WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE, THE BABY BOY MADDOX STORY Options

[dimenno]

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE: THE BABY BOY MADDOX STORY

INTRODUCTION
BABY BOY MADDOX: MAN OUT OF TIME
Let's be frank. Life is mostly a series of very expensive accidents and mistakes. Some you don't want to remember, and some which you had better never forget. Sometimes the cost is money, sometimes it's physical decrepitude, but always it is time, and lost time is so hard to find. Impossible, in fact, if you believe our present-day physicists.

Strictly speaking, I am not writing fiction when I write about Baby Boy Maddox. I am writing memoir: that bastard genre of imaginative non-fiction. On the one hand, fiction is history for very shitty memories. (But what if you remember everything?) On the other hand, it is impossible to be exact. (And so...everything is fiction.)

The reason, I think, why so many people go wrong with their coming of age stories of lost innocence and suchlike is because they don't pay attention to rule one, by way of Sophie Tucker: "Whatever you do, always serve it up with a little gravy." (Or was it Kate Smith who said that? I cannot resist observing that Ms. Smith did indeed look like someone who knew a great deal about, and was doubtless exceedingly fond of, gravy.)

Let's be frank: We were all of us stupid once, and skinny, and bored. Some of us stay that way forever. But we all grow old. (Years pass, you know.)

Years pass, and soon hardly anyone living will recall the luminous shades of olden customs, once considered necessary, but now considered retrograde, quaint--even downright primitive.

Baby Boy Maddox came from what seemed to me, as the 1960s drew to a close, a strange old world, a world he well remembered. Old people sitting outside in black and green striped vinyl chairs, or in the bright sunshine on green benches hard by the park with its chirping birds and intoxicating scents of flowers and new-mowed grass. Watching, always watching the parade of the working world. Familiar sights: Watching the town miser asking village merchants for old bread. Visiting the post offices in the train station. Visiting the other post office in the general store, which sold eggs pickled in vinegar and sour apples from a local vineyard. Always in any weather you would see the Flag Man at the railroad crossing which was close to the railway station in the town center and which criss-crossed street car tracks and trolley lines. In warmer weather you could see the ice-man with his tongs, and the chips of ice that fell from off the back of his truck which small boys would scramble to get. Year-round you could see the milk man, who at dawn left whole milk in cold wet bottles which certain nervy tramps would drink down as quick as a wink. Early in the morning came the egg man, into whose truck when not closely watched the small boys would crawl and gleefully break whole cartons of cackleberries. Almost as early you could see the vegetable man in front of his wooden stall, with his weather eye peeled for those who might try to abscond with an apple or two. In the afternoon might come the organ grinder with a monkey on his shoulder. Dirty-minded boys would snicker and say he had no wife, Later in the afternoon would come the rag-man with his cry of 'rags'--and small boys would follow him at a distance and jeer as he made his rounds. Many married men in the town spent daylight from 8 to 4 working in the deafening din of the mill, every morning punching a time clock with a time card, every lunchtime cracking open lunch pails and opening paper bags with sandwiches in anticipation of the lunch whistle which blew every weekday at 12 noon exactly, loud enough for everyone in the town to hear. Those who were not married might choose their wives among the maidens who might work at the Big Store, which advertised "153 Clerks."

The old folks might sometimes visit the barber shop which was adjacent to the poolroom, with its owner who worked into his 90s and gave discount rates to veterans. Nearby was the police station, and in it, the town jail, also known as 'The Bridewell', housed in the basement, where hapless drunks were stowed to sleep it off and tramps and vagrants, if not too surly, were given a chance to catch a square meal before being strongly encouraged to blow town. Usually they would be given a street-car pass and hop a trolley out to the rail yard and be gone long before dark.

Then there were the holidays. Saints Day parades in which touching the statue was just like touching the living saint and so it was considered a great sin.The Annual Fireman's carnival with its games of chance and rusty Ferris wheel and greasy, grimy fried pastries and charbroiled meats. 4th of July bonfires and parades and fireworks which made the night air shudder. Holidays were held on nearly any pretext. There was Old Home Week. The Company Picnic. The yearly Blackface Minstrel Show put on by the lodge brothers at the Moose and the Elks and the Oddfellows. The Cowboy shows put on by schoolchildren. And in July and August, when nights were warm, summer recitals held in the Town Common with its Concert Gazebo.

Imagine walking to the outskirts of town to upscale neighborhoods, to hear the hissing wind along summer streets, canopied with elms; a wind which foretold the last waning days of a quieter, nearly pre-industrial America, soon to be gone for good.
Imagine a man from that world who left that world and returned to it twenty years later, and you can well imagine how wild and strange such a man might seem to a young teenager, scarcely more than a child.

Baby Boy Maddox was such a man.

The world he returned to from such a long absence held many strange sights. Most of all, the clothing. Men and women who wore sandals and love beads and tie-dyed shirts and denim jackets and elephant bells--large bell bottoms with peace signs, mushrooms, and pot leaves stitched along the sides.

The tattered shards of old customs still held among the elderly, but the young--flower children, freaks, and heads--sought to make their mark through clownish fashions which many considered childish. And they were childish people. Naive. Believers in a new world coming in which people would be allowed to be themselves and therefore would be allowed to be good.

But it was not a new world. It was the same old would with some new people who had forsaken the ways of the old and who expected the old world to follow them.

And they were ripe for the plucking.

1. MONKEY MIND VERSUS HIVE MIND
In my youth I was very much influenced by the preachments of a wise old Hobo. He actually wasn't that old, and some would say he was more crazy than wise. He spoke often from his headquarters, in a thicket of the woods in a place called Holly Park. "When I was a child," said Baby Boy Maddox, "I saw a Tarzan movie in which he visits New York and stays in a fancy Hotel. While he was staying there, his monkey got into a medicine cabinet and caused mischief. This, I think, is the true beginning of the Hippie movement. Tarzan, the solitary Man of Free Will leaves the wild mind of the jungle with his monkey mind attached and enters the hive mind of the big city and the two of them proceed to alter the state of reality. That's all our lives truly are. Like that movie. We begin as strangers who struggle against nature; as we grow older we are the strangers who come to town, and then as we sicken and begin to die we settle back once again into strange lonely people who struggle. If you bring your monkey mind to bear on all these struggles you will lead a trouble-filled life. But if you accept the Hive Mind then you will simply remain inert for decades and nobody wuill know or care if you live or die because in a sense you will already be dead."

Thus saith Baby Boy Maddox!

He told me all these things and more in early September of 2001, as he himself was squatting next to a campfire and lacing up his leather boots. By all accounts, by then he was at least 50 years old and certainly nobody could ever accuse him of heing a part of the hive mind he so deplored. But there was a question in my own monkey mind--exactly how long can a person hold out against the dreaded Hive Mind? Is it not a fallacy to even imagine that anyone can ever truly escape it, even for one minute? After all, we all have seen what happens when danger threatens a tribe of monkeys--they hoot and scream and throw their hands up in the air and they scamper away. Do we even imagine for one second that some wise old gorilla appears in their midst and with significant gestures urges them to calm themselves?

