospitalization, it wasn’t serious enough to stop the current activity. But we weren’t stupid; we figured out that the rope-holder was actually a flaw in the system. Solution? Tie the rope onto the door handle. OK, who’s next?
I jumped back in the pool, figuring that a good dose of chlorine would heal that gash right up. And it was a big enough pool that the blood didn’t really tint the water much at all. No worries.
But for the next couple of weeks, I had a big, red, welt across the side of my body. Even if we’d have had makeup (which we didn’t), it would’ve been hard to disguise the wound for those shirtless close-up kung fu scenes we needed to film. Time to improvise.
When we returned to the Messner’s house to film the remaining fight sequence, we hastily wrote up a scene where I entered the front door of the house. The camera does not follow me in, but the audience can hear the sound of an attack with some sort of weapon. When I come out of the house, I’m dripping blood from the wound in my side. We never explained what happened inside, and no one ever asked.
We used a product called “Vampire Blood”, which I believe was left over from the filming of “The Return of Nocto, the Boy Vampire”. It was a bit too bright to be believable, but hey, I’d just jumped off the dang roof, so deal with it, OK?
(A couple of years later, Doug and I started a project called “Hit Man”. It was a true splatter-fest, so we needed gallons of blood. The Vampire Blood product was too expensive in those quantities, so we did some experimentation and learned how to make realistic blood out of food coloring and Karo Syrup. It was sweet and tasty, too.)
There are no longer any signs of my car-surfing wound; I’m all healed up. Roger was never again allowed to coach unsupervised. And we did get the rest of the fight scenes shot before the rainstorms moved in. But that is another story.
Moral of the story: Surround yourself with creative people, and there will never be a dull moment.
Live a full life, my friends.
Terry
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Special Effects – Why I’m Bleeding After Jumping Off the Roof, Part 1 ~1973
For most of my life, I’ve been considered to be “the Creative One” in just about any group I’ve been a part of. I’m usually the one who’s asked to come up with wild ideas and bring them to life. I’m usually expected to provide the humor, the “outside the box” thinking, and the skewed perspectives – while the others in the group provide the grounded and stable viewpoints. But not always.
When I’m with my son Tanner, I’m obviously outclassed. The kid is brilliant, and oozes creativity out of every pore. He’s one of those rare people who’s creative with words, with music, and with images all at once. But I’ll rave about him elsewhere…
The situation I’m speaking of today is my collaboration with Douglas R. Smith, also known in Hollywood as Gillatino Bertolucci, and Dougimontis, the Philosopher.
Doug and I made movies together when we were in high school and college. And there was never any doubt who was the creative force behind our projects; Doug was (and still is) a genius.
My job within our duo was to gently nudge Doug back to the planet earth when necessary. You see, Doug is a genius…but he sometimes has some trouble with a concept most of us know as “reality”. He came up with ideas, all right, but he regularly failed to consider how much they were going to cost, and how many innocent bystanders were likely to be injured as a result.
Our first project was the kung-fu epic titled “The Tiger and the Dragon”. Doug had made movies before (most notably working with Lee McCroskey in the fabled “Nocto, the Boy Vampire” series), and I had spent considerable time as the cinematographer for our family’s posterity documentation. (In other words, I shot some of our home movies. I took over the duty when I noticed that everything my father shot used a technique known as “pan across everything as fast as you can”, which meant that everything passed by in a frenetic blur. He explained the technique to me; “Film is expensive. If I pan really quickly, everything gets recorded on at least one frame, and we save tons of money.” Well, OK, but it guaranteed that relatives, neighbors, friends, and people we didn’t even know would run for the hills when we pulled the projector out of the closet.)
The plot of “T&D” was modeled on Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”. In fact, most of the character names were pulled directly from the film, as well as a good percentage of the dialog. The story had our hero avenging the death of his best friend, who’d been killed by a mob boss after winning a ping pong tournament. I played the lead, Doug’s brother Steve played the boss bad guy, and Doug was his head henchman. All the other characters were played by our teammates from the Wichita Swim Club.
Most of our stunts were simple karate fights, with the actors’ lack of martial arts skill disguised by clever camera angles and tricky editing. But we had two extra-special stunts; 1) a police inspector falls off a 10-story parking garage, and 2) I jump from a 30-foot roof and crush the skull of one of the bad guys.
Guess what? Both stunts were Doug’s ideas.
The first one wasn’t too hard. We weren’t going to show the actual fall – he just went over the edge and the camera moved to show his splattered corpse 10 stories below. The “edge” our cop leaped from actually only dropped him about 4 feet – he had to duck after the jump so that we wouldn’t see his head floating there as he was supposedly plummeting. But it looked exactly like the edge for the establishing shot. It was simple, but was pretty effective.
We got some pretty funny looks from spectators as we set up the shot. Our cop (Lee McCroskey) had to lie in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the circular ramp while we filmed from the top of the building. Since we didn’t have walkie-talkies, he had to remain perfectly still with his arms and legs “dislocated” and an “extremely squashed” look on his face until we took the elevator down to where he could hear us shout the All Clear.
Lee did a great job as a corpse, but it wasn’t until we got the film developed that we discovered that he’d looked over his right shoulder when he jumped on the ledge during the establishing shot – but over his left in the close-up where he jumped off. Oh well, on our limited budget, we just had to cut it in and hope no one noticed.
(One other flub crept into this scene. Before he jumped from the building, Lee was supposed to turn and run from the evil henchmen who had been waiting to ambush him…but he fell flat on his butt as he turned. We just kept rolling and told him to get up and get moving. He did it well; it looked natural. But my brother, who was playing one of the henchmen can be seen in the back of the frame, rolling on the ground, laughing at Lee’s clumsiness. Due to Lee’s on-screen magnetism, though, no one in the audience noticed.)
OK. I admit that I had no problem when Doug suggested that Lee fall 10 stories to his death. But when he said that I should leap onto a guy’s head from a 30-foot rooftop, well, I balked.
I calmly explained that he was out of his friggin’ mind, but Doug wasn’t listening. “No, look,” he said, “we can fix it in editing. You only have to jump off the 15-foot roof peak. It’ll look like you went off the top. No problem.”
“Nobody’s gonna buy that,” I said. “It’ll look fake, and besides,” I added, “I ain’t jumpin’ off no 15-foot roof, either!”
“You gotta,” he said. “It’s the only way to sell the stunt.”
“Leave it out. It’s gonna make us look stupid.”
“No, we gotta do it.”
Deep breath. I looked at the house* again. It had 3 peaks to the roof – the center was the 30-footer, while the ones on the ends of the house were about half that high. Still, even the lower peaks were high enough to seriously injure anyone stupid enough to jump off. We didn’t even have a bunch of pillows, or a pile of leaves; much less a professional stunt cushion. If I were going to jump, I’d land in the yard. And the rest of the movie would go unfilmed while its star sat in a hospital bed with his leg in one of those casts with wires holding it up.
I’ve never been a particularly brave or adventurous person. I explained to the crew that the jump was simply too dangerous, and I wasn’t going to do it. Well, my brother was listening to this exchange. “Oh, it’s not so bad”, he said. Then he climbed up on the courtyard wall that attached to the lowest point of the roof. A minute later, he had jumped off the 15-foot peak.
