FoxCraft

Darby O'Gill and the Scared Little People

The Hipp Theatre needs my help—yours, too, if you're interested.

For the past several years, the movie theatre in my home town of Gregory, South Dakota, has been run as a nonprofit organization staffed completely by volunteers. In order to keep showing movies, they'll need to buy expensive digital equipment. They've sent fundraising letters to all the Gregory High School alumni they could find, asking for donations to help today's kids enjoy movies "the way we did."

Great idea. Except I don't remember ever enjoying movies at the Hipp Theatre when I was in high school. Maybe the fact that my social life consisted largely of reading four or five library books a week had something to do with that. Surely I must have gone to a movie at least once or twice. If so, apparently neither the movie nor the date was that memorable.

What I do remember vividly about the Hipp Theatre, though, is watching a Disney movie there called Darby O'Gill and the Little People. Darby O'Gill was an elderly Irish man who kept trying to catch, or maybe did catch, the king of the leprechauns. His daughter was courted by a handsome young man who kept singing a lilting little song to her. The song still pops up in my mind at random moments: "Oh, she is my dear, my darling one, her eyes so sparkling, full of fun . . . "

Besides the song, the most memorable part of the movie included wailing banshees and something called the "death coach." I'm a little hazy on the details, mostly because I watched that part in terror with my hands over my eyes, huddled in my seat next to my Aunt Ginny and peeking every now and then to see if the scary things were gone yet. As I've always remembered it, I was about four years old at the time.

Well, thanks to the marvels of the Internet, I looked up Darby O'Gill and the Little People just now. I discovered two facts, one startling and one disturbing.

The startling fact was that the handsome singing lover was a young actor named Sean Connery. Maybe that explains why I've had a crush on the man my whole life.

The disturbing fact was that the movie was released in 1959. I was born in 1951. When I sat there in the theatre, not breathing, trying not to peek at the fearsome banshees, I wasn't four years old. I was at least eight.

That realization was a bit embarrassing. At least until I remembered that, in another theatre and another decade, I watched Jurassic Park the same way. I was 42 at the time. At least by then I was adult and sophisticated enough that I didn't have my hands over my face. I just shut my eyes and held my breath whenever I thought another dinosaur was going to burst through the wall and grab somebody.

Meanwhile, my daughter, at the blasé age of 11, sat there calmly munching her popcorn.

Either I was emotionally scarred for life by the banshees, or I'm just a wimp. I don't think I care to figure out which.

Still, I guess my memory of Darby O'Gill and the Little People is reason enough to donate a bit to the Hipp Theatre. Good for all the hardworking volunteers who think a small-town movie theater is worth keeping open. I hope they succeed.

I also hope, even in today's world, that there are still a few kids who watch the scary parts with their fingers over their eyes.

Machine Gun Kelly Goes to the Library

I was about 9 or 10 years old. My school (not my class, the whole school—all five of us, and that included the teacher) were on a field trip. One of our stops was the Tripp County Library.

The library was on the second or third floor of the county courthouse. In my memory, getting to the library meant going past the sheriff's office and the jail, though I may be wrong about the jail part.

Anyway, the courthouse was and is a traditional three-story stone building occupying its own city block, with lawn on either side. On this particular visit, the teacher parked at one end of the block. Eager to show off my scrawny fourth-grade muscles, I offered to carry the box of library books. After a few steps, I realized the box was heavier than I had expected. Pride wouldn't let me change my mind about carrying it, so my next best choice was to take the shortest possible route to the front door. Instead of following the sidewalk, I made a wobbly beeline diagonally across the grass.

As I approached the grand front entrance of the courthouse, I noticed two things. One was a girl about my own age, standing on the steps. The second was a sign that read "Keep Off The Grass."

I staggered up the steps with my box of books, and the girl informed me, "You're not supposed to walk on the grass."

Too embarrassed to admit I hadn't seen any sign until it was too late, I told her, "I know."

"So how come you did?"

"Because it was shorter."

She looked shocked. I went on past her, trying to look as if such deliberate disregard for the rules was second nature to me. Between the box of books getting heavier by the moment, and my uncomfortable awareness of the proximity of the library to the sheriff's office, achieving an air of nonchalance wasn't easy.