That would be a story line so implausible as to make Tarzan in New York look like a masterpiece of cinematic realism.

2. "AMERICA"
[In about 1966 the Hobo folk singer Baby Boy Maddox first attracted notice among the demoralized folk community with his agitprop saga "America" (not to be confused with Paul Simon's later song of the same name). To my knowledge, this song has never been recorded.--ed.]

Once America was just, a dark big forest
Then came the Indians on boats
And lots of human sacrifice
And then they were invaded once or twice
And even more; they killed the buffalo,
And brought along the pox; they brought
The horse, they bore the cross,
They brought the whores, they brought salvation
And some firewater too; then came the blacks
Then came the blues then came the wars;
The Indians died from drink and syphilitic sores;
This is the history and these are all the facts;
They took an axe to all the mysteries
And murdered every tree and said they did it
For a new Democracy;
It was a sham, it was a mockery,
And then they built the towns; they built
The churches and the schools and laid the roads,
There came the ships and trains and telegraphs and phones;
They dug up bones and graves and sacred burial mounds,
They killed the silence and the land was filled with sounds,
They built the city walls and castles made of steel,
Forgot Democracy and taught the poor to kneel;
And worship God and worship war and worship goods;
And sold the land to hoods and slavers and to spies.
America is dead; it is a soft white corpse;
In lakes and rivers here it floats, a human sacrifice;
It was invaded once or twice; it killed the eagle and the dove,
It lost our love; It never took the world's advice;
It was a killer of the dream;
This is the history and these are all the facts;
They took an axe to all the mysteries and murdered all the trees,
They sold the land to hoods and slavers and to spies;
And if they want to find me I'll be living in the woods.

3. THE HAIRDRESSERS
The year: 1969. The place: the hobo camp on the railroad tracks next to Holly Park.

"When I take control of the government...." said Baby Boy Maddox, the hobo sage. He said this, and paused, as though the feat were already all but a fait accompli. Like many eccentric people, he was always saying things that were seemingly insane but which, upon investigation, made a weird kind of sense.

"When I take over the government, the first people I'll go after are the farmers. Next, the hairdressers."

"The men," I asked. "Or the women, too?"

"All of them!" he screamed. "Who do the people tell their secrets to? With women," he added, with a sneer, "Everybody knows that they can't keep a secret. Telephone, telegraph, tell a girl. So they gab to their lady hairdressers, and especially to the men."

He shared a sly smile.

"Now, everybody THINKS that all male hairdressers are queer, but that's not strictly accurate. All male hairdressers are polysexual. They'll go after anything. It's the result of being exposed to all those chemicals. Arsenic, and like that. It warps their brains. The thing about hairdressers, you see, is that every last one of them is a SPY. Now, before you go throwing around 99-cent words like 'paranoid,' Sunny Jim, let me put you straight about something. All spies are sexual deviates, and so are the high muckety-mucks in the government--especially the NSA and the State Department."

I must have looked at him slightly alarmed.

"Don't worry," he said with another sly smile. "I know that I'm ALREADY on their radar. Like I said, they are deviates. What other explanation is there? They work sixteen hour days and sleep in strange places, but almost never at home. Is it because they're so dedicated? Oh, hell no--it's because they can't stand their wives and their kids know it, and so the kids end up just as f*cked up as their fathers. Barbers, too. Their kids are just as fucked up as they can be. Look at Charlie Brown! What does HIS Dad do for a living? Oh, he touches the heads of other men. Have you ever met a NORMAL barber? That's why I won't go near a barber shop. I either let it grow, or I shave it all off myself. You see, being around all those chemicals, barbers develop a sort of immunity, but any ordinary citizen who goes in there ain't used to it and before you know it, they go flapping their gums and spilling all the beans."

He paused for a moment to let this sing in, and then resumed. "What's the one thing you'll always see in a barber shop? A newspaper! That's so they can trap you into talking about current events, on the pretext of wanting to make some light conversation. And they also have the radio on. Or maybe even the television. Or sometimes, God help us, maybe even both. Mind Control, my little man," he chanted in a type of sing-song. "Mind Control, Mind Control. I know I'm right and I will be proven right--come the day. The day," he wheezed, "When I take control of the government. No more window dressing of spies surrounded by beautiful femme fatales. No more hating women and keeping secrets from them. No more state-sanctioned terror. I'll control the terror, and the terror will start with barbers and hairdressers. All those son-of-a-bitches," he said through gritted teeth, "Have had it coming for a long long time."

And then he smiled. Was he kidding? Or was he entirely serious, and merely dreaming about the day.

I only know this: I stayed away from red-striped poles for a long long time.

4. THE FUNNIES
It was in 1979 that Baby Boy Maddox, the hobo sage, almost literally disappeared off the face of the earth, and for several years. We were down by the hobo jungle sitting underneath a rusted and pitted water tank, squatting by a smoldering campfire one drizzling afternoon in late October. We were talking about the fact that tabs of LSD were circulating which bore pictures of cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse. To him, this was a sad fact, and was also evidence of a “deeper conspiracy.” (He then looked around him, quite uneasily, as though somehow the minions of Disney were secretly observing him.)

On hearing him speak those words, and on observing his peculiar agitation, I recalled a previous conversation we had once had, a decade earlier.

In fact, I was very surprised to discover that I remembered nearly every detail of that particular encounter. It was almost as though the words "Mickey Mouse" were some kind of key which had somehow unlocked previously buried recollections.

September 1969 it was, several weeks after the moon landing, although we didn’t talk much about that. I was twelve years old. We were seated on a rock overlooking a gully in Holly Park, from which Baby Boy Maddox often held forth. In his hand he held a folded copy of the Anytown Patriot Press. He was not smiling. Instead, on his bearded face he wore a look of infinitely patient disgust—as though he were a sports-loving father sadly pondering the ineffectual weakness of his owlish, myopic son.

"Let me ask you something. What is the second thing in the so-called "news" papers that people look at?" said Baby Boy Maddox. The previous day he had run into a tree branch while bush wacking in the nearby forest and his left eye was extremely red and swollen. He had covered it with a fairly clean bandage, but he still presented an alarming sight to the world, and he must have known it.

"Now, when it comes to the first thing, I'll admit, everyone is different. Dummies and gamblers look at the sports section. Rich guys check business, which is always the best-written part of the paper, because THEY don't fool around. Your average schmoe looks at the front page, just in case there's something happened yesterday when the poor slob was in a beer-induced coma and maybe he missed it. That's about 80 per cent of the population, by the way. The old folks look at the obituaries to check to make sure that their name's not in it, because maybe last night they died and are now a ghost, only they don't know it. The hippies and other zombies look at the horoscope. One guy they keep locked up in a hotel room and chained to a bed writes every last one of those horoscopes, you know. Different papers run different scripts depending on who reads their crummy paper."