“See? No injuries. No problems.” Crap. If my stupid little brother can do it, then I’ll look like a total dipwad if I don’t do it. Fine. I started the climb.
First we took the establishing shot of me standing on the top peak, where it was obvious how high I was. Then I walked over to the lower peak. Doug zoomed in so that no one could see that the roof continued to go upward just behind me.
To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to think we needed a test run. Doug looked through the camera and gave me the thumbs up. I jumped.
It hurt. Bad.
But the camera hadn’t been rolling. Gotta do it again. Taking a deep breath (and using part of it to curse my stupid little brother’s bravery), I mounted the roof again.
Of course, Doug was right. The scene was a big hit in the movie. Practically everyone who’s ever seen the movie comments on how cool it was that I jumped off that really high roof and landed on that guy’s head. That one scene transformed the movie from an amateur effort into a pretty good little film.
So how did I land on the guy’s head, you ask? Well, with a little help from editing and camera trickery. We filmed the shot with me standing on Ricky Harris’s shoulders. The camera started at Rick’s shoulder height and then tilted upward quickly. On a stationary screen, it appeared that I’d come down…fast. We cut that in right after the shot of my jump, and followed it with a shot of me stepping off of Ricky’s crushed body.
As an homage to Bruce Lee’s big fight in “Enter the Dragon”, I wasn’t wearing a shirt (It had been ripped off by the effeminate bouncer henchman played by Dave Feld. Feld wasn’t effeminate at all, but she didn’t show up for our vocals dubbing session, so we dubbed his lines with our best stereotypical limp-wristed lisp. The audience loved it.)
The next scene was supposed to begin the final fight sequence leading up to the climactic meeting with the mob boss. But we had to explain the bloody gash across my ribs first. Stay tuned.
Terry
*The house belonged to the Messners. Robin was one of the best swimmers in the world, and I was madly in love with her at the time. (I thought her mom was pretty hot, too, but that's another story.) Robin's dad is Roe Messner, who is most famous (or infamous) for dumping Robin's mom in order to marry the former Tammy Faye Baker. But that was later...at the time of this film, Roe was still around the house in Wichita. It was a great house, and it was awfully nice of their family to let us stage murders in the yard and jump off the roof, etc.
Special Effects – Why I’m Bleeding After Jumping Off the Roof, Part 1 ~1973
For most of my life, I’ve been considered to be “the Creative One” in just about any group I’ve been a part of. I’m usually the one who’s asked to come up with wild ideas and bring them to life. I’m usually expected to provide the humor, the “outside the box” thinking, and the skewed perspectives – while the others in the group provide the grounded and stable viewpoints. But not always.
When I’m with my son Tanner, I’m obviously outclassed. The kid is brilliant, and oozes creativity out of every pore. He’s one of those rare people who’s creative with words, with music, and with images all at once. But I’ll rave about him elsewhere…
The situation I’m speaking of today is my collaboration with Douglas R. Smith, also known in Hollywood as Gillatino Bertolucci, and Dougimontis, the Philosopher.
Doug and I made movies together when we were in high school and college. And there was never any doubt who was the creative force behind our projects; Doug was (and still is) a genius.
My job within our duo was to gently nudge Doug back to the planet earth when necessary. You see, Doug is a genius…but he sometimes has some trouble with a concept most of us know as “reality”. He came up with ideas, all right, but he regularly failed to consider how much they were going to cost, and how many innocent bystanders were likely to be injured as a result.
Our first project was the kung-fu epic titled “The Tiger and the Dragon”. Doug had made movies before (most notably working with Lee McCroskey in the fabled “Nocto, the Boy Vampire” series), and I had spent considerable time as the cinematographer for our family’s posterity documentation. (In other words, I shot some of our home movies. I took over the duty when I noticed that everything my father shot used a technique known as “pan across everything as fast as you can”, which meant that everything passed by in a frenetic blur. He explained the technique to me; “Film is expensive. If I pan really quickly, everything gets recorded on at least one frame, and we save tons of money.” Well, OK, but it guaranteed that relatives, neighbors, friends, and people we didn’t even know would run for the hills when we pulled the projector out of the closet.)
The plot of “T&D” was modeled on Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”. In fact, most of the character names were pulled directly from the film, as well as a good percentage of the dialog. The story had our hero avenging the death of his best friend, who’d been killed by a mob boss after winning a ping pong tournament. I played the lead, Doug’s brother Steve played the boss bad guy, and Doug was his head henchman. All the other characters were played by our teammates from the Wichita Swim Club.
Most of our stunts were simple karate fights, with the actors’ lack of martial arts skill disguised by clever camera angles and tricky editing. But we had two extra-special stunts; 1) a police inspector falls off a 10-story parking garage, and 2) I jump from a 30-foot roof and crush the skull of one of the bad guys.
Guess what? Both stunts were Doug’s ideas.
The first one wasn’t too hard. We weren’t going to show the actual fall – he just went over the edge and the camera moved to show his splattered corpse 10 stories below. The “edge” our cop leaped from actually only dropped him about 4 feet – he had to duck after the jump so that we wouldn’t see his head floating there as he was supposedly plummeting. But it looked exactly like the edge for the establishing shot. It was simple, but was pretty effective.
We got some pretty funny looks from spectators as we set up the shot. Our cop (Lee McCroskey) had to lie in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the circular ramp while we filmed from the top of the building. Since we didn’t have walkie-talkies, he had to remain perfectly still with his arms and legs “dislocated” and an “extremely squashed” look on his face until we took the elevator down to where he could hear us shout the All Clear.
Lee did a great job as a corpse, but it wasn’t until we got the film developed that we discovered that he’d looked over his right shoulder when he jumped on the ledge during the establishing shot – but over his left in the close-up where he jumped off. Oh well, on our limited budget, we just had to cut it in and hope no one noticed.
(One other flub crept into this scene. Before he jumped from the building, Lee was supposed to turn and run from the evil henchmen who had been waiting to ambush him…but he fell flat on his butt as he turned. We just kept rolling and told him to get up and get moving. He did it well; it looked natural. But my brother, who was playing one of the henchmen can be seen in the back of the frame, rolling on the ground, laughing at Lee’s clumsiness. Due to Lee’s on-screen magnetism, though, no one in the audience noticed.)
OK. I admit that I had no problem when Doug suggested that Lee fall 10 stories to his death. But when he said that I should leap onto a guy’s head from a 30-foot rooftop, well, I balked.
I calmly explained that he was out of his friggin’ mind, but Doug wasn’t listening. “No, look,” he said, “we can fix it in editing. You only have to jump off the 15-foot roof peak. It’ll look like you went off the top. No problem.”
“Nobody’s gonna buy that,” I said. “It’ll look fake, and besides,” I added, “I ain’t jumpin’ off no 15-foot roof, either!”
“You gotta,” he said. “It’s the only way to sell the stunt.”
“Leave it out. It’s gonna make us look stupid.”
“No, we gotta do it.”
Deep breath. I looked at the house* again. It had 3 peaks to the roof – the center was the 30-footer, while the ones on the ends of the house were about half that high. Still, even the lower peaks were high enough to seriously injure anyone stupid enough to jump off. We didn’t even have a bunch of pillows, or a pile of leaves; much less a professional stunt cushion. If I were going to jump, I’d land in the yard. And the rest of the movie would go unfilmed while its star sat in a hospital bed with his leg in one of those casts with wires holding it up.
