The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 414
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
CHRONOLOGY 47: TAPCO / ATR 5
Wed., Sep. 4, 2013
6:02 p.m. No Money Down. G. #3.
No Reply.
I just got home and, upon opening Guinness #3 (drank a pint on the train), find here a voicemail from Ron Link. I know that I drank 8 beers last night to “celebrate” my reintroduction to what is evidently a life sentence of teaching in the Bronx but I’m doing it again tonight even though I hope to be able to work out tomorrow. I may also connect with Ron. I hardly saw or spoke to him these past 2 days but know that he wants to get together over the next couple of days. I’m thinking of going into that place either Fri. or Sat. - not tomorrow. He’ll probably be in all 3 days.
Because he is as lonely as I am but he knows how to deal with it. He’s another hardened lonely man, much like fellow Ohioans my brother and sister. These people learned how to be alone early or learned to expect to be alone early or something and so now they know how to deal with it. Ron may have tried a couple of relationships but the likelihood is that he … has never come to terms with that. The few years with Valerie Carter would have been a disguise. The girlfriend that he supposedly had when I saw him that time a couple of years ago may have been another ruse. That is a terrible loneliness to have to deal with.
I talked a bit about Dale with Carol and Ben the night before I drove to Ohio. Carol told us about her very successful sister and they asked me about my siblings. I had to admit that neither had ever married or had kids. They politely implied if my brother were gay and I could only say that I had never seen any evidence. That is the truth. I remember only one girlfriend in high school and that was short lived. I think I always assumed that he had been burned and as a result had never attempted to venture into another relationship but I really don’t know. He’s never given me any indication that he is other than heterosexual but we haven’t talked much about sex.
Anyway Day 2 went fine today. I’ve got a room to myself - 211. I don’t have any place to lock things up. Those are all taken. I went from having 2 to having none. That’s what happens when you’re the new person in a place but there are at least 8 new people there. I’m not the only one. I spent some time with 2 of them today who are car-pooling in from Long Beach, Long Island. Both are female. One (Dani) appears to be about 45 years old and is a phys. ed. / health teacher but also teaches yoga. The other (Allison) looks to be a youthful 30 and is married with 2 kids. We all had the same questions about just exactly what is going to happen next week.
6:15 p.m. You Can’t Catch Me. G #4.
[And by the way - I’ve had nothing to eat today. I was up at 5 this morning with no effect from last night’s beer, out the door at 5:45 and on the Grand Concourse at 182nd St. at 7:30, which is an hour before I’ve got to be there. I strolled the west side up to 183rd and back down the east side to 182nd before walking down the hill to the school. All I could think was that I’ve been sentenced to a long prison term for some crime that I committed and the crime is clearly abandoning Paula Kratzer in 1981. I deserve a life sentence for that as it turns out although I didn’t realize that until very recently.]
I’m going to return the call from Ron ....
[2 minutes later] In the message he invited me to come to a bar on 78th St. where they have music on Sat. night. So when I got his voice mail, I told him that I’d do that and that we’d talk before then. I also said that I’d heard nothing but good things about the job he’d done at the school since he took over and that is true. The teachers there appear to have great respect for him and confidence in him and that is such a radical turn for me but it’s also very heartening to see that it is directed to an old friend of mine.
I don’t know if what Ron is … or not. I do know that this has been a pattern in my life from the very start. The 2 biggest cases, of course, were Omar Abdul-Rasool and Leo Lacayo ...
7:01 p.m. Jaguar & Thunderbird. G #6.
Ron called back almost immediately and so I’ve been talking to him and drank #5 during that conversation. We’re on for Sat. night at 78th & Columbus. Evidently there is an after hours session there for Broadway musicians. Who knows what time I’ll be getting home that night. If I miss the last train to NJ, it won’t be until the wee, wee, wee hours - did Johnnie Johnson really write that song, friend? I just read through to the end of the Chuck Berry book on the trains today.
7:17 p.m. Promised Land. G #7.
I just bought “My Ding-a-Ling” by Chuck Berry because I’ve come to the end of the biography but the worst part may not be listening to that song but thinking about 1972 when it was a hit. I remember that year, of course, and it was a good year for me and Paula and it’s hard for me to think of those times now. I’ve put the 70s out of my mind for a long, long time and now I find that I’m forced to reconsider everything that I’ve ever thought or felt and that brings up all of this. I remain in a very fragile emotional state and don’t see any end to that. Maybe as long as I’m in this teaching prison, I’ll have to suffer this emotional horror of hating myself for what I did. I don’t see any way out other than the absurd pipe dream of thinking that Paula might communicate with me after all these years.
