I Don't Like Jazz, But I Did!

I was born and raised a Baptist south of the Mason-Dixon line. Only organs and pianos were allowed as accompaniment for hymns in our church. There was once a man who sang accompanying himself with a guitar. He was never invited back! The mere idea of jazz renderings of this sacred music must have been sacrilege. That’s pure sacrilege.

I knew very little about jazz. When I was in  high school I heard some jazz they called Dixieland. I think it was used at African American funerals in New Orleans. There were some shipmates of mine in the Navy that were fond of jazz. They listened to Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and other performers I don’t remember. The songs were long and didn’t have any words. Even rap music has words! Jazz always reminded me of film noir and those gumshoes in trench coats of black and white television.  I liked those television shows.

On a recent Sunday the Horton School of Music at Charleston Southern University was presenting a jazz concert. The performance had been recommended by a friend and we decided to attend. It was held at East Cooper Baptist Church. We crossed the Cooper River on a rainy night to hear music that I had no particular desire to hear.

The youngish looking bearded man in the gray suit began to play. His instrument was the saxophone. The guttural sounds I remembered from film noir filled the air. Next was the man with the shaved head shining like an eight ball under a pool room light. His trumpet reached those high notes that only the angels reach. The fat man sitting on the stool with hair like steel wool sparkling in the light worked the slide on his instrument with deft precision. The notes from the horn blended with the others.  Brassy!

The drummer did not wear a suit. He was attired in a jacket and a red shirt. His shirt tail was out and he had dreadlocks below his waist. The sounds he coaxed from the drums hinted their origin from across the sea. But the rub board he rubbed reminded me of zydeco. There were the low rich notes of the double bass and the tinkling of the piano that added to the music.

Suddenly, I found myself patting my right foot to the music. I reminded myself that I did not like jazz, but my foot did not stop. A few seconds later I found myself humming the tune the Mark Sterbank Group was playing. It was a tune, a hymn really, that I remembered from my childhood; Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.

I don’t like jazz, but I did!

The Rocket Scientist

When I was eleven years old  I was an avid reader of Collier’s magazine. The magazine had a lot of articles about space travel. The Allies had won WWII and captured some of the German V-2 rockets. The Americans had also captured or recruited some of their rocket scientists.  Werner von Braun was the most famous. The magazine had many color illustrations of what the rockets that would take Americans to the stars would look like. As an eleven-year-old country boy I was obsessed. I had to build a rocket.

I dug into the encyclopedia that Momma and Daddy had bought from the traveling salesman. When the bookmobile came to school I asked the librarian for all the books on rocketry.  There was very little about solid fuel rockets on the 1950 Ford pickup truck which had been converted into the bookmobile. It came very two weeks to Bradley school, which was much too infrequent for me. I had always been a voracious reader. Yes, I was one of those kids who would be reading by flashlight under the covers in my bed past bedtime. I eventually read the complete encyclopedia and held the record for the most books read in the school library when in the eighth grade, but that would happen in the future.

My big problem in rocket construction as an eleven year old rocket scientist was to find the proper fuel for my rocket. Finally, I determined that gunpowder would power the rocket. My research on primitive firearms provided a recipe for the fuel. Charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur were all that was required. By filling a coffee tin with wood chips,  putting on the lid, which had a small hole punched in it, and heating it on the kitchen stove, I could make my own charcoal. I found that dry pine wood chips made the best charcoal. I would grind it up with a mortar and pestle. But I never did get around to grinding it up, because I could not find one of the other ingredients.  The sulfur was not a problem, because I had some in the Chemcraft chemistry set I had gotten for my tenth birthday. Saltpeter, on the other hand, was a big problem. I could not find any anywhere.  As a teenager I would find out that we had potassium nitrate fertilizer on the farm that would have served me well as saltpeter.  But, not to be prevented from achieving my objective, I found another solution: modern gunpowder. Gunpowder such as found in shotgun shells. I had access to such, sort of. I had some for my own gun, a sixteen gauge Ior Johnson single shot shotgun.  Also, I knew that Daddy had some. I could borrow some of his, and he would not miss them. After all, hunting season was six months away. I managed to cut the shot shells apart with a bit of trepidation. A shotgun shell had a cap in the brass part of the shell which when struck by the firing pin of the gun ignites the gunpowder in the shell. If per chance I had caused one of the caps to fire I probably would not be writing this today. But some caution was thrown to the wind.  I had to build a rocket.