I’ve never been a particularly brave or adventurous person. I explained to the crew that the jump was simply too dangerous, and I wasn’t going to do it. Well, my brother was listening to this exchange. “Oh, it’s not so bad”, he said. Then he climbed up on the courtyard wall that attached to the lowest point of the roof. A minute later, he had jumped off the 15-foot peak.
“See? No injuries. No problems.” Crap. If my stupid little brother can do it, then I’ll look like a total dipwad if I don’t do it. Fine. I started the climb.
First we took the establishing shot of me standing on the top peak, where it was obvious how high I was. Then I walked over to the lower peak. Doug zoomed in so that no one could see that the roof continued to go upward just behind me.
To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to think we needed a test run. Doug looked through the camera and gave me the thumbs up. I jumped.
It hurt. Bad.
But the camera hadn’t been rolling. Gotta do it again. Taking a deep breath (and using part of it to curse my stupid little brother’s bravery), I mounted the roof again.
Of course, Doug was right. The scene was a big hit in the movie. Practically everyone who’s ever seen the movie comments on how cool it was that I jumped off that really high roof and landed on that guy’s head. That one scene transformed the movie from an amateur effort into a pretty good little film.
So how did I land on the guy’s head, you ask? Well, with a little help from editing and camera trickery. We filmed the shot with me standing on Ricky Harris’s shoulders. The camera started at Rick’s shoulder height and then tilted upward quickly. On a stationary screen, it appeared that I’d come down…fast. We cut that in right after the shot of my jump, and followed it with a shot of me stepping off of Ricky’s crushed body.
As an homage to Bruce Lee’s big fight in “Enter the Dragon”, I wasn’t wearing a shirt (It had been ripped off by the effeminate bouncer henchman played by Dave Feld. Feld wasn’t effeminate at all, but she didn’t show up for our vocals dubbing session, so we dubbed his lines with our best stereotypical limp-wristed lisp. The audience loved it.)
The next scene was supposed to begin the final fight sequence leading up to the climactic meeting with the mob boss. But we had to explain the bloody gash across my ribs first. Stay tuned.
Terry
*The house belonged to the Messners. Robin was one of the best swimmers in the world, and I was madly in love with her at the time. (I thought her mom was pretty hot, too, but that's another story.) Robin's dad is Roe Messner, who is most famous (or infamous) for dumping Robin's mom in order to marry the former Tammy Faye Baker. But that was later...at the time of this film, Roe was still around the house in Wichita. It was a great house, and it was awfully nice of their family to let us stage murders in the yard and jump off the roof, etc.
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Park Board, Part 3 – Moving up to the Wichita Swim Club 1970
(Start by reading Part 1 and Part 2)
Once I achieved dominance in the Park Board summer swim league, it was time to move up to the next level. Mickey, Rick Dillard, and Steve Odle had already joined the Wichita Swim Club, and they convinced me to sign up as well. I’ll never forget my first practice there. It was in an outdoor pool, but the pool was covered by an enormous canvas bubble, held up by a couple of huge fans constantly blowing air inside. Entry was gained through a revolving door at the end of an outdoor corridor from the dark and bare concrete locker room. Since it was wintertime, the walk from the locker room to the revolving door could be a severe test of toe toughness, as you gingerly avoided the icy patches along the walkway.
There was no point in wearing your glasses; about halfway through the revolving door they’d fog up so badly that you’d totally saturate your towel if you tried to clean them off. Sometimes, the fog inside the bubble would be so bad that you couldn’t see more than 1/3 of the pool. Fortunately, on my first night there, the visibility was pretty good. It wasn’t hard to find the coach…he carried a clipboard, and his booming voice made it clear who was in charge.
His name was Doug Sidles, and I later came to have a great deal of love and respect for the man. That first night, though, I was simply eager to show him the awesome conditioning that I’d gained through my years with the mighty Harvest Park team.
We chatted for a few minutes. He asked me my race times, and what sorts of workouts I had been through. I told him, confident in the knowledge that our HP workouts were far more grueling than anything those wimps at Westlink or Country Acres ever had to put up with. Doug nodded knowingly and pointed to lane 5. “Start here,” he said, and then walked away to answer another swimmer’s question.
I eased myself into the water, and started to introduce myself to my lanemates. Then I realized the mistake. I was a 15-year-old male in the prime of my swimming career, and these people in Lane 5 were 11 and 12-year-old girls! I raised my hand. “Uh, Mr. Coach, Sir,” I pleaded. “Um, I think I’m in the wrong lane.” But it was too late – the set was starting.
“All right”, I grumbled to myself. “I’ll swim with these Barbie-loving toddlers. We’ll resolve this after the set.” Let the swimming begin.
In about two minutes, it was obvious to everyone in the pool that I had been right about not belonging in that lane – those little girls were killers! There was no way I could keep up with them. In moments, I was standing in the shallow end of the pool, bent over double gasping for air…while girls too young for training bras were streaking up and down the pool, lapping me without effort.
I almost quit right there. I could easily go back to Harvest Park and continue my dominance of what I could now see was a clearly inferior league…or I could stay here and have every ounce of my masculinity stripped away, pounded to a pulp, and discarded in the fog of the great canvas bubble.
But I had my pride. I resolved right then and there to work as hard as I could – to give every last effort I could to the task of improvement. I swore an oath to myself; “By all that is Holy in this world, I swear that I shall overcome all adversity and shall shirk no challenge until I have finally, once and for all, achieved my goal. By all that is Great and Powerful, I shall not rest until I have moved up to the lane with the 11-year-old boys!”
It took some time, but I got better. By the end of my career with WSC, I could routinely keep up with boys who were only 2 or 3 years younger than me. And with the exception of the girl who was leading the lane that first night, I eventually was able to swim faster than the others I'd met that evening. (The 11-year-old who was leading the lane turned out to be Robin Messner, who was ranked in the top 3 in the world only two short years later. I was never able to beat her in anything.)
Ed Poley had been right; there was an entire other swimming realm out there. The Park Board league had been fun, but WSC had real swimmers, and attended real meets. Some of those experiences will be chronicled in other chapters. But for now, I’ll leave you with a footnote to my Park Board swimming career.
About a year after I joined WSC, I attended a meet at Harvest Park, to cheer for my old teammates. My brother was swimming the 200 free, and I prepared to yell my support from beyond the chain link fence. But this was the Park Board Championship meet, and Harvest Park was only a few points behind the hated Westlink Pool team. My brother needed to win the 200 in order to pull our team ahead.
There were no rules against substitutions, so I put on my old green & white striped suit, changed the name on my brother’s entry card, and headed to the starting blocks. (Well, OK, the Park Board didn’t use starting blocks – you’d just curl your toes over the edge of the gutter – but you know what I mean.)
Perhaps it was just a natural product of a teenage growth spurt, perhaps the fact that Doug Sidles was an excellent coach. Or maybe it was the motivation I felt from being humiliated by that snotty pack of tiny little ass-kicking girls at WSC…but whatever the reason, the obvious fact was that I had improved a lot. I won the race, and had even gotten out of the pool and started to dry off before any of the other competitors had made the turn for their final length. As I walked from the pool deck, I smiled and waved at the crowd of spectators, who were whispering among themselves about rumors of a mythological place called the Wichita Swim Club.