He paused. The sun was beginning to set. Gray clouds covered the topmost part of the canopy, but wispy, childish white clouds still scudded across the sky close to the horizon line. It was beginning to grow dark, and although Baby Boy Maddox had the look of a wild man newly sprung from the recesses of a circus wagon or a freak show cage, he was incongruously wearing a pair of clean and freshly pressed slacks which I guessed he had miraculously pulled out of a Goodwill box.

"But after they indulge their first love, every single man and woman in the country next takes a look at the funnies. Just in case for once there's something actually funny in there. Some of them try to do the word jumble in their heads, but most of them try to decipher the latest message from on high by reading the portents in the funny pages.”

"Sounds like a bit of a stretch," I mumbled.

"Maybe so," Baby Boy Maddox conceded, with a bit of a snarl, "but you listen to me for once. The reason that nearly anyone who picks up a paper will read the funnies is because they're IMPORTANT. What mischief will Dennis the Menace cause next-- because of his will to power? You'll see it in the Wall Street Journal six weeks down the line, but the funnies have it TODAY. What temporary job will Bugs Bunny be working at? Fry cook? Better put on your apron, boss--Bugs is no fool and he just might be on to something. You never see HIM on no street corner, begging for carrot cake. No sir. He TAKES what he wants--because by all rights it all belongs to HIM. As for Charlie Brown, there's a very good reason why he's always quoting the Bible and dispensing wise sayings. Mind control, Jim. Bear THAT in mind. And Blondie? Don't even get me started. Classic earth mother. Matriarchy in action. But I wouldn't f*ck her, even with someone else's dick. She's a black widow spider, man. Good God! Open your eyes! You will NEVER read anything in the funny pages that will change your life. It's always instead all about staying RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. In the PIT."

"Is that so?" I said. I must have seemed a bit skeptical, because Baby Boy Maddox started getting excited.

"The invisible government isn't on the front pages, and it sure ain't in the sports section. It's on the funny pages, plain as day, if you know how to read ‘em. You see, folks are very busy. And mostly very dumb. They don't have time to read. And when they do read, they don't remember very much of it. So you just hand them their marching orders for the day in daily pictures, Don't roll your eyes and clench your teeth at me. It's true. I'm no lunatic. I look at these pictures every chance I get, and they all say the same thing. 'We manufacture--you consume.' It's all a part of the hidden machinery. Fake dramas. Invented situations. The lying myth of a free world that does not believe in lies! Terrifying hieroglyphs of pharaonic human sacrifice! Endless pictures of malevolent Celtic dwarves imbued with supernatural clairvoyance! These pictures touch something deep and otherwise unreachable in the human soul. They are powerful, and truly to be feared. They are saturated in mysticism and hallucinations. They are visions from another world, full of symbolic rituals. The Dagwood sandwich--fables of American abundance. Lucy and the football—an object lesson in exactly what will happen when you try to rise above your station. Dennis the Menace and Joey—a modern-day Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Bourgeois Boy and his little feral buddy .“

He paused, presumably to let this insightful wisdom sink into my immature cranium. “You may think that comic strips merely state the obvious. And it's true. But they are also textbooks of sympathetic magic. Drawings that are effigies of human beings. Fetishes indelibly stamped upon a page. Puppets composed of lines on paper. Dime-store mysticism. Mind control! Don't kid yourself, Kid. These damned pictures are dangerous! Comic strips ain’t harmless entertainment--they are the footnotes of Satan! Cave etchings of the damned! Pagan scrawls! Drawn by hacks, written by agents, funded by spooks, published by collaborators. They are tiny time bombs that are set to explode inside your cranium exactly when you least expect it. Study them at your leisure, but be careful--few people have minds that are strong enough to resist their snare."

I must have looked puzzled, because with a crazed look in his one good eye he then proceeded to further elaborate his thesis.

“I’m telling you right now that there is only one thing that I’m really afraid of, and that is one comic strip in particular. Little Orphan Annie. When I see how plucky that little girl is, it made makes me want to throw my guitar in the trash can and beg a suit and get a straight job. MAN, that sh*t is dangerous. It’s a plant, man. You get that little girl in your head, and before long, she’s telling you what to do. NObody should have that kind of power,” he shouted. He then paused, and began to look thoughtful. He then muttered. “Except for me, maybe.” He stood up, then, still holding the newspaper, and began to look over the edge of the rock face, down into the gully far below. After a moment’s silence he sat back down, with some difficulty making himself reasonably comfortable, and then resumed. “And who does the little girl answer to? Daddy Warbucks, that’s who. Big Brother’s number one henchman. A fascist of the Rockefeller sort, with a slave diamond in his stickpin and a walking stick with a knob of gold stolen from the mouths of dead Indians. Now, tell yourself, before you start to tune me out—what’s the opposite of Little Orphan Annie?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“Big Communist Joe Stalin, that’s who! And that f*cking dog of hers, Sandy, with those glassy, mind-controlled eyes. You ever notice something? The Asp is the only one who DOESN’T have those glassy eyes. The Asp. A trained assassin. Everybody else in that strip is a mind-controlled robot. I’m telling you, I STILL can’t get over that Warbucks cat. Flying around the world, overthrowing governments, making more money than God—and yet he’s worried about Little Orphan Bratty? Lemme pull your coat to something, Squire—the whole thing is the wet dream of a dirty old man. It’s a script that’s played out every day in black and white, and once a week in color. You know, it’s one thing for the f*ckers to sneak around and publish this kind of sh*t under the counter, behind our backs. But then you open up the newspaper to the funny pages and you see them flaunting their script in broad daylight right before our very eyes and it makes you want to cut some throats, Man.”

At this, I started to edge away from Baby Boy Maddox. Ever so slightly, so he wouldn’t suspect that he was beginning to creep me out.

“ Now, Little Orphan Annie is a redhead, right? And what does red hair usually signify?”

“Dunno.”

“A bastard. WHOSE bastard? Three guesses, and if you said Oliver Warbucks then you’re right on the money. You see, Oliver has this compulsion, and he tries to fight it, so he goes away for long stretches at a time, but he always comes circling back because he just can’t help himself—he has just got to jazz that Little Orphan Lolita he’s got stashed away, and since he’s got all the f*ck you money in the world, there’s not one thing they can do to stop him! That’s your object lesson right there—get rich by selling weapons to war pigs and you can do any damn thing you want and they’ll even call you a hero! I’ll tell ya something—I’ve seen and done things that no man should ever even talk about, but I would never, ever sink as low as Oliver Warbucks. Just goes to show what money and power can DO to a man. And you can quote me on that. I call it…The Little Orphan Annie conspiracy.”

He adjusted the white patch over his left eye then rose up with a shuddering sigh and threw the newspaper over the edge of a cliff, and I watched with a dreadful foreboding as the black and white sheets fluttered and glinted in the cold light of the newly setting sun. Then he slowly turned at peered at me, intently.