Fortunately, by then the rest of the group had caught up with me. I gladly relinquished my burden—at least the physical part of it—to let one of the older kids carry the books. All the way up the flights of marble steps, though, I worried about what that other girl must think of me. In her eyes, I was sure, I must seem like a reckless lawbreaker who had, willfully and with malice aforethought, walked across the grass in defiance of the forces of law and order.

Yet letting her believe in my evil nature seemed better, if only slightly, than the other available choice—admitting I hadn't see the sign and I had made a mistake. Better to be thought crooked than clueless.

Perfectionism? Yes, I've heard of it. Why would you ask?

In the Doghouse

The first do-it-yourself carpentry project I remember attempting, when I was too young to know any better, was a stick horse. To start out with, I had a wooden head. (That would have been the horse's head—and aren't you ashamed of that unkind thought you just had?) It was cut out of plywood, and I think it may have been something I painted in school.

Anyway, my self-assigned task was to attach the head to a broomstick to make a complete horse. I remember working away, one eighth of a turn of a screwdriver at a time, to screw the two pieces of wood together, until I simply couldn't turn the screws any further. I had no idea that a real carpenter would have drilled holes first.

Another time I started to build a doghouse. I had the idea that you needed to start with a frame and then put boards on the sides, but that was about the extent of my architectural skills. I got four scrap two-by-fours nailed together into a crooked rectangle for the base, and then got stuck when I couldn't figure out how to attach the uprights at the corners. I had maxed out my skills. Since I was scrounging scraps of wood, I ran out of material about the same time, and abandoning the whole project seemed like the only good idea left. You might say the doghouse never got off the ground.

Quite a few years later, as a beginning adult with a toolbox of my very own and a college degree (including a major in art which, unfortunately, didn't encompass anything useful like "Introduction to Doghouse Design"), I set out to build a house for our outdoor cat.

The style was Early Grocery Box. It consisted of one cardboard box inside another with insulating material stuffed in between. I cut a nice round (well, almost round) door into one side and put a couple of towels inside for flooring. I even gave the whole thing a coat of blue paint for waterproofing before I put it in the coziest corner of the front porch. It was kind of cute, in its own lopsided way.

As far as I know, the cat never spent a single night—heck, not a single minute—inside the house. Maybe he didn't like the color.

Or maybe he was too embarrassed to be seen going into the uneven little door. Being a smart cat, maybe he had noticed the difference in connotation the English language gives to "doghouse" and "cathouse." As in, "He was in the doghouse for a long time after his wife found out about his visit to the cathouse."

Wondering about the peculiarities of language may not be any more satisfying than trying to build doghouses or cathouses, but it certainly is easier. I'm a lot less likely to stab myself with a screwdriver, for one thing. And any half-finished constructions that don't work out? All I have to do is hit "delete" on my computer, and all the evidence of my false starts and miscalculations magically disappears.

If only I could do the same with the half-started creations on my sewing machine and my workbench. Somebody really needs to invent a universal "delete" button, something like a television remote. It would be the perfect tool for wannabe crafters like me who persist in imagining they can create vast projects with half-vast skills.

The Spartan Boy, the Fox, and the Tulip Bulb

The ancient Spartans probably would be proud to know that we use their name today as a synonym for self-discipline and avoidance of luxury. They might be less pleased with our opinion of their child-rearing philosophy, which was a cross between Attila the Hun and Super Nanny on steroids.

Their nurturing attitude toward the young is summed up in the familiar story about the Spartan boy and the fox. As part of their rigid training, boys were taught to steal to supplement their meager food rations but were severely punished if they got caught at it. This boy had stolen the fox, intending to eat it. In danger of discovery, he hid the fox under his clothes, where it started gnawing at him. He kept the animal hidden and endured the pain without flinching, until the fox ate its way into his vital organs and he died.

Just imagine what reality television could have done with this. "Desperate Schoolboys." "Suffering With the Stars." "Are You Tougher Than a Fourth Grader?"

For centuries, this Spartan boy was held up as a role model for toughness, honor, and self-control. Well, maybe. I think his real motivation was a little different. Here's why.