I said my final goodbye to Park Board swimming that day, and returned to resume my role as a little fish in a bigger pond.
Many more swimming stories are yet to come. Some are actually entertaining.
Stay tuned, my friends.
Terry
Park Board, Part 3 – Moving up to the Wichita Swim Club 1970
(Start by reading Part 1 and Part 2)
Once I achieved dominance in the Park Board summer swim league, it was time to move up to the next level. Mickey, Rick Dillard, and Steve Odle had already joined the Wichita Swim Club, and they convinced me to sign up as well. I’ll never forget my first practice there. It was in an outdoor pool, but the pool was covered by an enormous canvas bubble, held up by a couple of huge fans constantly blowing air inside. Entry was gained through a revolving door at the end of an outdoor corridor from the dark and bare concrete locker room. Since it was wintertime, the walk from the locker room to the revolving door could be a severe test of toe toughness, as you gingerly avoided the icy patches along the walkway.
There was no point in wearing your glasses; about halfway through the revolving door they’d fog up so badly that you’d totally saturate your towel if you tried to clean them off. Sometimes, the fog inside the bubble would be so bad that you couldn’t see more than 1/3 of the pool. Fortunately, on my first night there, the visibility was pretty good. It wasn’t hard to find the coach…he carried a clipboard, and his booming voice made it clear who was in charge.
His name was Doug Sidles, and I later came to have a great deal of love and respect for the man. That first night, though, I was simply eager to show him the awesome conditioning that I’d gained through my years with the mighty Harvest Park team.
We chatted for a few minutes. He asked me my race times, and what sorts of workouts I had been through. I told him, confident in the knowledge that our HP workouts were far more grueling than anything those wimps at Westlink or Country Acres ever had to put up with. Doug nodded knowingly and pointed to lane 5. “Start here,” he said, and then walked away to answer another swimmer’s question.
I eased myself into the water, and started to introduce myself to my lanemates. Then I realized the mistake. I was a 15-year-old male in the prime of my swimming career, and these people in Lane 5 were 11 and 12-year-old girls! I raised my hand. “Uh, Mr. Coach, Sir,” I pleaded. “Um, I think I’m in the wrong lane.” But it was too late – the set was starting.
“All right”, I grumbled to myself. “I’ll swim with these Barbie-loving toddlers. We’ll resolve this after the set.” Let the swimming begin.
In about two minutes, it was obvious to everyone in the pool that I had been right about not belonging in that lane – those little girls were killers! There was no way I could keep up with them. In moments, I was standing in the shallow end of the pool, bent over double gasping for air…while girls too young for training bras were streaking up and down the pool, lapping me without effort.
I almost quit right there. I could easily go back to Harvest Park and continue my dominance of what I could now see was a clearly inferior league…or I could stay here and have every ounce of my masculinity stripped away, pounded to a pulp, and discarded in the fog of the great canvas bubble.
But I had my pride. I resolved right then and there to work as hard as I could – to give every last effort I could to the task of improvement. I swore an oath to myself; “By all that is Holy in this world, I swear that I shall overcome all adversity and shall shirk no challenge until I have finally, once and for all, achieved my goal. By all that is Great and Powerful, I shall not rest until I have moved up to the lane with the 11-year-old boys!”
It took some time, but I got better. By the end of my career with WSC, I could routinely keep up with boys who were only 2 or 3 years younger than me. And with the exception of the girl who was leading the lane that first night, I eventually was able to swim faster than the others I'd met that evening. (The 11-year-old who was leading the lane turned out to be Robin Messner, who was ranked in the top 3 in the world only two short years later. I was never able to beat her in anything.)
Ed Poley had been right; there was an entire other swimming realm out there. The Park Board league had been fun, but WSC had real swimmers, and attended real meets. Some of those experiences will be chronicled in other chapters. But for now, I’ll leave you with a footnote to my Park Board swimming career.
About a year after I joined WSC, I attended a meet at Harvest Park, to cheer for my old teammates. My brother was swimming the 200 free, and I prepared to yell my support from beyond the chain link fence. But this was the Park Board Championship meet, and Harvest Park was only a few points behind the hated Westlink Pool team. My brother needed to win the 200 in order to pull our team ahead.
There were no rules against substitutions, so I put on my old green & white striped suit, changed the name on my brother’s entry card, and headed to the starting blocks. (Well, OK, the Park Board didn’t use starting blocks – you’d just curl your toes over the edge of the gutter – but you know what I mean.)
Perhaps it was just a natural product of a teenage growth spurt, perhaps the fact that Doug Sidles was an excellent coach. Or maybe it was the motivation I felt from being humiliated by that snotty pack of tiny little ass-kicking girls at WSC…but whatever the reason, the obvious fact was that I had improved a lot. I won the race, and had even gotten out of the pool and started to dry off before any of the other competitors had made the turn for their final length. As I walked from the pool deck, I smiled and waved at the crowd of spectators, who were whispering among themselves about rumors of a mythological place called the Wichita Swim Club.
I said my final goodbye to Park Board swimming that day, and returned to resume my role as a little fish in a bigger pond.
Many more swimming stories are yet to come. Some are actually entertaining.
Stay tuned, my friends.
Terry
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Park Board, Part 2 1963 thru 1969
(Start by reading Part 1)
The practices were chaotic. No lane ropes. No particular skills displayed by either the participants or the coaches. We mostly just tried our best to get away with the minimal effort. But our tans improved with each day.
Then we had our first local “Park Board” swim meet, which was a three-way competition between Harvest Park and the two other local park pools. I entered the 25-meter freestyle; one length of the pool, as fast as my little arms could crank. There was no strategy, no finesse, and no particular athletic ability in evidence. But I won my age group
I was hooked. That blue ribbon was cool. I wanted more.
For the next 6 years, swimming was my primary activity during the summer. Oh, sure, I played some baseball. I rode my bike. I watched “Major Astro” in the afternoons. And as all young boys do, I fought with my siblings as much as possible. I considered all these pastimes equally, at first. But when I got hit in the eye socket by a rapidly-thrown hardball when trying to play catch with Mark Dotzour, well, I decided that swimming was probably the sport I wanted to concentrate on. Much less dangerous. Or so I thought.
But tragedy struck at the next swim meet. A kid in the heat before my event apparently had a seizure during his race and sank to the bottom. All I knew at the time was that I had to wait in the hot sun for a very long time before my race was called to the starting blocks. It wasn’t until later that we heard about the extensive efforts to revive the little boy, and how those efforts had ultimately failed. He didn’t make it.
Everyone in the league was saddened and sobered by the loss. Though none of us at Harvest Park knew him personally, our entire team was urged to pray for his family, and we did. But we also retained the optimism of our youth – something like that could never happen to me! We just got back in the pool and started training for the next competition, not even noticing how all the parents now watched with a new and different set of eyes.