“Comic strips are trash. Yet another dry swamp of stories about the ongoing class struggle. Kids in nightshirts. Kids in short pants and big bow ties. Racetrack gamblers, People with bad teeth. Lecherous bosses, raping shavetails, mentally retarded bucktoothed morons, buxom dumb bunny secretaries, subservient minstrel-show coons, and all sorts of other cruel stereotypes. Drunks. Wife-beaters. Fat hogs. Skinny weaklings. All the stick figure scapegoats. All these comic strips are class commentaries. Comic books too. Superman is a national socialist in a strong man outfit who used to go after arms dealers and dictators until he became a suburban piggy just like Mickey Mouse, while Batman is still this wealthy guy who lives in a cave with a little boy and a faithful manservant and dresses up in a creepy outfit so he can beat the crap out of hoodlums and other proletarian scum.”

He paused, closed his good eye, and looked straight at me, presumably through the gauze bandage of his injured eye. “You know,” he said ominously, “Hitler was a good guy.”

“Umm…how so?”

“He outlawed Mickey Mouse.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Oh, I'll admit, he had his bad qualities, sure. But he knew what was coming. Disneyland. Disney World. A land of giant rats, atomic mutants, and bucktoothed mother*ckers. In other words, Hell. It’s all satanic funny business. ‘I am Mickey. I am Donald. Donald Is Mickey.’ Disney is all about dope, mind control, hypnotic carnival rides, brainwashing, and pagan rituals. Uncle Walt used to patrol the grounds of good old Dis Land after dark and see that every detail was just right. Hypervigilant mysticism. If that’s not ritual magic, then I don’t know what is. Disney was a cult leader trying to exert control over America’s lost and abandoned children. He was the Sorcerer, and Mickey Mouse was his apprentice. Good old Uncle Walt saw himself as the true parent of all America. He was a paranoid narcissist who saw himself as God. Secretive, defensive, grandiose. One of the Devilmen. A creator of false memories. A vendor of secular superstition. Children are very pious, you know. They reach for Mickey just like they used to reach for Jesus. It’s a crime. A disaster in the making. Walt Disney had the Junior Woodchucks, who were nothing more or less than a civilian spy network that would have been the envy of Joe Stalin. He had a naked pixie floating around during his television show. That’s just plain outright child pornography right there. A model of sexual deviance blatantly designed to remove our inhibitions and entice us to commit forbidden acts. I mean, look at Pinocchio—come on! Obvious masturbation imagery! Conditioning of responses. Psychic programming. And Jiminy Cricket—his insect-brained superego.”

He paused.

“Disney World is just one big prison house of the intellect. We should waste no time in purging his evil creatures from our land, lest they grow inside of us. And become a cancer. And make us all grow old before our time.”

By this time, I really wanted to get out of there. Baby Boy Maddox had a dangerous glint on his eye. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that he was on something. Furthermore, it had just rained that day, and the air was moist, and smelled of wood smoke. I had just taken a shower a few hours before, and I must have smelled of soap, because the mosquitoes were attacking my ankles and biting me something fierce.

He seemed to know what I was thinking—as though I myself were just another comic strip character who has allowed himself to be brutally anatomized beneath his one good eye, a merciless orb which saw everything and missed nothing.

“I’m sorry if I freaked you out, Man,” he said, in a rare concession to social etiquette. “The whole world is my base of operations—and sometimes I get carried away. But now, “ he said, “YOU know what I know, so if anything ever happens to me, you can go out and spread the world. But be careful what you say,” he warned. “Be very very careful. Very few people have ever f*cked with the Disney people--and lived to tell the tale.”

He then retreated several yards back to his base camp, a sleeping blanket covered by a tarp and suspended over two stout branches.

That was my cue to exit, and as I walked through the rapidly accumulating mud puddles of the dirt path which wound through the park and back out onto the city sidewalks, I wondered whether what he had said had any validity at all.

For some reason, I began thinking of the number three. Three Caballeros. Three Little Pigs. Three Blind Mice. And…the Holy Trinity.

“Can’t be,” I said to myself. “Can’t be.”

When I got home, my mother had supper waiting. I ate more than usual—I think the meal was meatloaf and mashed potatoes—and after lights out I sneaked out to the garage and got good and stoned and tried to forget all about it.

And yet a sinister refrain kept running though my mind: “It’s a small world after all it’s a small world after all it’s a small world….”

5. THE MICKEY MOUSE CONSPIRACY

It took me many years to gain the complete trust of Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage. Maybe four or five, all told. Could be that he trusted finally me because one day early on I gave him all my father’s unfashionable old clothing—a tangerine suede jacket with black wristlets; a heraldic print wash-and-wear cotton shirt; several skinny black and red and red and black striped ties; two pairs of garish slacks in brick red and holly green; a campus style brown corduroy suit meant to be worn high on the waistline in which the pants were too big and the jacket too tight; some white socks for which he was especially grateful—his were in shreds—and, finally, a pair of leather shoes with patented Shu-Lock fasteners which didn’t quite fit him and pinched the sides of his feet but which were far better than the completely ragged tennis sneakers he had been reduced to wearing.

With any other man in his predicament, this conspicuous charity would have put me one up in regards to him, and he would have made grateful noises but would actually have secretly despised me. But Baby Boy Maddox was not like other men.

So he decided to trust me. And so, in 1973 he told me a fantastic story about how he had made a “boatload” of money recording a Christmas Song which turned out to be a minor regional hit. “The tune is nothing much,” he admitted. “Just the key of A and the key of D, mostly. But it was sound. I got it from the special way I tuned my guitar. I learned that tuning from the devil. Actually, not the devil himself, but second-hand, like, from an old blues Cat who was down on his luck, and living rough, and dying in a grimy boxcar. I gave the old boy plenty of drinks from a bottle of sweet jug wine and just before he croaked he loosened up. He told me that one time he had dreamed he met Satan himself at the crossroads and that Old Nick had showed him a special way to tune his guitar that nobody else knew about. And all of a sudden, he could play like an angel. The womenfolk, he said, all adored his songs. But somehow, word had got out about the deal he had made. He never was much for keeping a secret, he told me. And so the menfolk, who were probably jealous, said that he had sold his soul and so he didn’t give a damn about other men and so that made him a jinx and that no good would ever come to anybody who ever lent him a helping hand. Wouldn’t nobody let him play, he told me. Anyway, I played this song using this special tuning he taught me, and the recording was a smash hit. I sold the song for twenty grand and even managed to hang on to the rights. I never trusted no banks, as long as I lived, and I stashed that money away in a wonderful tin box. Go on and torture me,” he said, half serious, “I’ll never tell nobody where I have it hid. That there money is my nest egg for when I’m too old to work, and I ain’t gonna touch it until I’m old and gray.”

I’ll admit that I briefly flirted with the notion of having some beefy friends of mine catch him unawares and rough him up to prize out of him the location of this wonderful tin box, but I quickly thought better of it. Baby Boy Maddox was just crazy enough to go to his grave without letting out so much as a peep regarding where he stashed the dough—if it even existed.

