The Story of "I, Libertine"

Bob Kaye ^ | 6/18/96 | Bob Kaye

[BluesDuke]

Suddenly I am missing dearly my copy of H.L. Mencken's The Bathtub Hoax (I had the book but lost it with many others of my books in flood damage a few years back); the title essay was a totally fabricated history of the bathtub which Mencken wrote and published as a lark and the booboisie fell for hook, line, and sinker...

[nunya bidness]

You are quite welcome. In the meantime I need to find my copy and post it. Flashlight in hand I venture forth in to adventure known as "the basement."

[nunya bidness]

Here's a cyber copy. A Neglected Anniversary.

[nunya bidness]

Turbulent! Turgid! Tempestuous!

Forget about Anne Rice, Ewing rules!

[BluesDuke]

You, sir, are a gentleman!

[nunya bidness]

You want to know what makes me go nuts is that the one guy who made the Sun is the same guy who will never be mentioned in the paper today.

His quotes are eternal. Just not in the rag that greets the sun in the city that breeds.

[nunya bidness]

I'm not sure what you mean my good man. But I will raise a glass to you and yours and exclaim, "Excelsior! You fathead!"

[BluesDuke]

Well, you probably do not need me to tell you that the loss is the Sun's. But I can't really knock Baltimore. Any city which could host so lovely a ballpark as Camden Yards (I had the pleasure of sitting there for a game in 1998, Orioles versus the Red Sox - the Orioles won a pretty well played game - and took a tour of the park and field before game time) can't be all that whacked!

[xkaydet65]

The Rover 2000TC. A touring sedan made by the Land Rover people. Congrats on the Swetheart soap. Your Brass Figleeyeee is being prepared. Excelsior!!!

[dersepp]

During the early seventies, I was a teenager and would watch Sheperds' PBS show on the Milwaukee affiliate station. He was the lead in for Mont Python, but for me, he made the whole evening.

The best story he told had to do with trains. It has him in the dining car of what could have been the Pennsylvania Riley run to Chicago. He noted how when he was a kid in bed, he'd hear the whisle blowing and the sound of the train on rails from a spur miles away. He lay there thinking of who was on the train and the places they'd be traveling to....Certainly away from his forgotten depression stunted town and region. The way he described the sound trains make in the plains at night would make my hair stand up on my neck.

I imagined the same thing, laying in bed at night in the middle of Ozaukee County, listening to the train 15 miles away on the Milwaukee river in the deep of the winter night. Only with lots of ice and snow on the ground can a train make noises that reverberate and skip like an AM signal; unexpectedly significant and frightening from such a distance.

Anyway, the story progresses to his being on a troop train and working a 36 hour KP shift. The train makes an unannounced stop in the middle of desert nothingness, save for the fact that down the embankment and a long way off, the fellows make out a neon sign blinking beer, beer, beer. Dare they send somebody off to get some? I won't ruin the story for you, but I wish I could get it on video or cassette.

[nunya bidness]

Thanks for sharing that account. It seems to me that the story tellers are a dying breed these days. Maybe we are too cynical.

[FReethesheeples]

;^)

[FReethesheeples]

;^)

[Mercuria]

Geez. This is great.

Puts to shame the I-got-an-autograph-from-a-Beatle-movie-actor-when-I-told-him-he-had-a-nice-a** story...

[Demidog]

Story telling is a spiritual endeavor and is older than time. Great story tellers appeal to us all because they can make sense of life. And I'm not talking about writers. The Oral tradition rules. You'll be saddened to know that I have never in my life heard of Shep until this post and I am more saddened than you because in the day and age of Rush and Howard Stern, a man like Shep would be a welcome change. Sadly, I never got to hear this man work.

[Demidog]

Puts to shame the I-got-an-autograph-from-a-Beatle-movie-actor-when-I-told-him-he-had-a-nice-a** story...

I shook Matthew McCaunaghay's hand when he was wearing his PJ's Christmas Day. Woo Hoo!