Our main rivals within the Park Board league were the Westlink Pool team (from the opposite end of our subdivision), and the team from Country Acres, which had formerly been the westernmost suburb – until the upstart Westlinkians started moving in. It was typically a battle royale between the HP and Westlink teams, with Country Acres settling for a few table scraps. Westlink had these nasty-looking Speedo team suits covered with vertical red and white stripes. Our team cranked the fashion barometer up to an entirely new level; we had green and white stripes on our Speedos…PLUS, we had these nifty round hand-sewn patches that said “HP” (also in the same gawdawful leaf green color). Each suit patch was a stiff circle, about 3 inches in diameter – which meant that the smallest kids could barely move their legs without getting “patch burn”. Some even developed a special kind of Frankenstein walk to avoid being emasculated by the rigid, disk-like symbol of team pride that they proudly displayed near such a sensitive area of the anatomy.
In my age group, the Westlink relay was powered by Mickey Canaday (who later became my best friend) and a cocky bad-boy named Skip Bunker. Harvest Park depended on Herbie and a powerful kid named Dean Parker. The races were always close, and though we lost our share of them, we were learning how to compete with enthusiasm and dignity.
Though my memory is a little hazy regarding the chronology of coaches we had, a few stand out: Steve Miller because of his freckles, jaunty visor, and later, the speculation whether he was the same guy as the rock star who did “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner” – Brad Tompkins because of his awesome butterfly and the number of times his name appeared on the record board at Friends University – and Ed Poley, who could swim 50 meters underwater without a breath.
It was Ed Poley who told us tales of the mythical Wichita Swim Club. It was housed in a facility far, far across to the other side of town, shrouded in mystery and awe. From its hallowed lanes, he told us, swimmers achieved National Rankings and Olympic Berths. The swimmers of WSC had muscles so huge that they had to have their T-shirts custom made. They could swim 50 miles butterfly while carrying VW buses on their backs. Their lungs were so powerful that they could inflate weather balloons with a single breath. “If you work hard enough,” he said, “you could someday swim with these great warriors of the water.” You could almost hear the orchestra crescendo as he spoke.
We kept working. From the time I was 13 until I turned 15, I was consistently in the top 2 in my age group. I swam the “distance” race…the 200 freestyle. The only person who could beat me consistently was Bill Larsen, and he didn’t show up for all the meets. After Bill and I, the field dropped off dramatically. I had reason to be confident, since I knew I’d always be in the hunt for the top place. I never disparaged my competitors, but we all knew that I’d taken my place among the elite. I had achieved a small degree of stardom.
It was time for a growth experience, which I’ll share with you next.
Terry
Park Board, Part 2 1963 thru 1969
(Start by reading Part 1)
The practices were chaotic. No lane ropes. No particular skills displayed by either the participants or the coaches. We mostly just tried our best to get away with the minimal effort. But our tans improved with each day.
Then we had our first local “Park Board” swim meet, which was a three-way competition between Harvest Park and the two other local park pools. I entered the 25-meter freestyle; one length of the pool, as fast as my little arms could crank. There was no strategy, no finesse, and no particular athletic ability in evidence. But I won my age group
I was hooked. That blue ribbon was cool. I wanted more.
For the next 6 years, swimming was my primary activity during the summer. Oh, sure, I played some baseball. I rode my bike. I watched “Major Astro” in the afternoons. And as all young boys do, I fought with my siblings as much as possible. I considered all these pastimes equally, at first. But when I got hit in the eye socket by a rapidly-thrown hardball when trying to play catch with Mark Dotzour, well, I decided that swimming was probably the sport I wanted to concentrate on. Much less dangerous. Or so I thought.
But tragedy struck at the next swim meet. A kid in the heat before my event apparently had a seizure during his race and sank to the bottom. All I knew at the time was that I had to wait in the hot sun for a very long time before my race was called to the starting blocks. It wasn’t until later that we heard about the extensive efforts to revive the little boy, and how those efforts had ultimately failed. He didn’t make it.
Everyone in the league was saddened and sobered by the loss. Though none of us at Harvest Park knew him personally, our entire team was urged to pray for his family, and we did. But we also retained the optimism of our youth – something like that could never happen to me! We just got back in the pool and started training for the next competition, not even noticing how all the parents now watched with a new and different set of eyes.
Our main rivals within the Park Board league were the Westlink Pool team (from the opposite end of our subdivision), and the team from Country Acres, which had formerly been the westernmost suburb – until the upstart Westlinkians started moving in. It was typically a battle royale between the HP and Westlink teams, with Country Acres settling for a few table scraps. Westlink had these nasty-looking Speedo team suits covered with vertical red and white stripes. Our team cranked the fashion barometer up to an entirely new level; we had green and white stripes on our Speedos…PLUS, we had these nifty round hand-sewn patches that said “HP” (also in the same gawdawful leaf green color). Each suit patch was a stiff circle, about 3 inches in diameter – which meant that the smallest kids could barely move their legs without getting “patch burn”. Some even developed a special kind of Frankenstein walk to avoid being emasculated by the rigid, disk-like symbol of team pride that they proudly displayed near such a sensitive area of the anatomy.
In my age group, the Westlink relay was powered by Mickey Canaday (who later became my best friend) and a cocky bad-boy named Skip Bunker. Harvest Park depended on Herbie and a powerful kid named Dean Parker. The races were always close, and though we lost our share of them, we were learning how to compete with enthusiasm and dignity.
Though my memory is a little hazy regarding the chronology of coaches we had, a few stand out: Steve Miller because of his freckles, jaunty visor, and later, the speculation whether he was the same guy as the rock star who did “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner” – Brad Tompkins because of his awesome butterfly and the number of times his name appeared on the record board at Friends University – and Ed Poley, who could swim 50 meters underwater without a breath.
It was Ed Poley who told us tales of the mythical Wichita Swim Club. It was housed in a facility far, far across to the other side of town, shrouded in mystery and awe. From its hallowed lanes, he told us, swimmers achieved National Rankings and Olympic Berths. The swimmers of WSC had muscles so huge that they had to have their T-shirts custom made. They could swim 50 miles butterfly while carrying VW buses on their backs. Their lungs were so powerful that they could inflate weather balloons with a single breath. “If you work hard enough,” he said, “you could someday swim with these great warriors of the water.” You could almost hear the orchestra crescendo as he spoke.
We kept working. From the time I was 13 until I turned 15, I was consistently in the top 2 in my age group. I swam the “distance” race…the 200 freestyle. The only person who could beat me consistently was Bill Larsen, and he didn’t show up for all the meets. After Bill and I, the field dropped off dramatically. I had reason to be confident, since I knew I’d always be in the hunt for the top place. I never disparaged my competitors, but we all knew that I’d taken my place among the elite. I had achieved a small degree of stardom.
It was time for a growth experience, which I’ll share with you next.
Terry
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Park Board - Part 1 – 1963 thru 1969
I grew up in the suburbs. Some folks may not consider Wichita, Kansas to be a big enough city to justify having designated suburbs, but this was the early 1960s – every town in America was on a lateral expansion bandwagon. Thanks to America’s postwar prosperity and the collective triumphs of thousands of George Baileys over their respective Mr. Potters, young married couples were migrating out of the cities. For many, it was less than one generation since their families had left the farm to move into the cities, but that’s OK – it’s now the Space Age.