My plan was to make the fuselage of the rocket from a discarded toilet paper tube. I could not dispose of a complete roll of toilet paper for my cause. Would I be so brazen to use a complete roll of this treasured commodity for my efforts? No, I had to find a better way. So I made my own tube from poster board scavenged from an old wildlife poster I had made in the third grade. The tube was about one half the diameter of the toilet paper tube. A scrap of wood provided the material for the nose cone. My pocket knife sharp and I quickly

carved out the nose cone. Unfortunately, Mickey Spencer had stolen my Hopalong Cassidy a few years earlier.  I hoped he had cut his finger. The back of a Blue Horse tablet provided the cardboard for the rocket’s tail fins. Mom interrupted me for the noon meal.  I wolfed down the tomato sandwich and followed it with a glass of milk.  A man who had been without food in the desert would not have eaten faster. I was on a mission. The next part of the project was to fabricate the ignition system. My mind’s eye could see it clearly.  It would be an electrical system. In operation, I would count down 3...2...1...and push the button, sending my rocket skyward.  I would use nichrome wire attached between two nails and inserted into the tail of the rocket. There was an old lamp cord with a plug on it in my spare parts box that would carry electricity to the nichrome wire. The electric current would cause the nichrome wire to get hot and ignite the gunpowder.  I turned my cap around on my bicycle as I rode to this big ditch where we threw away our trash. When I was scrounging there before I had seen an old hot plate.  Hot plates used nichrome wire coils for heating elements.

On my way back to my room I picked up a scrap of wood from the wood pile in the back yard. With two nails and a hammer I had all I needed to build the rocket igniter. The igniter assembled quickly, and I was ready for the test flight.

I decided that it would not be a good Idea to fire the rocket in my room, so I carried it outside. But that did present a problem. We lived in an old farmhouse and electrical outlets were scarce. A number of extension cords would be necessary to get electrical power to the rocket’s igniter. I had to convince Mom I needed all the extension cords we had. It so happened that at that time I was working on an electricity project for the 4-H Club. Mom always supported my 4-H projects. She believed in the organization sponsored by the U. S. Department of Agriculture for rural youth. And she brought me every extension cord in the house. It took five extension cords to get power to the launch site. I decided not to include a launch button in the electric circuitry. There was not a push button switch anywhere on the farm! I would simply plug the rocket ignition power cord into an extension cord. I would countdown, of course. You can’t launch a rocket without a countdown! The time had come.

Ten...nine...eight...seven...six...five...four...three...two...one...I plugged the igniter into the extension cord. There was smoke! There was fire! There was a scream! There was not a rocket streaking toward the heavens. I wrote in my journal that it was a marginal success. Although the rocket did not lift off it was a tremendous learning experience. And the scream? That was from my mother, who was using an electric food mixer while making a cake at launch time. The launch put a strain on the electrical circuits of the house and blew every fuse. Mom was not angry with me. She appreciated the fact that I knew where the spare fuses were  and and how to replace the blown ones. I told her the problem was due to the very old wiring in the house.  If my Daddy had been home things would have been different.

I pursued my dream of becoming a rocket scientist until high school. Much to my chagrin the study of physics without skills in algebra and higher mathematics was impossible.

The Klingon Poet

I never knew when Bob would appear in my office, but I always knew what he would say; “You’re not going to believe this…” And that day was no different.

“You’re not going to believe this, but I believe we can get another 10% production out of the extruders,” he said as he pulled the six-inch slide rule from his pocket with his right hand. Most engineers in those days carried slide rules. The left hand seemed to have a Pall Mall cigarette permanently attached.  The cigarette invariably had about one inch of ash about to drop on the carpet. I remember the brand because it was the same brand, Pall Mall, that the author, Kurt Vonnegut, said he was using to commit suicide.  

“What kind of changes will you make?” I asked.

“Just little ones, mostly temperature profiles,” he said.

“All right, go for it.  Ask the process technicians to make the necessary changes to the extruders.  Tell them I said do it,” I told him.  I knew my instructions would be carried out to the letter.

Bob was well into his sixties but a bundle of energy.  His physique would have been described by Barney Fife as “wiry” though slightly bent. Soaking wet Bob may have weighed one hundred pounds. His face was wrinkled as a raisin and was about the color of a golden raisin. Small tufts of gray hair emerged from his nose and ears. His longish brown hair was streaked with gray and combed straight back. A slightly oversized crooked nose was  above a constant smile revealing teeth stained by years of nicotine and the bright brown eyes were magnified by the horn-rimmed trifocals.  Bob seemed to radiate the curiosity of a ten-year-old boy.

Bob was one of my favorite time killers. If I let him get started with stories of the war an hour would pass quickly. But I loved his stories. The plant engineer had been a navigator on a B-17 Flying Fortress during WWII.  Bob was my eyes and ears on the production floor. He had the confidence of the rank and file. They respected his technical expertise as much as I did and he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty either. They liked that. Currently he was assisting me in the hopeful apprehension of the Klingon poet. This man was driving management nuts!

Every morning when I arrived at work the first thing I would do was check the men’s restroom. Invariably the “Klingon poet” had been there!