“Disney,” he said darkly, “would LOVE to get their hands on the secret of that song. Because everybody in the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set knows for a fact that Walt Disney was one bad-ass OSS mofo who was seriously into some deep occult mojo,” he said, as he opened a can of sardines in olive oil which I had purloined from our kitchen cabinet. He thriftily drank the oil and put the rest of the contents aside for later. “Mickey Mouse is actually a script for a new world order that has been in the works since at least 1919. You see, the powers that be, the big boys, they ain’t content to skulk around behind the scenes. No, Sir, they just love to hide things right out in the open. First of all, Mickey Mouse is black. Black people have known this from the get-go. And he wears white gloves, just like the old-timey minstrels. In the early versions, he’s highly sexed, and he has a black girlfriend. But what ARE mice, after all? Helpless vermin. And they breed like crazy. That’s some pretty heavy racist shit, man. And forget about the cheese—I’ll tell you what they really like—peanut butter. And who invented peanut butter? George Washington Carver. I’m not making this shit up, man. And I’m not trying to drive you crazy, either. I’m just asking you to use your head. So. Look at the name MICKEY MOUSE. What kind of coded message is the New World Order trying to transmit here? I’ll tell you: Military Industrial Complex. Keynesian Economic Yoke. More of United States Engulfment. Sing THAT to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club Song. OK. So. A mouse is like a rat, right? So what Disney is trying to tell us is that’s it’s OK to admire a rat. To be a rat, even. A willing stooge of the pigs. A f*cking stool pigeon. Disney himself was a snitch. Big time. He ratted out all his employees to old man Hoover. I’m sure they both sat around boozing it up after laying a couple of fixed bets on the ponies. Hoover and him, just laughing it up about that one. You remember how I told you about Hitler banning Mickey Mouse? He was no dummy. Sure, he became a meth monster later on, and I’m sure his breath was horrendous, but actually, Hitler had a lot of good ideas. He was ahead of the curve on a lot of things. He was really into branding. The toothbrush mustache, the lucky swastika. I’m sure Madison Avenue took a lot of cues from that bad boy. Anyway, Hitler had his Nazi thing going, and he was really swinging, and he didn’t want the competition. There was only room for one fascist Ratzi in Naziland, and that was HIM. Speaking of which, after the Germans were temporarily sideswiped, Werner Von Braun took a job at Disneyland after his stint at NASA, or should I say, NAZI? Didn’t they even name a cartoon character after him—Ludwig Von Drake? Anyway, what could be more like the Hitler Youth than the Mickey Mouse Club? Special hats, emphasis on the great outdoors, funny business between Uncle Walt and his special little buddies, ritual songs and parades. And pictures of the fascist mouse plastered on everything. Got to admire Walt—he made the kiddies worship a repulsive disease-ridden rodent. I suppose Mickey Bedbug might have been a harder sell. But still, he managed to keep the whole thing going for quite some time. I mean, the f*cking rat is everywhere. Stalin and Mao were f*cking PIKERS next to Disney. The Russians had their Potemkin villages, And the Chinese had their Great Leap Forward, but Disney went them both one better and built EPCOT, with a one-track mind and a monorail that ALWAYS ran on time. You think Mussolini was something else? Try breaking the rules and regulations of Disneyland and just wait and see how fast you get thrown out on your ass. And I’m sure you’ve probably noticed that never once, in any Disney product, is the name Jesus ever mentioned. Disney was the BEAST man, Was, or still is, if those rumors about him being frozen are true.”

Baby Boy Maddox wiped his nose, looked around him, then quickly ate the remainder of his sardines, and then he got up and quickly vanished into the woods, without showing me the special tuning of which he spoke and without even saying so much as a simple goodbye and good luck.

6. PRISON MAN AND HIS CONVICT TRICKS
I am ashamed to say it, but it took me years to figure out that Baby Boy Maddox was, in all likelihood, suffering from Ganser Syndrome, something that the headshrinkers call a factitious mental disorder, which, as far as I can figure out, means a mental disorder which isn’t really a mental disorder, which, in turn, is a mental disorder. People with Ganser Syndrome also have what is known as prison psychosis. I haven’t looked this up lately, but I take this to mean that they often make things up and have hallucinations, like a lot of schizophrenics tend to do, and that what they say very often doesn’t seem to make an awful lot of sense, because it’s full of leaps of logic and non sequiturs.

Furthermore, Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage, in the nearly 40 years in which I knew him well, was something of a human chameleon, albeit one with only two colorations—hirsute, and totally bald. He would grow his hair and beard until they both reached preposterous lengths. At which point, he resembled a Holy Man whom, paradoxically, the police always felt compelled to question. Questions which invariably led to arrests, since simple requests pertaining to identification were seldom, if ever, answered to the satisfaction of the constabulary.

After every stint in the local lock-up, Baby Boy Maddox would shave off his beard and all his hair—provided that it hadn’t already been done for him—and he would then venture forth to one of his many stash points in Holly Park, where he would don army fatigues that he had somehow acquired through means fair or foul. Since he lived, during the rainy season, in a Salvation Army clothing collection box, I can well imagine where he managed to procure most of his clothing.

In essence, in his clothing, at least, he was a study in contrasts. Nor did the contrasts end there, with physical appearance. Conservative attire would prompt him to act in conservative ways. Cleaning the streets of litter. Pulling up weeds from cracks in the sidewalk. Sitting in the Public Library for hours on end with a Bible or some other religious book in front of him, even though it is doubtful that he even knew how to read. Sometimes he would even hang out at the local gym and listen to the boxers talk—or, more likely, grunt—as he busied himself with sweeping up the sawdust on the floor.

When he wore the full beard and growth of hair, on the other hand, he would beg on street corners. He could also be found singing in bars for the payment of a few scattered coins tossed his way by sentimental lushes. He had a large repertoire of songs which were the favorite of inebriates everywhere, and could perform them with pitch-perfect fidelity to their sources. The Old Triangle. Bubbles in My Beer. Danny Boy. Whiskey in the Jar. Heartache and Hangovers. My Bucket’s Got a Hole In it. Bartender’s Blues.

He was also very often a not entirely welcome presence backstage at concert venues, where he would stand, unmoving and unspeaking, observing the musicians, both onstage and off. He was only tolerated because many of the musicians considered him something of a mascot or a good luck charm. However, some performers—a very few—said he had a creepy, “desperate” look about him. That he was a jinx. That he looked like he was in league with a devil who wanted to steal their souls. (However, since many of these drug-addled performers had presumably bartered away what was left of the souls a long time ago, to them perhaps he was merely a silent reminder of just how far a man could fall without such an advantage.)

Indeed, in his hirsute phases, Baby Boy Maddox spent a good deal of his time “hustling for coin,” as he himself put it. To that end, he devised a whole series of charities. Later in life, he would stand on street corners on Old Town shaking a can and bearing a placard for self-manufactured but semi-legitimate-sounding charities such as Israeli Headquarters; Drop a Dime on Palestine, and Pennies for Lebanon. In the 1960s, Baby Boy Maddox begged on the street on behalf of bogus charities with more original names, often while dressed in a priest’s outfit—after all, in those days, the late 1960s, what policeman would dare to question a priest?—and he usually did so far away from his regular turf at Holly Park.