I mean, if American families didn’t move into suburban subdivisions, what the hell were the manufacturers going to do with all those unused avocado refrigerators and ultra-modern gas ovens? Not to mention the billions of square yards of Formica with pastel-colored Star Trek badge logos all over them…
Our neighborhood was being built to order. Each family hired its own architect, planned its dream home, and picked out an 80-foot lot of dirt to build it on. I was about 6 years old when we first visited the future Heggy home. Mom pointed to the little flag-topped wires that appeared to be randomly tossed about the yard and said, “Here’s the kitchen, and there’s the bathroom…”
Sure, Mom, I thought. We’re gonna live on a patch of dirt. Well, I suppose it beats sharing a duplex with those smelly folks and their bratty kids we were currently next to. That little neighbor boy had broken my toy vacuum cleaner with the colored balls that popped up inside the plastic dome when you pushed it. The bastard. Yeah, I can handle dirt, I guess.
The little flag wires grew into 2 x 4s, which sprouted sheetrock and electrical outlets, and before you knew it, we were moving in. We weren’t the first house in the neighborhood, but there were still plenty of vacant lots around when we occupied the home.
The subdivision was called Westlink, and there was even a big, ultra-modern wedge-shaped sign announcing this fact to anyone who drove down Central Avenue. At the time, Westlink was on the western frontier of town; take a few more steps toward the sunset and you’d be immersed in the wild territory of the untamed Cowskin Creek. The suburb was growing faster than we kids were; and it was fun to watch.
There was a shopping center with a Dillons supermarket, and a Rexall Drug store. There was an elementary school, and another one under construction. And no modern neighborhood would be complete without a couple of churches, including the bizarre A-Frame of the Westlink Baptist Church, which looked more like it belonged in the Alps than in the Great Plains. And not too long after we moved in, the big machines started digging the hole for the Harvest Park Swimming Pool.
The Harvest Park Pool was a standard L-shaped affair, with a 6-lane 25-meter section conjoined to a square diving well, which featured a one-meter and three-meter board. None of us were really sure what a “meter” was, but we were confident that we’d learn all about it in school (along with readin’, writin’, and how to duck and cover during a nuclear attack.)
Our family spent a lot of time at Harvest Park. The first swimming day of the summer was unofficially known as “burn yourself to hell” day. We may not have known how to swim yet, or how to convert yards to meters, but two things were immutably clear: 1) You would die if you got moisture on any body part during the first hour after eating (stomach cramps, you know), and 2) You had to get a good burn before you’d start to get a suntan.
That first night, we’d lube up with First Aid Cream and sit in a bathtub full of ice cubes, enduring the pain with the certain knowledge that our suffering was for a good cause. For the next three days, we’d wear white T-shirts to the pool to protect the seared flesh of our backs. (Our legs were on their own, I guess.)
We took swimming lessons each summer, and spent many pleasant evenings frolicking around in the shallow part of the pool. At 25 cents per person per visit, it soon became obvious that we needed a “family membership”. From then on, we just recited our last name as we came up to the front desk of the pool facility. Boys turned left while the girls turned right. We were required to shower before entering the pool, so naturally, the challenge was to apply precisely the minimum amount of water that the stern lifeguard would accept as a “shower”. (It didn’t take much.)
I was amazed with my Dad’s ability to swim underwater and grab our legs when we least expected. And I’ll never forget the day that my sister first swam an entire length of the pool without stopping. I was inspired to duplicate that prodigious feat myself.
I worked hard at swimming lessons, trying to catch up with my sister. My best friend, Herbie, and I would hang out at the pool at any opportunity. Herbie was a natural swimmer, and charismatically got to know the entire pool staff almost on opening day. When he encouraged me to join the summer swim team, I declined. But under his constant needling, I finally agreed to give it a try. After all, it meant I’d get to stay at the pool even longer each day.
I’ll tell you about that in the next installment.
Terry
Park Board - Part 1 – 1963 thru 1969
I grew up in the suburbs. Some folks may not consider Wichita, Kansas to be a big enough city to justify having designated suburbs, but this was the early 1960s – every town in America was on a lateral expansion bandwagon. Thanks to America’s postwar prosperity and the collective triumphs of thousands of George Baileys over their respective Mr. Potters, young married couples were migrating out of the cities. For many, it was less than one generation since their families had left the farm to move into the cities, but that’s OK – it’s now the Space Age.
I mean, if American families didn’t move into suburban subdivisions, what the hell were the manufacturers going to do with all those unused avocado refrigerators and ultra-modern gas ovens? Not to mention the billions of square yards of Formica with pastel-colored Star Trek badge logos all over them…
Our neighborhood was being built to order. Each family hired its own architect, planned its dream home, and picked out an 80-foot lot of dirt to build it on. I was about 6 years old when we first visited the future Heggy home. Mom pointed to the little flag-topped wires that appeared to be randomly tossed about the yard and said, “Here’s the kitchen, and there’s the bathroom…”
Sure, Mom, I thought. We’re gonna live on a patch of dirt. Well, I suppose it beats sharing a duplex with those smelly folks and their bratty kids we were currently next to. That little neighbor boy had broken my toy vacuum cleaner with the colored balls that popped up inside the plastic dome when you pushed it. The bastard. Yeah, I can handle dirt, I guess.
The little flag wires grew into 2 x 4s, which sprouted sheetrock and electrical outlets, and before you knew it, we were moving in. We weren’t the first house in the neighborhood, but there were still plenty of vacant lots around when we occupied the home.
The subdivision was called Westlink, and there was even a big, ultra-modern wedge-shaped sign announcing this fact to anyone who drove down Central Avenue. At the time, Westlink was on the western frontier of town; take a few more steps toward the sunset and you’d be immersed in the wild territory of the untamed Cowskin Creek. The suburb was growing faster than we kids were; and it was fun to watch.
There was a shopping center with a Dillons supermarket, and a Rexall Drug store. There was an elementary school, and another one under construction. And no modern neighborhood would be complete without a couple of churches, including the bizarre A-Frame of the Westlink Baptist Church, which looked more like it belonged in the Alps than in the Great Plains. And not too long after we moved in, the big machines started digging the hole for the Harvest Park Swimming Pool.
The Harvest Park Pool was a standard L-shaped affair, with a 6-lane 25-meter section conjoined to a square diving well, which featured a one-meter and three-meter board. None of us were really sure what a “meter” was, but we were confident that we’d learn all about it in school (along with readin’, writin’, and how to duck and cover during a nuclear attack.)
Our family spent a lot of time at Harvest Park. The first swimming day of the summer was unofficially known as “burn yourself to hell” day. We may not have known how to swim yet, or how to convert yards to meters, but two things were immutably clear: 1) You would die if you got moisture on any body part during the first hour after eating (stomach cramps, you know), and 2) You had to get a good burn before you’d start to get a suntan.
That first night, we’d lube up with First Aid Cream and sit in a bathtub full of ice cubes, enduring the pain with the certain knowledge that our suffering was for a good cause. For the next three days, we’d wear white T-shirts to the pool to protect the seared flesh of our backs. (Our legs were on their own, I guess.)
We took swimming lessons each summer, and spent many pleasant evenings frolicking around in the shallow part of the pool. At 25 cents per person per visit, it soon became obvious that we needed a “family membership”. From then on, we just recited our last name as we came up to the front desk of the pool facility. Boys turned left while the girls turned right. We were required to shower before entering the pool, so naturally, the challenge was to apply precisely the minimum amount of water that the stern lifeguard would accept as a “shower”. (It didn’t take much.)
