Masonic Camp for Boys and the Juvenile Appeal of Fascism (1963)

For most of his adult life my Dad was a member of a mystery religion. He was a Mason. Each Thursday he would put on his red jacket and his fez and head out for the Lodge. My mom encouraged him to join, hoping that he would somehow gain an advantage, but this task proved too great for the Masonic brotherhood. He remained pretty much in the same job throughout his life.

My knowledge of Masonry comes secondhand through observation. For a mystery religion, there is nothing mysterious to report. If there was some sort of hidden knowledge of the universe, I’m pretty sure the Masons don’t know it. Among the various Masonic paraphernalia I’m familiar with (pyramids, Egyptian hieroglyphics, assorted bake goods) none of them speaks to a purpose higher than that of a social club.

Trust me. When the anti-Christ arrives, he won’t be wearing a fez driving a midget car in the Thanksgiving Day parade.

However, Dad’s Masonic membership made me eligible for The Masonic Camp for Boys just off the shores of placid Lake Majestik in north east Ohio. Each summer, until I was seventeen, I could be safely locked away in a concrete block bunkhouse along with twenty or so campees.

MCB was a state within a state within a state, and a totalitarian state at that. No doubt there is a juvenile appeal to enforced order. Kids love parades and, if the newsreels of the 1930’s are any guide, totalitarianism provides for lots of marching opportunities.

And there was lots of marching a MCB.

We marched to breakfast. We marched to dinner. We marched to supper. We marched to the lake. We marched from the lake. We marched to our marching drills and marched back. The only individual who was exempt from this marching life-style was the Camp Director, Big Joe Tuck.

Big Joe tooled around the camp in his electric golf cart while holding a nine iron. The question was, did he golf? But then how could he? He was completely out of shape weighing well over three hundred pounds. This made for some interesting scenes. At any one time you could see Big Joe cruising along in the distance his golf cart engine straining to carry his mass.

Activates at the camp could be divided into two distinct categories.

Category One: Activities I Hated.

These included:

Archery: After the invention of gun powder, this became essentially pointless.

Horseback riding: We would ride around the nearby woods in a big circle while the horses tried to scrape up off every tree they passed. Frankly, the horses had my sympathy.

Capture the flag: an activity more stupid and confused than a political convention.

Category Two: Fun Activities That Were Made Hateful

These included:

Canoeing: All that water and no place to pee.

Swimming: We were forced to wear caps that designated our swimming ability. I was a perpetual red cap- a beginniner. I figure I was the most important person at the beach. The life guards needed someone to save. It was here that I discovered a brand new place to be humiliated- under water.

Crafts: possibly the most hateful of all- the weaving of lanyards from multi-colored flat plastic ribbons. If Solzhenitsyn had been forced to braid plastic in the Gulag, the Commies would have broken him.

On the last evening of camp each cabin would sleep under the stars, abandoning the discomfort of the cabin to sleep on the ground in our sleeping bags under the sky. For our retreat we put on our life jackets and paddled to the central island on Lake Majestic: Turtle Island. We built a fire, ate hot dogs, told ghost stories and laughed about nothing.

I actual found myself having a good time.

I woke up in the middle of the night and looked up at the cloudless, unblemished sky. The beauty of the stars scattered across the blackness is a memory I will keep for the rest of my life. The mysteries of world were forever around me and all I needed to do was to open my eyes.

That was August of 1963. The world I knew had but a few months left. And then everything would change.

Next: The Worst Job in World

Ghoulardi and the Exuberant Chaos of Kidhood (Summer 1964)

For a short while in Northeast Ohio there was no one cooler than Ghoulardi. He was Holden Caulfield with a beard, Alfred E. Neuman with an m80, and if his television show did not broadcast from a Cleveland area insane asylum, surely it emanated from the extreme south side of Mount Purgatory.