The Give a Little Foundation was one of his most successful scams. He had had a rather elaborate poster made for him by an art student—it featured pictures of starving children (clipped out of magazines) from Africa, India, South America, etc., and as he stood in front of his poster he would stretch his features in what I liked to call “the saddest face in the world” and silently shake an empty can while wordlessly gesturing at the pictures in that woeful collage. (The Kool Aid Fund was a much less successful variant on the same theme.)

He almost never brought his guitar to these begging expeditions, although occasionally he would shake a tambourine while wordlessly soliciting funds for such worthy causes as The Dwight D. Eisenhower Ileitis & Colitis Foundation, Free Public Libraries, Moochers Anonymous, and The Moloch Fund. During one particularly sweltering summer he went through a phase in which he would come up with a new bogus charity almost every day. (Full disclosure: I must admit that I helped him come up with more than a few of these. If this makes me a party to fraud, then so be it, although I suppose that, legally, the statute of limitations for these offenses has long since passed.)

Baby Boy Maddox once said to me that he “deserved” any money he made from these scams because coming up with these novel causes was “hard work”. The names of these organizations often ranged from the plausible to the downright fantastical: The IX Crusade; Justice for Napoleon; Free the Skyclad; Walking Beef; The African Coffee Foundation; The Post Modern Initiative; Sidewalks Not Streets; Feed the Birds; My Way, Incorporated; The Benevolent Patrolman’s Association; The Weiner Wagon Preservation Society; Home for Ex-Masons; The Shakedown Foundation; The Stained Glass Window Fund; Project Bluebird; Home for Lost Girls; The Grass Widow Society; The Inconvenience Relief Fund; The Society to Make Whole; Home for Incontinent Sailors; The Red Door Foundation; The Drywall Initiative. (When he was feeling particularly puckish he would stand in front of a candy factory in Old Town and croak at the passerby, “Free the Budweiser Six” while shaking an empty beer can.)
As the summer waned, many of the so-called charities he devised grew ever more incomprehensible: The World’s Unfair; The Occult Revolvers; The Banjo Pantheon; The Good People of Utopia; Thee Ecstatic Yod; Children of the Broken Skyline; The Haunted Third; The Manana Group; Paradigm Protection; Aces of Chaos; White Slave Traffic Jam; The Manic Club; Sunshine Mecca; The House of Dogs; The Saturating Joy Foundation; Speak But the Word; The Church of Dynamo; Thou Movest Me, Inc., and ( perhaps my all-time favorite), Payday Advance.

Baby Boy Maddox felt no guilt whatsoever when running these or other scams. I recall very well his reasoning. One day in the late summer of 1968, as the sun was beginning to set, he seated himself upon a grassy knoll in Holly Park and addressed a group of his young acolytes, of whom I was one.

“There’s something you figure out very early on if you’re smart,” he said, “or if you’ve ever been screwed by the government. Here it is. The deck is stacked. The deck is completely stacked. The police are not your friends. The courts are not here to see that justice is done, and, most of all, the government is most definitely out to get you. The government will stand there and will lie to you and steal from you. You call that a friend? Those kinds of actions are more like those of a sworn enemy. And so,” he said complacently, noticing from the corner of his eye the departure of two men from the fringes of the crowd, “you can take this knowledge and do with it whatever you want. I don’t care and, frankly, I don’t want to know. But of you continue to act as though the people who are your enemies are actually your friends then you are guilty of the worst crime possible—the crime of knowing the truth, and failing to act upon it. And now,” he said, scrambling to the feet and walking slowly toward the woods, “you all had better get out of here because the fuzz are going to make a raid here in about two minutes.” With that, Baby Boy Maddox vanished into the woods and, sure enough, about two minutes later, seven unmarked police cars surrounded Holly Park and two undercover police officers began questioning some young girls who were loitering on the fringes of the crowd.

I took this as my cue to make myself scarce—I was all of 12 years old at the time—and through some miracle I managed to snake my way out of Holly Park by way of a footpath leading through the forest--which I knew well would eventually end up at the Holly Park Middle School. From there, it was only seven more blocks by foot to my home, but, even then, I was particularly careful to avoid the glare of the streetlamps which were just beginning to blink on, a feat which I accomplished by cutting through backyards unenclosed by fences. Once or twice I was forced to pause in order to elude the scrutiny of two men in an unmarked late model Ford Galaxie which I immediately recognized as a model similar to those which had surrounded the park about 20 minutes earlier. I was, however, safe at home and in bed within an hour of Baby Boy Maddox’s inflammatory speech.

Baby Boy Maddox was always trying to expose me in particular to what he called “the facts of life,” though there was seldom any sexual component to what he had to say. One night, he shook out his cotton sleeping blanket with a green exterior and a red and white checkerboard pattern in the lining. As he began to prepare his bedding in what he liked to refer to as his “nest,” positioning it inside of an improvised lean-to deep in the recesses of the forest, he began to lecture. “When you don’t have any folks,” he once said, “as was the case with me, and you grow up in an orphan home, you feel as though you are standing on quicksand and at any moment you could sink clear to the bottom without a trace and nobody would ever know that you were ever there. But do you want to know what it’s really like?” He stared at me through cold earnest liquid eyes as black as the maw of an existential hell. “Do you remember that story of Jack and the Beanstalk? Remember at the end, when that giant fell to earth? Well, imagine that the giant was a child and imagine that he fell for years and years, aging the whole time, and that by the time he hit the ground he was already dead of old age. That’s what it was like,” said Baby Boy Maddox.

“When you have a family,” he said, “if somebody abuses you or takes advantage of you, there is always somebody you can tell; you can look them in the face and they’ll look right back into your eyes and tell you they believe your story or they don’t--but at least you know that if anything ever happens to you, something will be done. When you grow up in an orphan home, in juvie, in jail, terrible things can happen to you and there’s nobody you can tell and nothing you can do because if you breathe one word you get a reputation as a snitch and the first second and third commandment in those places are all the same: don’t be a rat. Don’t say nothin’ to nobody. Keep your mouth shut. And anyway, even if you do tell, and even if they do believe you, and they have no reason to believe you, because they already know you’re a troublemaker--even if they do believe you, do you know what they say? ‘Shut up. Pipe down. Drop Dead, You got nothing coming.’ Now, you go right ahead and live by your script, that good boy script where good always wins out over evil and justice always prevails, but me, I’ll go right on living by my own script, thank you very much—because I’ve been around some--and I know better.”