I was amazed with my Dad’s ability to swim underwater and grab our legs when we least expected. And I’ll never forget the day that my sister first swam an entire length of the pool without stopping. I was inspired to duplicate that prodigious feat myself.
I worked hard at swimming lessons, trying to catch up with my sister. My best friend, Herbie, and I would hang out at the pool at any opportunity. Herbie was a natural swimmer, and charismatically got to know the entire pool staff almost on opening day. When he encouraged me to join the summer swim team, I declined. But under his constant needling, I finally agreed to give it a try. After all, it meant I’d get to stay at the pool even longer each day.
I’ll tell you about that in the next installment.
Terry
Sunday, June 22, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Special Effects circa 1974
On our swim team, the grandest event of the summer was the “Smith Open” Ping Pong Tournament. Oh, sure, we had swim meets to compete in, including the infamous Air Capital Meet, the Regional Championships, and for the fast people, the National Championships. And folks who did well at those events received medals, trophies, and adulation for their accomplishments. But to truly become a hero to the team, you had to win the Smith Open.
The Smiths were the only family who had six kids swimming on our team. That’s right, six kids – and they were all pretty good swimmers. But it was not just the sheer volume of Smith genes in the pool that made them inescapable – it was the Smith household that did it.
They had an open door policy. Really, I mean it – the door to the Smith home was always open. No one was expected to knock, just to walk in and make themselves at home. Visitors would always find food in the kitchen, music on the stereo, and someone who was up for a friendly game of pool in the front room.
It was a nice house, but certainly not a mansion. Still, there was room for plenty of activity. The ping pong table in the basement was in a bit of a cramped space; a free swinger would occasionally impact the hanging beads that were draped across the doorway to the laundry room, but you could still put in a good game.
The Smith parents were beloved by all the kids on the swim team. Eccentric, but beloved. The dad’s name was Duane Rollo Smith, but everyone called him Duaner. Mom’s name was Patricia, but most just called her “Pitter Pat”. Duaner referred to himself as “the King” of the household, and enjoyed issuing mental challenges to anyone he encountered. Pitter Pat simply spread massive amounts of love upon everyone who walked through the doors.
The Smith’s eldest son, Steve, proclaimed himself to be the greatest Ping Pong player on the face of the earth. My college roommate and best friend (Mickey) was quick to point out just exactly how totally full of crap Steve was. The gauntlet had been thrown.
And as these things usually go, once word got out of the upcoming epic Ping Pong duel, more pretenders appeared from the woodwork. Seemed as if there were quite a few swimmers who felt their athletic skills extended beyond the aquatic realm. A tournament was proposed.
There was not even a question about who would host the thing. The only problem was to find an additional table – the Tournament would simply take too long if all the games had to be contested on the single table in the Smith’s cramped basement. Glenn Nyberg volunteered to swipe, er, I mean borrow, a table from his neighbors.
I was assigned to the table pickup task force, along with Steve Smith and his brother Doug. Duaner drove his wood-side-panel monstrosity of a station wagon over to the Nyberg’s.
In our current modern age of mini-vans, most young people have never experienced riding in the rear seat of a station wagon. The front two seats of the vehicle were exactly like those in a regular sedan, but behind the second seat was a third that faced backwards. It could be folded into the floorwell if one wanted to carry cargo rather than passengers, but provided adequate comfort for three when unfolded. The kid on the starboard side of the car had to contend with a bulging panel that hid the spare tire (which were full-size, in those days), but the other kids had nearly normal space to sit in. Most of these rear seats had no seatbelts, and I believe the Smithmobile was no exception.
Facing backward provided opportunities that conventional seating did not. For example, you could stare directly into the eyes of the driver of cars behind you. You could play with the electric rear window – put it down to allow seatmates to dangle their feet out the back, then roll it up to try to guillotine their unsuspecting legs. And if Duaner wasn’t paying attention…
While his dad was distracted by traffic in front of the car, Doug climbed out the rear window and got a secure grip on the luggage rack on top of the car. Staying low to avoid wind resistance, he crept forward and waited for his opportunity.
Now, Duaner was quite attentive to the rules of politeness and propriety. He rarely swore at all, but I think everyone in the county heard what he said next. “JEE-JUSSS CHRIST!” he shouted when Doug suddenly appeared upside down directly in front of the driver’s side windshield. Not only had Doug launched his entire torso down the front of the car, but he had put on his best bug-eyed, tongue-protruding, maniacal demon face at the same time.
Try it. Suddenly appear upside down in front of an unsuspecting family member. Even though they may know your face well, and love you with every fiber of their being, I guarantee that such a sudden, inverted monster-faced appearance will totally freak them out. It certainly did with Duaner.
The car was stopped and discipline applied. After Doug was safely back inside the wagon, we were emphatically informed that we were henceforth forever banned from operating the car’s rear window. Oh, well, it was worth it.
At the Nyberg's, putting the Ping Pong table on top of the car was not that hard; after all, we were athletes in our prime, and feats of brute strength were welcome challenges. We opened the rear car doors and looped Duaner’s long rope around the table to secure it.
When Duaner emerged from the house after talking with Mr. Nyberg, we were ready to mount up and return to the Smith’s house. The kids climbed into the car and closed its doors.
Except they wouldn’t close – the rope was in the way. I’ll never forget Duaner’s expression; a perfect Spock eyebrow half-grin. “Ah,” he said, “two loops of rope – one for each year of college.” None of us said much as we unwound the rope, closed the doors, and wound it again – through the open car windows. Then we sheepishly climbed into the car (through the open windows, since we now couldn’t open the doors), and rode home in silence. We could tell that Duaner wanted to continue laughing at us, but to his credit, he was remained silent.
Once the table was set up in the living room, Doug and I started scouting camera angles. We had decided that the tournament would play an important role in the kung fu film we were making. The plot called for an epic Ping Pong battle between good guy “Mr. Roper” (played by Mickey) and the evil overlord “Mr. Spanman” (played by Steve Smith).
As a show of his strength, Mickey was supposed to crush a ping pong ball under Spanman’s nose1. Seems like a simple effect, but it took us a long time to figure out how to do it. We found that it is nearly impossible to actually crush a ping pong ball in one hand – so we mashed one with a hammer. Well, through the lens of the camera, it just looked like a blob, so we decided to crack a ball into shards and then insert a closeup after Mickey opened his hand. It worked better than the mashed ball, but on the final Super-8mm film product, it didn’t look any different than if we’d have had Mickey crush a single Dorito® chip (which would’ve been a lot cheaper than the several dollars we spent mutilating real ping pong balls). Sigh.
Anyway, the game scenes were exciting, and so was the dramatic fight scene where Spanman had Roper “wasted” after the tournament. Everyone who attended the Smith Open Tournament that year also showed up at our movie premier, and applauded wildly during the dramatic scenes of ping pong competition.
Well, when I started this piece, I was planning to talk about some of our other special effects as well, including the jet-scorching laser we created, the head-crushing leap from a high rooftop, the 10-story plummet in the parking garage, and the dramatic hotel window escape climb. But those stories will have to wait until another time.