One day when I was about seven or eight, I discovered a pile of little onions in the large round planter in the middle of the front yard. It didn't occur to me to wonder why my mother or grandmother would have pulled onions from the garden and left them in the yard rather than taking them into the house.

I didn't especially like onions, but in one of the small spasms of recklessness that occasionally disturbed the timidity of my childhood, I decided to eat one. It didn't taste at all oniony. In fact, it didn't have much flavor at all. About the time I swallowed the last bit, I realized, with that sinking feeling you get when you recognize you've made a mistake precisely one second too late to take it back, that I had eaten a tulip bulb.

I went into the house and asked my mother, with great casualness, whether tulip bulbs were poisonous. Probably, she said. She may have thought she was discouraging me from nibbling on things that shouldn't be nibbled. It obviously didn't occur to her that I was asking after the fact. Maybe I was a little too casual.

For the next couple of days, I worried. I waited for symptoms of acute tulip poisoning to show up—tummy aches, dizziness, my tongue turning black, paralysis, death, whatever. I didn't sleep well. I may have even lost my appetite.

What I didn't do was tell my mother or anyone else that I had eaten something that might possibly be poison. Thankfully, I never did get sick. If I had, I hope I would have been brave enough to fess up. But I walked around for a couple of days wondering whether I was going to die—and I was too embarrassed to say anything. That's how ashamed I was of being too dumb to know the difference between an onion and a tulip bulb.

That Spartan boy? He was tough and self-disciplined, all right. But I think what really made him hide his suffering was fear that someone would catch him making a mistake. In part, that kid died of shame.

How Come Everybody Knows This Stuff But Me?

Maybe it's because I spent grades kindergarten through eight in a rural school that never had more than five pupils. (I was the only person in my high school physical education class who didn't know how to play softball.) Maybe it's because we didn't have television when I was a kid. Maybe it's because I spent most of my teenage years reading instead of dragging Main Street or sneaking out to illicit parties.

Whatever the reason, there is a surprising amount of stuff "everyone" knows that I don't. Not just who Snooki and Lady Gaga are, or whether the Kardashian sisters actually do anything or simply are famous for being famous. I'm talking about a more fundamental layer of shared cultural background that I seem to have missed.

Every now and then I am reminded of some odd bit of apparently common knowledge that isn't common for me. These are things everyone else seems to understand and take for granted, but I don't get. Either I've never had a chance to learn them, I've never needed the information, or—more likely—I never wanted to admit my ignorance by asking.

Now, for the first time ever, the depths of my ignorance are about to be revealed. You read it here first, folks. These are some of the things I don't know:

1. Jumping-rope rhymes. As far as I can remember, I have never chanted one in my life.

2. When a vehicle with a standard transmission won't start, and you push or pull it to get it moving and then start it by "popping the clutch," how exactly do you do that? Do you begin with the clutch in, then let it out at the crucial moment? Or do you push it in? Or push it in and then let it out? Confusion over this issue is probably the major reason I have always driven an automatic. At least I know exactly what to do if that ever fails to start: dig out my cell phone and call AAA.

3. How exactly do you play "Rock, Paper, Scissors?"

4. I've done enough hiking to be able to identify poison ivy. I'm rather too familiar with thistles and creeping Jenny, since the yard is full of them. But what precisely does a pot plant look like? Yes, I've seen pictures, but to the best of my knowledge I've never seen one in the flesh. (Of course, since I'm not sure what they look like, how would I know?) The stuff could be flourishing in the overgrown back half of our yard right this very minute, along with the thistles and that one tall asparagus plant. If anybody should ever discover marijuana growing wild back there, could I go to jail?

5. Did Gilligan and company ever get off that island? If so, how?

Instead of whining about it, of course, I could just look up some of this stuff online. Or maybe I should focus on all the other things I do know. Like what a "gerund" is, or a "stoat." Or what part of a car in England is called the "bonnet." Or what Harry Truman's middle initial stands for. I'd be perfectly willing to enlighten you on any of those important facts.

Right after you explain how to pop a clutch.