He looked at me very seriously and resumed. “When you have no control over where you sleep and when you sleep, then you have no control over anything at all. One time some guy took to walking his dog in the park here at two in the morning. He’d let the dog off of the leash and the pooch would come straight up to me and bark like crazy. The second night it happened, I was ready. I had a spray bottle full of water and red pepper and I got him right on the nose. The dog, that is. Smart dog. He never came back. I think the guy must of decided to walk him somewhere else. Who knows? Anyway,” he said, “whoever has control over when you sleep has ultimate control over your whole life. When I finally got free, I swore that nobody would tell me what to do, ever again. Those people who live their nine to five lives, they may think that have control over how they live, but they don’t. Half the time, they’re scared to death that they’ll oversleep and come in late to work and the boss will yell at them and they lay awake half the night worrying about it. I spent the first ten years of my life walking on eggshells all the time, worried every waking minute that somehow I was going to be punished for something I didn’t do. That’s how you drive a person insane, in case you want to know. Modern civilization is a machine to make more machines. In the modern world, you’re either a half-living zombie or you become a total machine. The rarest thing in this world is a truly free man. When a free man is walking among you, you will know it in an instant. If you have eyes to see you’ll know he has a certain look about him—I call it a ‘swinging dick.’”

I looked at him a bit uneasily, probably because of the sexual reference.

“That’s what we used to call the prison bulls who use to give the hard cons a lot of bullshit. They only did it because they knew they could get away with it. Hell, the Warden didn’t even give half a damn. Anyway, this totally free man has a certain something about him, an aura, a pure white aura that means he never worries about nothin’. Men do what he says and women respond to him whether they want to or not. So if I had anything to say to you that you need to hear it would be this: stop worrying about making other people happy. Worry about making sure that you can do exactly what you want to do exactly when you want to do it. No matter what the cost. Anything else, I don’t call that living. It’s just dying by inches while wearing a pretty mask.”

To give you one a further example of Baby Boy Maddox and his way of thinking, I recall one morning shortly after our last encounter when, out of the blue, he said to me, “Hitler would of won if only he had teamed up with the Jews.”

Maybe he was testing me—trying to find out if I were Jewish. As it happens, I am not. But I still reacted to his rhetorical opening gambit with predictable outrage. I didn’t often talk back to him—especially when he was in his bearded Wild Man mode—but my liberal sensibilities were offended to the very core, and so I replied, “What are you—a Nazi?”

“Not at all,” he said, and smiled benignly. “In fact, I have nothing but the uttermost respect for them Jews. That’s why I’m so sure that Hitler would of won World War Two if only he had been a little nicer to ‘em. Me and the boys,”—presumably he meant the boys in the prison yard—“used to hash this out over pruno when the cockeyed bulls weren’t listening in. One guy started off by sayin’ that Hitler would of won if he had a pit bull, because them dogs is vicious, Esse. We told the punk to quiet down. Then another punk said that Hitler would of won if he had had a Ford T Bird. That didn’t make no sense, and we told him so. Then there was the guy who said he would of won if Superman and Batman was on his side. We told him, Dummy, there ain’t no Superman. Then some of the smarter guys chimed in. Hitler would of won if he’d of taken a right turn at Poland. If he’d of teamed up with Robert E. Lee. But then they started talking smack. Like, did Santa Claus put toys in the stockings of little Nazis too, or did he give them coal, which they needed anyway? I’m telling you something though—you’d be surprised at some of these arguments we got into on the cell block. Pretty amazing, some of them. Most cons ain’t book smart, but nearly all of them can figure out some new angle if you give them enough rope. Like, Hitler would of won if he’s of kept his mind on one thing at a time. If he had listened to his generals. If he had gotten the bomb. If he had made nice with Stalin instead of pissing him off, like. But let’s face it--when it comes to arguing, most cons just ain’t all that smart. He’d of won if he’d of had more German Shepherds like Rin Tin Tin—an army of ‘em. He’d of won if he’d of made flying tanks. If he’d of given his soldiers better drugs. If he’d of used more black magic. If only that Northern sentry hadn’t of found them battle plans wrapped in them cigars. I’m trying to remember some of the more nutty ones. Oh yeah—if he had an army of tireless zombies. If the army would of eaten Wheaties instead of sauerkraut. If Colonel Hogan had cooperated. If they could of raffled off the junk in Fibber McGee's closet. One guy said the German army lost because they were rationing phosphorus, and everybody knows that three on a match is bad luck. We argued about that one all afternoon. What is luck? We decided that luck is supernatural math. That’s all. And who are the people who are really good at math? The Jews. It stands to reason that since they’re smarter than everybody else and better with numbers—and nobody dast deny it—that the smart thing to do would have been for him to get them to help him out.”

I was horrified. “That’s so wrongheaded,” I said to Baby Boy Maddox, “that it’s not even funny!”

Baby Boy Maddox took my criticism in stride. “You’re just like a lot of those cats in the prison yard,” he said. “I’m telling you right now that a lot of these White Power dudes with the tattoos and that, they didn’t want to hear about it neither, but it’s true—the Nazis and the Jews together would of been unstoppable.”

It is here that I am compelled to mention to the reader that by now—I was 1971 and I was about fifteen—I had grown very afraid of Baby Boy Maddox, and yet I couldn’t help but seek him out. I had grown addicted to his crazy stories, his addled theories, his mad, disturbing, magnetic presence.

It was, in fact, only many years later that I figured out some of his techniques. Many of these were obviously convict tricks that he had developed and perfected in prison. I will conclude by providing the interested reader with a sample of some of his more efficacious devices. He didn’t try too many of these on me—I suppose he figured that I was the goose who laid the golden egg—but I witnessed him using them on other people, countless times.

THE PROTECTOR. He promises you that he has your back “because he likes you,” and then he’ll turn around and take you for all you’re worth.

DOUBLE TEAMING ON THE SINGLE-O. I’ve never seen anyone else who was able to do this—feed you the Nice Cop-Mean Cop act while playing both sides himself.

THE PREEMPTIVE ACCUSATION. He accuses you of the very same sneaky tricks that you would be most likely to accuse him of, but he manages to get there first.

THE DRY RETORT. He could and would pack infinite nuances into the simple expression, “…and…?”

THE EXTORTATORY SUBJUNCTIVE. An air of silky menace that he would exude whenever he told you that it would be “a shame” if “something were to happen….”

DELIBERATELY SHOWING YOU THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK. I’ve also seen this trick used by flirtatious teenage girls. He will actually let you see him sticking his tongue out at you while you’re talking to him, but it is a micro-gesture so brief that you are left feeling not entirely sure of what you actually saw.

PAY ME IN ADVANCE. It goes without saying that if you fall for this one, you’ll never see him again.

MOBBING. He can make you feel as though your perfectly reasonable objections to some proposed plan of action are actually the delusions of an ignorant child.

NOBODY TRULY UNDERSTANDS ME. Therefore, I can do whatever I want.

Q.E.D., THEREFORE, SHUT UP. Baby Boy Maddox is always right; therefore, any further discussion is moot.
I will admit that it took me many years to decide that Baby Boy Maddox was dangerously delusional. Mostly because he was maybe the world’s greatest dissembler. Maybe that’s why the authorities viewed him as such a threat—although that is a story for another time.

In any event, I wouldn’t exchange the experience—the experience of listening to him actually speak--for anything.