And, by the way, Mickey won the tournament that year. Steve Smith won the next one, I believe, and the two continued their epic battles for years to come. I’m not sure when the Smith Open Tournament was last held, but if you ever see that it has been resurrected, don’t you dare miss it.
1 - The movie was called “The Tiger and the Dragon”. We modeled it after Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”, and the ball-crushing scene was an homage to O’Hara breaking boards before his fight with Lee.
Special Effects circa 1974
On our swim team, the grandest event of the summer was the “Smith Open” Ping Pong Tournament. Oh, sure, we had swim meets to compete in, including the infamous Air Capital Meet, the Regional Championships, and for the fast people, the National Championships. And folks who did well at those events received medals, trophies, and adulation for their accomplishments. But to truly become a hero to the team, you had to win the Smith Open.
The Smiths were the only family who had six kids swimming on our team. That’s right, six kids – and they were all pretty good swimmers. But it was not just the sheer volume of Smith genes in the pool that made them inescapable – it was the Smith household that did it.
They had an open door policy. Really, I mean it – the door to the Smith home was always open. No one was expected to knock, just to walk in and make themselves at home. Visitors would always find food in the kitchen, music on the stereo, and someone who was up for a friendly game of pool in the front room.
It was a nice house, but certainly not a mansion. Still, there was room for plenty of activity. The ping pong table in the basement was in a bit of a cramped space; a free swinger would occasionally impact the hanging beads that were draped across the doorway to the laundry room, but you could still put in a good game.
The Smith parents were beloved by all the kids on the swim team. Eccentric, but beloved. The dad’s name was Duane Rollo Smith, but everyone called him Duaner. Mom’s name was Patricia, but most just called her “Pitter Pat”. Duaner referred to himself as “the King” of the household, and enjoyed issuing mental challenges to anyone he encountered. Pitter Pat simply spread massive amounts of love upon everyone who walked through the doors.
The Smith’s eldest son, Steve, proclaimed himself to be the greatest Ping Pong player on the face of the earth. My college roommate and best friend (Mickey) was quick to point out just exactly how totally full of crap Steve was. The gauntlet had been thrown.
And as these things usually go, once word got out of the upcoming epic Ping Pong duel, more pretenders appeared from the woodwork. Seemed as if there were quite a few swimmers who felt their athletic skills extended beyond the aquatic realm. A tournament was proposed.
There was not even a question about who would host the thing. The only problem was to find an additional table – the Tournament would simply take too long if all the games had to be contested on the single table in the Smith’s cramped basement. Glenn Nyberg volunteered to swipe, er, I mean borrow, a table from his neighbors.
I was assigned to the table pickup task force, along with Steve Smith and his brother Doug. Duaner drove his wood-side-panel monstrosity of a station wagon over to the Nyberg’s.
In our current modern age of mini-vans, most young people have never experienced riding in the rear seat of a station wagon. The front two seats of the vehicle were exactly like those in a regular sedan, but behind the second seat was a third that faced backwards. It could be folded into the floorwell if one wanted to carry cargo rather than passengers, but provided adequate comfort for three when unfolded. The kid on the starboard side of the car had to contend with a bulging panel that hid the spare tire (which were full-size, in those days), but the other kids had nearly normal space to sit in. Most of these rear seats had no seatbelts, and I believe the Smithmobile was no exception.
Facing backward provided opportunities that conventional seating did not. For example, you could stare directly into the eyes of the driver of cars behind you. You could play with the electric rear window – put it down to allow seatmates to dangle their feet out the back, then roll it up to try to guillotine their unsuspecting legs. And if Duaner wasn’t paying attention…
While his dad was distracted by traffic in front of the car, Doug climbed out the rear window and got a secure grip on the luggage rack on top of the car. Staying low to avoid wind resistance, he crept forward and waited for his opportunity.
Now, Duaner was quite attentive to the rules of politeness and propriety. He rarely swore at all, but I think everyone in the county heard what he said next. “JEE-JUSSS CHRIST!” he shouted when Doug suddenly appeared upside down directly in front of the driver’s side windshield. Not only had Doug launched his entire torso down the front of the car, but he had put on his best bug-eyed, tongue-protruding, maniacal demon face at the same time.
Try it. Suddenly appear upside down in front of an unsuspecting family member. Even though they may know your face well, and love you with every fiber of their being, I guarantee that such a sudden, inverted monster-faced appearance will totally freak them out. It certainly did with Duaner.
The car was stopped and discipline applied. After Doug was safely back inside the wagon, we were emphatically informed that we were henceforth forever banned from operating the car’s rear window. Oh, well, it was worth it.
At the Nyberg's, putting the Ping Pong table on top of the car was not that hard; after all, we were athletes in our prime, and feats of brute strength were welcome challenges. We opened the rear car doors and looped Duaner’s long rope around the table to secure it.
When Duaner emerged from the house after talking with Mr. Nyberg, we were ready to mount up and return to the Smith’s house. The kids climbed into the car and closed its doors.
Except they wouldn’t close – the rope was in the way. I’ll never forget Duaner’s expression; a perfect Spock eyebrow half-grin. “Ah,” he said, “two loops of rope – one for each year of college.” None of us said much as we unwound the rope, closed the doors, and wound it again – through the open car windows. Then we sheepishly climbed into the car (through the open windows, since we now couldn’t open the doors), and rode home in silence. We could tell that Duaner wanted to continue laughing at us, but to his credit, he was remained silent.
Once the table was set up in the living room, Doug and I started scouting camera angles. We had decided that the tournament would play an important role in the kung fu film we were making. The plot called for an epic Ping Pong battle between good guy “Mr. Roper” (played by Mickey) and the evil overlord “Mr. Spanman” (played by Steve Smith).
As a show of his strength, Mickey was supposed to crush a ping pong ball under Spanman’s nose1. Seems like a simple effect, but it took us a long time to figure out how to do it. We found that it is nearly impossible to actually crush a ping pong ball in one hand – so we mashed one with a hammer. Well, through the lens of the camera, it just looked like a blob, so we decided to crack a ball into shards and then insert a closeup after Mickey opened his hand. It worked better than the mashed ball, but on the final Super-8mm film product, it didn’t look any different than if we’d have had Mickey crush a single Dorito® chip (which would’ve been a lot cheaper than the several dollars we spent mutilating real ping pong balls). Sigh.
Anyway, the game scenes were exciting, and so was the dramatic fight scene where Spanman had Roper “wasted” after the tournament. Everyone who attended the Smith Open Tournament that year also showed up at our movie premier, and applauded wildly during the dramatic scenes of ping pong competition.
Well, when I started this piece, I was planning to talk about some of our other special effects as well, including the jet-scorching laser we created, the head-crushing leap from a high rooftop, the 10-story plummet in the parking garage, and the dramatic hotel window escape climb. But those stories will have to wait until another time.
And, by the way, Mickey won the tournament that year. Steve Smith won the next one, I believe, and the two continued their epic battles for years to come. I’m not sure when the Smith Open Tournament was last held, but if you ever see that it has been resurrected, don’t you dare miss it.
1 - The movie was called “The Tiger and the Dragon”. We modeled it after Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”, and the ball-crushing scene was an homage to O’Hara breaking boards before his fight with Lee.