From January 1963 till December 1966 Ernie Anderson (aka Ghoulardi) hosted a local late night television show that featured a grade Z horror flick punctuated by skits, side comments and the occasional explosion. The host wore a white jacket, a fright wig, an obviously phony mustache and an equally fake van dyke beard, along with glasses that were missing a lens. He was supposed to be a hip mad scientist, but to us, the kids in the WJW viewing area, he was our cooler, hipper, older brother we wished we had.

My real older brother (by two years) resembled one of those creepy alien kids in The Village of the Damned minus the glowing eyes. Allen was serious without being studious, disciplined without being focused and he wore his blond hair in an incredibly well lacquered flat top. There were times when just looking at him gave me the willies.

When Allen turned ten my parents, in a baffling show of parental disconnect, presented Allen with a chemistry set, the theory being that when one sees a fire one should immediately douse it with gas just to see what the hell happens. Allen’s eyes glowed as he opened the set, his fingers slowly touching each of the bottles and vials contained within. Chemistry and Allen: it was love at first sight.

Allen immediately assumed the role of child scientist. I was drafted into the position of assistant. Our younger brother, Lowell, being disinterested in anything outside of a Tonka toy, became the most important member of our team- the unwitting test subject.

Allen quickly threw away the pamphlet of suggested experiments. They were far too tame for what he had in mind. We embarked on the well-trodden path of ad hoc kid experimentation. Over the weeks that followed we created invisible ink (backfire), stink bombs (horrible backfire) and itching powder (our one undeniable success- actually sending Lowell into the emergency room for a cootie check. High five!)

Having exhausted the more obvious paths of scientific investigation we began forays into a more esoteric branch of discovery: off the shelf alchemy. Using various household products such as Vanish, Sani-Flush and Windex we attempted to create a here-to-fore unknown compound. The results of these experiments were depressingly similar: a gelatinous goo that smelled of sulfur and Lysol which was flushed down the toilet with little or no fanfare. These experiments came to an abrupt end when our mom, after an attempt to unclog the basement commode resulted in a bowlful of a greenish brown foul smelling muck, started insisting we eat our vegetables.

After that, Allen began to work on his next project. He became secretive, working long hours on the basement workbench. I kept my distance. It didn’t pay to get too inquisitive when Allen was in one of his moods.

Then, one Saturday, while mom and dad were grocery shopping at Krogers, Allen revealed to me the nature of his project. “I’ve created an explosive device.” Not a bomb. Not a firecracker. But an explosive device.

This was big.

The device was the size of a matchbox. It may originally have been a matchbox, but Allen had wrapped it in aluminum foil so I couldn’t tell. He had packed the container with gunpowder extracted from around 1,000 caps. And he had purchased a fuse from Wattley, a perpetual ninth grader and neighborhood screwhead. (Why did Wattley have fuses? Who knew? He was also a reliable source for CO2 cartridges as well as pipe tobacco and the occasional girlie magazine.)

We setup the necessary experimental framework in the basement. Allen donned his lab coat while I adjusted my goggles. These were not true laboratory rated goggles, but swimming goggles. I figured they were better than nothing. After a final check to ensure our parents had not unexpectedly returned, Allen ceremoniously lit the fuse.

The fuse flared and moved across the floor ten times faster than we expected. Allen shouted, “RUN,” and I scrambled up the basement steps three at time bursting through the screen door into the sunlight and safety. Allen, however, had tragically tripped on the way out and was still in the basement when the explosion occurred.

The noise was beyond description. I am certain it rivaled other explosions throughout history: Krakatoa, Hiroshima, perhaps even greater than Roseanne Barr's cannonball into the pool at the Sacramento LaQuinta.

Finally Allen stumbled out of the house, his glasses rimmed with soot, his flat top smoldering, his eyebrows… my God, his eyebrows were gone! He looked at me with a wild expression on his face, paused a moment and then cried, “ I’M DEEF!”