Pick a Church in Pickstown

Pickstown, South Dakota, is the kind of place where visiting fisherman can buy breakfast and bait at the same place, and the waitress has long since grown tired of jokes about what kind of worms are in the hamburgers. Most visitors—and there are plenty of them, come to fish and waterski and have family reunions at the campgrounds and picnic areas along the Missouri River—never explore further than the motels, cafes, and gas stations along the highway.

But when it was young, Pickstown was home to several thousand people. Unlike most prairie towns whose fates were tied to the coming and going of the railroads, it was a boomtown by government design. Built between 1946 and 1949 and owned by the federal government, it was created to house the workers building Fort Randall Dam.

When the dam was finished a few years later, the town dwindled. Now it is home to only a couple of hundred people. Still, if you take a walk on a quiet weekend morning after the fishermen have hauled their boats off to the river, you can see signs of its youth. Sidewalks along spacious empty lots end abruptly where front doors used to be. Duplexes built as worker housing have been remodeled into single-family homes. A few barrack-style apartment buildings probably survive on vacation rentals.

The Rainbow Room on White Swan Street, which occupies the original shopping center, is available for weddings, anniversary celebrations, dances, and reunions. At least during the summer, it appears to be a busy place. When we came in on Sunday morning for our family reunion, one of the refrigerators in the kitchen still held the top of the cake from the previous night's wedding reception.

A couple blocks away is Pickstown's hidden gem—the Community Church. A plain, white-painted building, it was locked when I peeked through the front window on Saturday morning but was open for services when I went back on Sunday. The pastor of the tiny congregation seemed pleased to give me a tour.

The church is a simple, appealing sanctuary with subdued stained glass windows and light oak pews. I suspect collectors would break the tenth commandment and covet its hexagonal light fixtures with their amber glass panels set into ironwork frames. The altar, also of oak, is appropriately plain for a small Protestant church.

Behind it, though, is what the pastor called "the church's secret." A second altar. And a third. All three are set on a revolving platform. The design, apparently, came from military chapels built to be easily reconfigured for Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish services.

I'd love to know how many of these chapels are still in use, but so far I haven't been able to find out much about them. There doesn't seem to be one in the only other government town I'm familiar with—Boulder City, Nevada, built for the workers building Hoover Dam. It had a locally-built interdenominational Protestant church instead.

The Catholic altar in the Pickstown church hasn't been used for some time, and it's doubtful whether the Jewish altar has ever been used at all. During the town's boom years, though, Catholics and Protestants shared the chapel. According to Adeline Gnirk in her 1986 history of this area, The Epic of Papineau's Domain, Mass was held at 7:30 and a community Protestant service at 10:30.

In between, however, the Lutherans had their own service at 9:00. Maybe the town was large enough for the Lutherans to have a separate congregation. Or maybe, to the strictest followers of Martin Luther, ecumenicalism can only be taken so far.

Smokey's Middle Name

It's an old joke, popular with second-grade comedians. "What is Smokey the Bear's middle name?"

The answer, of course, (provided here for those of you who haven't had your coffee yet or who don't remember second grade) is "The."

Except, really, it isn't.

When I mentioned Smokey in a recent column, I lumped him in with other famous characters who were "the" something-or-other. Jack the Ripper. Attila the Hun. Alexander the Great. Technically, he doesn't belong in such company.

Because, technically, "the" is not part of his name. There is a serious difference of opinion on this issue. People who were children in the 50's and early 60's think of him as "Smokey the Bear." People who were children in the 70's know him as "Smokey Bear." People who were children in the 90's think of him as "Smokey who?"

The confusion over his middle name is all due to the song. You know what song—the one that just started up in your brain.

"Smokey the Bear, Smokey the Bear.
Prowlin' and a growlin' and a sniffin' the air.
He can find a fire before it starts to flame.
That's why they call him Smokey,
That was how he got his name."

And that's only the chorus. There are four long verses. If you care to read or hear them all, you can find the whole thing here.

You may not remember the words, but I bet you recognize the tune. And it was the tune that caused the whole "the" problem. When Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote the song in 1952, they had to put "the" in there to make the rhythm come out right. You'll notice they also needed to stick in a few extra syllables like "a growlin'" and "a sniffin.'" Apparently they came up with the melody first and needed to perform some linguistic gymnastics to make the lyrics fit.