Best possible scenario: Therapy Dog becomes a great success and makes me and Zawadi a lot of money; Paula Kratzer communicates with me; I drop everything that I’m doing to do whatever she might suggest; she and I spend the rest of our lives together.
Worst possible scenario: I continue in this dual hell of being imprisoned in a teaching job and coming home to this “family” nightmare. (I won’t be able to take this much longer.)
7:36 p.m. Toy Bell. G. #8.
I managed to spend the time when “My Ding-a-Long” was playing in the small bedroom looking for the Mercury LP CD that I knew I had of Chuck Berry - I remember being greatly disappointed when I bought it in the early days of the CD age when they could fake you out if you didn’t know what you were doing. But I just heard the song I just bought - the original “Ding-a-Long” by the Bees. I got this from the biography - that Dave Bartholomew wrote the song and recorded it a couple of times himself - I can’t find those versions - and then had it done by the Bees and that one is out there now. So I got it and it’s the same song. I just read through the section about whether or not Johnnie Johnson helped Chuck Berry write his songs. I’d say that if you’re going to give Johnson credit for them, you might as well give T-Bone Walker credit also. Chuck Berry admits taking his licks from T-Bone. But it was Chuck Berry who wrote the words and packaged it all for white teenagers so there is no doubt in my mind that Chuck Berry “wrote” Chuck Berry songs. Johnnie Johnson ought to get some credit for his contributions but not as co-composer. (“Wee Wee Hours,” on the other hand, clearly is not a Chuck Berry song.)
8:06 p.m. Rock & Roll Music. G. #9.
Okay, friend, I’m going to input the Mercury Chuck Berry stuff that I’ve got here, including the early version of “Ding-a-Ling” called “My Tambourine” and then I’ll add the best covers to the play list.
8:19 p.m. Beautiful Delilah. G. #10.
Okay, friend, I see that I’ve already outdone last night by 2 bottles but I don’t have to get up tomorrow. I’m inputting the 2 Mercury LPs that I have on CD. I guess Mercury was quicker on the draw during those early CD days of the early 90s to get stuff out there to buy. I would only have thought of Chuck Berry back then because Geoff at the early age of 6, 7, and 8 or so had turned me onto him. I remember a car trip upstate to maybe visit either Marc Rosenbaum or Bruce Milner, both of whom had houses up there, when we had that great double CD playing “boom” box - a little red thing - in the back seat of the car and Geoff wanted to hear Chuck Berry. That would have been around 1988 and I still considered Chuck to be old fashioned rock and roll. Geoff was the one who gave me an appreciation of him as he did a couple of years later when he turned me on to Stevie Ray Vaughan, whom I’d dismissed at the Day School as too white to be a real bluesman.
8:33 p.m. Back in the USA. G #11.
I’m looking for Mercury singles and eating potato chips (Snyder’s from Massillon) ...
Note: I always found it to be a real critique of our pop culture that it took My Ding-a-Ling for Chuck Berry to finally hit the top of the charts. It hit #1 during that summer of ’72 and it was certainly the worst thing he’d ever recorded. Chuck Berry had virtually invented rock and roll singlehandedly - I can make a much better case for him than for Elvis - and yet it took a vulgar phallic novelty tune to do what songs like Roll Over Beethoven, Oh Carol, Johnny B. Goode, Nadine, No Particular Place to Go, Rock and Roll Music and so many more had not done. Maybe it was just Chuck Berry throwing up his hands and deciding to give them what they want as a sort of inside joke as happened in the Oscar nominated movie the past year, American Fiction when a serious writer decides to do the same. Maybe Chuck just thought of the song as American Music. To me it was a joke and maybe to him as well but Chuck certainly wasn’t one to turn his back on money to be made. But I turned the volume down on the car radio every time it came on but I wouldn’t have done the same with the Bees’ original Toy Bell because it relies more on the r&b style of 1954 when it came out and less on the vulgarity of the words. Still, it was a novelty song and one that appealed to our basest instincts, something I’d thought rock and roll had gotten beyond by the early 70s. In any case, I include here the Bees’ track as well as Chuck Berry’s earlier take for Mercury on the concept, My Tambourine. It was released as an album track in 1968. Given the opinion just stated of My Ding-a-Ling, I’ll refrain from subjecting you to that one.
AUDIO INSERTED: Bees, Toy Bell
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Labels
AUDIO INSERTED: Chuck Berry, My Tambourine
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Labels / Sleeves