But Allen wasn’t deef. His ears were just ringing as they would ring for the next twenty-seven months. I suppose that’s to be expected from an explosive force of that magnitude. Yet Lowell, who we had tied up to the chaise lounge directly next to the explosive device suffered no ill effects what so ever. Such are the vicissitudes of scientific inquiry.

That evening I watched WJW’s Shock Theater. The movie was the classic Attack of the 50 FT Woman- a more frightening concept has yet to be devised by man. As the show concluded, Ghoulardi detonated a firecracker destroying a small model car. Considering that I had a brother who had practically spontaneously combusted in front of me, this seemed like incredibly small potatoes.

While Allen did not give up experimentation, he shied away from the anything approaching the detonation of explosives. He moved on to other pursuits: the hairspray flamethrower and the uncovering of the mysteries inside a golf ball come to mind.

Adults are always trying to provide a stable environment for children. I know that's important. But as every kid understands, the joys of the kidhood experience are not found in day-to-day sameness of things, but in the chaos of life. The exuberant chaos of living.

Next:
Masonic Boys Camp and the Appeal of Fascism (1962)

On Becoming a Blogger

"To blog or not to blog, that is the question. Or it may be a rhetorical statement. I'll have to look it up and get back to you later."

I've pulled the pin, wet my whistle, jumped the broomstick, leaped before I looked and now BEHOLD, I'm officially a blogger. Soon I will be posting my thoughts for strangers to comment on and modulate my feelings of self-worth accordingly. As a matter of fact, I'm doing it right now.

First, before I get serious, some ground rules.

1. I will not blog about religion.

That's mostly true. At the very least I will try not to be sacrilegious. I don't kid myself. This is not going to be easy. The American experience is immersed in religion. From the purity of the Pilgrims to the fantasies of Joseph Smith to the sincerity of Billy Graham and the social works of Father Divine, religion permeates our worldview. Yet, as a spiritual person and a believer in God, I have respect for people who are honestly searching for the Truth in this sorry universe.

Of course I have zero respect for blatant hypocrisy. Ordinary non-blatant hypocrisy, the kind everyone is guilty of, is an entirely different animal. But the blatant stuff is for the birds. I mean, really, was there anything more hilarious than watching Bill Clinton sheepishly lug his Bible around after the Monica Lewinsky thing hit the Drudgereport? Bill had the same facial expression Beaver Cleaver had after he got caught playing doctor with Lumpy.

2. Secondly, Bill Clinton zingers aside, I will write nothing political.

Between Colbert and Limbaugh there is little I can add to the national political conversation except for the occasional metaphoric raspberry here and there. Or maybe a Beaver Cleaver reference. Conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat- all seem to me to be denizens in a human petting zoo: interesting, domesticated and strange but ultimately not to be taken too seriously by thinking adults.

3. When it comes to financial advice, I have nothing to offer.

However, if I did have some financial information to share it would be to invest in Florida real-estate. But some time later. Not now. But not too much later. You may miss the boat. Just late enough so you can make some money on the deal. Which would be sooner than you think.

This leaves culture a topic, I think I can reasonable add my two and a half cents worth of non professional insight. Of course I am hardly a cultural guru of international note, but I am a keen cultural observer on my particular sliver of the American experience: life in the middle of the middle.

I was born in the Middle West in the middle of the twentieth century to middle class parents. I was the middle child. I lived in a middle class neighborhood. My friends were neither from the wrong side of the tracks nor from the high falootin' side of town. When my family went out to eat, we'd go to either The Blue Swan or The Sizzler (we loved the bread served at the Sizzler.) My parents never divorced nor did they have friends who divorced. In the evening we would sit around the television and, yes, sing along with Mitch.

I am therefore well positioned to expound, extrapolate, expropriate as well as exhaust all the nuances of the culture I know so well-"middleclassedness."

Let the blogging begin.

Next topic:
Ghoulardi and the Exuberant Chaos of Kidhood