As a result, every kid familiar with the song came to know America's most famous fire-fighter as Smokey the Bear. Dell Comics called him that during the 1950's and 1960's. Some of the official posters from that era even did the same.

His real name, however, has always been simply Smokey Bear. This is according to the official Smokey website at www.smokeybear.com. If you'd like to see some truly scary fire-prevention posters from the 1940's, go to the site and check out the "Smokey's Journey" section.

But whether we call him "Smokey Bear" or "Smokey the Bear," we can agree on one thing: Only we can prevent forest fires.

Trouble at Exit 192

I drive across western South Dakota on I-90 often enough to notice when a gas station changes brands, a rest area gets a new hand dryer, or one of the Black Hills attractions puts up a new billboard. (When you've finished your audio book and the alphabet game is your primary source of entertainment and alertness, those billboards are important.)

Even so, it took me a minute last week to realize what was wrong at the Murdo exit.

The long green car was gone.

For as long as I can remember, Exit 192 at the edge of Murdo has been marked by a huge billboard advertising the South Dakota Auto Museum. The billboard, topped by an impossibly long green antique car, has been one of the landmarks of I-90 travel for decades. It certainly has been there as long as I've been driving across the state.

It probably was there the only time I've actually visited the Auto Museum, but unfortunately I can't remember. I was about six or seven at the time, and the only thing I remember about the trip was being unkindly teased by my older sister and even older cousin. The cars themselves apparently didn't make much of an impression.

As an adult, living in the Black Hills with family in the eastern part of the state, most of my stops at Murdo have only been quick ones on my way to somewhere else.

Last Sunday, though, I noticed the empty space along Highway 83 even before I turned off the interstate to drive into Murdo. The billboard was a splintered mess along the edge of the road, with the green car a crumpled wreck beside it. Apparently the most recent round of severe storms to sweep across the area had been too much for the elderly sign.

Driving past the wreck, I looked as closely as I could while still maintaining the dignity and respect appropriate to the recent demise of a public figure. I've wondered from time to time over the years how much, if any, of the sign had been built from a real car body. It looked as if the front end, at least, was an actual car, but I couldn't tell for sure. Inquiring minds—or this inquiring mind, anyway—would like to know.

In the meantime, I hope they rebuild the sign, and soon. I'll even promise to visit the museum if they do. Especially if the new sign includes the word "antique." Along that part of I-90, particularly heading east, the billboard game really needs that "q."

The Almost Outstanding Graduate

"Pomp and Circumstance." Graduation simply wouldn't be graduation without it. At least I hope that's still the case because, trite or last-century as it may be, the grand sweep of that music still moves me right down to my toes.

Actually, the music we think of as "Pomp and Circumstance" is only one section, "Land of Hope and Glory," from the first of six "Pomp and Circumstance" marches written at the beginning of the 20th Century by British composer Sir Edward Elgar. It was first used as a graduation recessional at Yale in 1905, and since then hundreds of thousands of graduates have done their best to keep their mortarboards level and move at a pace appropriate to its stirring dignity.

It would be fun sometime to hear the entire suite of marches at a concert, though during the "Land of Hope and Glory" section it is probable that a large portion of the audience would be irresistibly driven to rise from their seats and march solemnly toward the stage in alphabetical order.

Maybe my emotional reaction to "Pomp and Circumstance" stems from my own high school graduation, though I don't consciously remember the music. What I do remember is processing in, seventy-something of us, two by two, from the back of the city auditorium and down the center aisle through the rows of seats crammed with relatives and friends.

Just as we had rehearsed, when we reached the front each pair separated to file in opposite directions and take our places, standing in front of the seats that were reserved for us. Being an "S," I was toward the end of the pack, and my assigned seat happened to be at the aisle end of the row. I reached the designated point, turned toward the row of chairs—and realized I didn't have one. Someone had counted wrong, or someone in the crowded auditorium had filched a chair.