It had started three months previously with his first verse scribbled in one of the stalls of the men's restroom. I suppose you could call it a parody. It was like a daily journal of the factory operation presented as a Star Trek episode. Members of management were the crew. Captain Greg commanded the Starship GBL.  Greg Larson was the president of GBL Manufacturing. The writer's imaginative poetry was very entertaining to the production workers. Manufacturing  output had increased by 11%. It was indeed amazing the boost to morale the poetry had been. Prior to the scribbling of the poet, morale had been at an all time low. There were rumors of unionization and  a possible strike. But all that had gone away when the Klingon Poet started his writing.  I had to admit the stories, or rather poems, were quite amusing, but of course I had not yet appeared in any of the episodes.

It was uncanny how the poet would write about little known facts. The workers were fascinated by the ongoing galactic soap opera and the romantic adventures of Captain Greg and communications officer Glynis. Glynis Harrison was Greg's secretary. She was by far the most attractive woman at the plant. On the production floor tales of her sexual exploits as a high school cheerleader were legendary. Captain Greg had no knowledge of this since he came from a different galaxy (New England), but the poet knew a lot more. He wrote about the clandestine meetings between Captain Greg and Glynis. It was a number of weeks before Greg found out about the writing on the wall.  When he did he stormed into my office demanding that I find the culprit. I therefore enlisted Bob.  

“The poet found a new subject; Billy Duncan's new office assistant,"  Bob said. Billy Duncan was in charge of purchasing for the company.  I had been told that he considered himself God’s gift to women.  But I had no verification for this speculation.

"So he has a new assistant.  I signed the transfer to move that girl from production to administration.   What does that have to do with  the poet?"  I asked.

"Well, the poet said that the first mate of Star Fleet GBL Procurement Command had retrieved a new assistant from the galaxy Mammary Maximus," Bob said matter-of-factly.

"Mammary what?" I asked, hoping Bob would remember he had some place else to be.

Bob snickered and said, "Kinda reminds me of the Parisian cabarets after the war.”  

“Parisian cabarets?”

"Yeah, you know after the war they got English girls to dance in the French cabarets. They were much bigger than the French girls up top," he added with what I perceived as a leer and what could have been considered lewd hand gestures.

"I guess I forgot that. We'll talk later, Bob. I need to check the specs on the new product back at the testing lab."

On my way to the lab I stopped by the men’s rest room. Sure enough Joe, the company handyman, was busy painting in one of the stalls. “How’s it going, Joe?”I asked.

“It’s going okay, Boss,”he said continuing to paint. Joe called all management  “Boss”. Then he added, “I think dat poet fella is left handed. My sister write like dat an’ she left handed.”

I could see the writing that he had not painted over and it had a left slant to it.

“He keep dis up, we gonna hafta  git mo’ paint!” he said.

“Don’t worry about that, Joe. Max will get you some more when you need it,” I said in parting.

I dropped into the employees canteen area to buy a cup of coffee. Before I could drop my quarter into the vending machine someone beat me to it.

"What's going on in the front office?" Jake asked while putting the coin into the machine.  Jake Witherspoon was my warehouse supervisor. He was in his late twenties, about five feet six inches tall, muscular with dark brown hair and a rattail. It was not unusual for Jake to appear for work on Mondays with multiple bruises from a weekend martial arts tournament.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I pushed the extra cream button on the coffee vending machine.

“ We know that Billy’s getting a new assistant, Maxine Ledbetter,” he said and added with a grin, “Yeah, Billy really knows how to pick ‘em!”

“What else did you hear?”

“Nowadays all you have to do around here to find out anything is read the restroom wall.  I thought you could give me an update before I had to read it on the wall.”

“You know who the poet is, don’t you? Come on, you can tell me.  We’ve known each other a long time!” I insisted.

I lifted the sliding door on the vending machine and retrieved my coffee.  Jake raised his hands over his head and backed away with a smile.

“I dunno, “ he said with a smile spreading over his smooth shaven face. “And if I did, I dunno if I’d tell ya!  It’s just too much fun to read it!”

As I was leaving the canteen I saw two of our younger employees in the corner listening to a small radio. They were listening to rap music. In passing it occurred to me that rap music had rhyming verse. I could not help but wonder if these young fellas could write in rhyme too.  One of them was holding a cigarette in his left hand!

After going by the lab and seeing the results of the new polyester product on the Instron machine, I was back in my office. Hoping to hear nothing else about the “Klingon Poet” the rest of the day.

I called Max Fooshe in our maintenance department.  “Good morning, Max!  How was the weekend? Did Johnny play well Friday night?”

My portly, balding, fiftyish maintenance manager answered, “You betcha! If he keeps playing like this I believe he will get a scholarship. I’d be good it he could go to Minnesota, but I don’t think they look at anybody this far south.”