Behind me, the rest of the graduates filed into the last row. Up on the stage, the minister began his invocation. Standing with my head dutifully bowed just enough so my mortarboard wouldn't slide off, I was quietly panicking. As soon as he finished, I knew he was going to say, "Please be seated," and everyone would. Everyone except me, who would be left the lone graduate standing, the humiliated focus of hundreds of eyes.

Some seniors, self-confident class president types or debate champions or drama club lovers of the spotlight, might have been able to pass such an incident off with élan or even enjoy the attention. I was not one of those students.

Before the pastor got to the end of his invocation, though, I felt something nudge the back of my robe. Miraculously, a chair had appeared behind me. When we were told to be seated, and in uneven blue-robed unanimity we sat, I had never been so grateful to settle onto a hard metal folding chair.

After the ceremony, I learned that a neighbor, the father of one of my classmates, had noticed my predicament from his seat near the aisle a few rows behind the graduates. During the prayer, this burly, six-foot-plus man had sneaked forward with his own chair and placed it behind me. Knowing him, he gave the audience a big grin as he went to stand in the back of the room.

I hope I thanked him properly. As inarticulate and shy as I was at the time, I probably wasn't able to let him know how much his embarrassment-sparing gesture meant to me. And now, even though I've remembered it with gratitude for all these years, he's gone and it's a decade too late to tell him in person.

Thank you, Lyle. Bless your kindness and your quickness. I think about you every time I hear "Pomp and Circumstance."

Born to be Mild

Bungee jumping? No thank you.

Roller coasters? Did that once, thanks. Once was once too often.

There's an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Captain Picard, having learned about some consequences of a youthful misadventure, is regretting what he sees as his character flaw of recklessness. He is taken back through his life to explore how it might have been if he had taken fewer risks. It turns out he would have still ended up on the Enterprise, but as a low-ranking, undistinguished member of the crew. The risk-taking he had seen as a flaw was part of what gave him the ability to command a starship.

Unlike Picard, when I look back I don't regret my past reckless behavior. Quite the opposite. As a child, I believed that rules were meant to be obeyed, boundaries to be respected, and lines to be colored inside. Not only was I rarely the one suggesting anything adventurous, I was often that annoying kid warning the others that they were going to be in big trouble.

This was less about respect for the rules, actually, than it was about being chicken. I was simply born to be cautious. On the very few occasions I did let peer pressure lure me into wilder behavior, I usually lived to regret it.

Like the time at church camp when I was a teenager. Everyone else was doing it. (Well, as is usually the case, not quite everyone. Several people were doing it, including a boy that I wanted to impress.)

No, not drugs. Not smuggling pine cones into the counselors' beds. Not smoking cigarettes or necking out in the woods. A few kids very likely did those things, but they didn't tell me about it.

Someone had come up with the bright idea of putting a plank across a log to make an impromptu teeter-totter. The smaller person, aka the girl, would stand on one end. The larger person, aka the guy, would jump onto the other end, sending her into the air. Her hair and sometimes other parts of her anatomy would bounce in an appealing manner, and she would squeal and giggle and come down more or less on her feet.

It looked like fun—sort of. One of the boys doing the jumping was the one I was hoping to impress. I didn't want to look like the chicken I really was. Even though my sensible side tried to talk me out of it, I allowed myself to be coaxed onto the short end of the board.

He jumped onto the other end. I went flying. If my hair bounced in an appealing manner, I didn't have time to notice before I tumbled sideways and the ground came up and hit me.

My wrist hurt and started to swell. The camp director insisted on taking me to town for an X-Ray. Instead of playing my guitar at the campfire sing-along that night, I spent the evening in the emergency room finding out my wrist wasn't broken. They sent me back to camp with an ice pack, which soothed my bruised arm but didn't do much for my bruised pride.

In the years since, I've become far more adventurous in a lot of ways. I've learned to take a few more risks—at least of the emotional and social kind. But physical? No thanks. I still don't do carnival rides that fling you around like Raggedy Ann on speed. I don't stand at the edges of cliffs when I'm hiking in the woods. I take my vitamins, eat my vegetables, use sunscreen, keep my gas tank at least half full, and always fasten my seatbelt.

Maybe that explains why no one has ever put me in command of a starship.