“I wish I could have seen that game, but we had to go to the wife’s family for the weekend. You know how that is.”

“Well, you gotta do what you gotta do.  By the way, Joe is up painting that wall in the men’s room again. You were probably going to mention that, weren’t you” he asked.

“Yes I was. I saw him painting when I was going to the lab.  You don’t know who’s doing this, do you?  Greg is about to have my head!”

“Sorry, can’t help you. Some of the writing is kind of funny though”.  I could hear him smiling.

“Later, Max,” I said, as I hung up the phone.

Back in my office I closed my door and asked Janet, my secretary, to hold my calls and to tell everyone I was not to be disturbed.  What was I gonna do? I simply had to find the Klingon poet and take appropriate action. But I had to admit that the verses were amusing, and production was improving daily. I used the rest of the day to compile some reports for our corporate guests arriving the next day.  Our little operation would be getting a lot of attention at the corporate offices in New York. Maybe tomorrow I would catch the culprit.  But, it was not to be.

The next day a new verse appeared in the usual place:

“Captain Greg went out to see

If sweet Glynis was now free,

For a ride with Captain Greg

Maybe a word for Lady Peg!

And may galactic laughter embrace the universe!”

Lady Peg referred to Greg’s wife, Peggy!

I had to get that verse off the bathroom wall before Greg either saw it or heard about it. I made a quick call to Max, and he assured me that Joe would paint the wall as soon as he reported to work. I walked through the production floor. It really looked good. The Italian extruders looked like new machines, although they were over five years old. The employees were all dressed in white coveralls and wore yellow hard hats. Some of the women had opted to choose their coveralls about two sizes too small. Greg really knew how to put on a show when company was coming. The visitors from the corporate offices in New York would be there in the afternoon.  I continued my walk to the Quality Control Department for another check on our new polyester product  testing before returning to my office.

The phone rang as soon as I replaced the receiver in the cradle of my phone. I dreaded picking it up...I knew who it was!

“Get in here right now!” Greg bellowed from the phone.

I didn’t answer. I replaced the phone’s receiver and hurriedly walked toward Greg’s office. My mind was quickly going over a story to tell the boss why I had not apprehended the Klingon poet. The last time Greg had spoken to me about the poet, he had implied that my future with the company may well depend on whether I caught this literary villain or not. Greg’s secretary, Glynis, nodded her head toward his office door and with that sideways smile of hers said, “He’s waiting for you”.  The smile turned into a smirk.

His office was the biggest at the plant. There was a small sofa and two wing chairs in dark leather. Greg sat in a high-backed leather chair behind a large mahogany desk. Behind him was an ornate credenza and a huge oil painting of some Napoleonic battle. Although Greg was over six feet tall he had his desk and chair on a raised platform. Greg felt it was important to look down on subordinates.

He looked up from some papers on his desk and straightened them with manicured hands as I entered. The ice blue eyes beneath shaggy gray eyebrows peered over the gold rimmed glasses. As usual he was impeccably dressed; dark blue suit, white shirt, and striped tie. His monogrammed cuffs were visible at his wrists, along with a Rolex on his left wrist. The silver hair above his wide forehead was carefully styled.

“Sit,” he ordered, “we have business to take care of!”

“Yessir,” I said, as I perched on the edge of one of the wing chairs. Greg could become almost violent at times. He would yell at us during staff meetings and sometimes pound his desk with his fists. Then he would frequently turn off his hearing aids so as not to hear our responses!

“As you know we have visitors from corporate offices in New York due this afternoon. Before they get here we have to take care of a few things,” he said in his clipped Northeastern voice. Although he had been in the South many years his New England accent returned when he was excited.

“I’m listening.” I hoped he did not see me cringing.

“Everyone is very pleased with our increased production. I think you’ve done a great job, but…”

“Here it comes,” I thought, the hammer is about to drop.

“...you’ve really done too well. We now have too much inventory! So… I want you to reduce our labor force by three people. Just go by Human Resources and get the three least senior employees from Larry.  I’ve called him already.  He’ll have the names ready for you.  The usual severance pay, et cetera, et cetera. I want it done by the time our guests get here,” and in the words of Jean-Luc Picard he added, “Make it so!”

His attention returned to the papers on his desk, and I quickly followed the boss's orders to the letter. We would be ready for our visitors that afternoon. All went well, and at dinner with our corporate superiors that evening, Greg and I basked in the accolades of the New Yorkers.

The next day I came into work early, although I was somewhat groggy. As usual I checked the men’s room first. To my surprise there was no poetry on the walls. It was over. And we never learned who the Klingon Poet was.

  ________________________________

This is basically a true story. I was the assistant to the president of the company. All the names have been changed of course. Certain liberties were also taken with descriptions.