This post has been edited by dimenno: Jul 3 2012, 04:25 PM

[dimenno]

7. SPECIAL FORCES AT WORK
“Bring the troops home?” said Baby Boy Maddox to a group of assembled
teenagers, many of them probably no older than 16.

This was in the Spring of 1968, at the height of Anytown’s anti-war
protests thus far. I was 12, going on 13. This was the first time I ever saw
the man my schoolyard friends referred to, in hushed tones, as “The
Hobo,” “The Sage,” and sometimes even as “The Wizard.”

The young people had assembled in Holly Park probably expecting
some sort of concert, and, admittedly, a few ragged hippies dressed in
Mexican serapes were gathering at various points within the park,
For the most part merely disconsolately tootling penny whistles and
half-heartedly thumping on espresso-stained pawnshop bongo drums left
over from the beatnik days. But Baby Boy Maddox, although he wielded
his guitar and was apparently the star attraction of this gathering,
seemed disinclined to make music at that very moment. Instead, as I recall,
the charismatic but somewhat disheveled “Wizard” poured forth a rant
which might have made J. Edgar Hoover himself feel proud, had he
heard only the opening salvo.

“Bring the troops home. How ignorant can you be? Don’t you know that
‘War is the health of the State’? “

A few of the older teenage boys, self-styled pacifists, began to stir
uneasily, and one or two of them ventured to hiss at that latter remark.
Baby Boy Maddox silenced them with a steely glare from his coal-dark
eyes.

“Hear me out a minute," he said. It was more of a command than a plea.
The kids quieted down."Look—a lot of guys are overseas right now, fighting
for Uncle Sam. I ain’t saying the cause is right—but I ain’t saying it’s wrong,
neither. Ask yourself this—what do Asian Communists have to do with
the way you live now? What have they ever done for you? Not a damn thing.
Now, dig it, man. What do you suppose all them soldier boys would be
doing if, instead of bein' over there fighting Cong, they were all
back over here instead? I’ll tell you what I think. I think the first thing they
would be doing is kicking your sorry asses. I think they'd like nothing
better than beating the living crap out of sorry assed punks and
long-haired pacifists like you. Second thing is, they’d be drinking
all the booze and smoking all the dope and poppin’ all the pills they
could lay their hands on. They wouldn’t be driving Good Humor trucks
and rescuing kittens stuck in trees, I can tell you that much. Get
wise to yourself, kids—these guys are hard men. They’re stone cold
killers now, programmed from day one to attack anybody the government
doesn’t like. And guess what? That anybody is YOU. How would you like
for a bunch of cranked up ex-Marines to show up right here in Holly Park
right now and piss all over your love parade? Short answer: you wouldn’t."

He snorted, The kids were raptly listening to his seductive, world-weary voice.

"You know what really bothers me about you kids? It’s not the long hair, it
ain’t the funny clothes, and it sure as hell ain’t the dope. That’s
the kind of thing I can get behind one hundred per cent, because I
ain’t The Man. I ain’t never fired a pistol in my life.”

(True enough. I later noted, however, that he didn’t say anything about rifles.)

“”I’m all FOR peace-love-dove. You stay on your side of the park, I
stay on my side of the park, and let’s everybody meet together right
here on the grassy knoll. Now, maybe some of you are saying, ‘That’s
my older brother you’re talking about, getting his ass shot off in
Vietnam.’ OK—first of all, ain’t nobody over there who didn’t want in
some way to be a soldier boy. The smart ones, the people who have
other priorities and pending business elsewhere, they pretend they’re
crazy, or queer, or they suddenly discover they have a bad back or a
punctured eardrum, or their old man rustles up a quack doctor says
they’re unfit to serve, or they got some pull with the draft board, or
else they go off to college and get a deferment that way."

He looked at all of us as though he were about to tell us the secret of life.
Which, In a sense, he was.

"And so I'm telling you right now that if you were smart, you guys
would do the exact same thing. OK—second thing is, do
you remember how your older brothers used to treat you back when they
were around? They didn’t want you hanging around them, and they always
gave you a hard time, because they were older and stronger than
you. Maybe not all of them acted that way, but most of them did,
and you can be sure I’m laying it on the line because you can ask
anybody—I never tell a lie because I don’t know how. What I’m laying
down right here is the Gospel truth, baby. Now, here’s where it starts
to get hairy. Uncle Sam trains these big brothers of yours from day
one to be stone cold killers. They might have been your heroes before
they left for the Nam, but now they’re just zombie slugs who’ve been
programmed to murder. Let’s face it—whatever they were before, they’re
lost to you now. When they all come back, they’re going to take all
the jobs, smoke all the weed, grab up all the chicks who groove on war
pigs, and go on a big ole killing spree. Talk about your crime wave
now—when these cats come back, they’ll all be totin’ guns—and they’ll
know how to take ‘em apart and put ‘em back together, blindfold—that’s
the first thing they teach you in the Army and Navy. Case you haven't
guessed."

He paused, and mopped his brow, even though it was nearly four in the
afternoon on a chilly spring day and the sun was hours past its meridian.

Now, did Mr. Jesus ever say anything about guns and shit? No, man,
that cat was all about turning the other cheek and shit. Three words—
nowadays?--forget about it. That shit don’t fly no more, once them soldier
Johnnies come marchin' home. Bring the boys HOME? Hell, keep ‘em
OVER there! Cause home ain’t here! Not no more! “

He paused, and even the teenaged girls who had been stirring restively
had stopped, and were now attending his words with silent awe.

“Lemme get at what really bothers me about you kids. Listen to what
I’m laying down here—it’s the solid goods. You assume too much. Do you
believe for one minute that that once THIS war is over, there ain’t gonna be
another and another and another and another? Guess again. Because
you ought to know by now that the rest of the world ain't burning down
our embassies for nothing. They don't call us war pigs and baby killers
for no good reason. THEY know the score. What the rest of the world wants, we
want. What the rest of the world has, we want to have, whether we’re entitled
to it or not, and we take it, because that’s just the way it is. Who
else do you suppose is going to get your oil for you? The Peace
Marines? With rifles that shoot flowers?"

He laughed at his own joke. Nobody else laughed. They were waiting.

"No, it’s going to be the same cats who always take what they want
without paying—big guys with even bigger guns. Wrap you head around
THAT, Sunny Jim, Instead of marching around in so-called peace rallies
and all that other stupid shit like that, and painting a big fat target
on your back saying 'Shoot Me Now.' and standing out in the open
smack in the middle of the streets in broad daylight
where the cops and the feds and big brother and all them
other pigs have got you in their f*cking cross hairs, what you really need
to do is find yourself a quiet little old patch of forest and lay low."

He turned his eyes to heaven, and, for a minute there, I thought that
maybe he was about to have some kind of epileptic fit, but the moment quickly
passed, and he casually resumed his spiel.

"Don’t let NObody pressure you into being some kind of martyr.
That script might have been groovy some 2000 years ago, but right
here and now that kind of move is strictly from hunger, Jack, because it’s a
brave new world and like it or not, you’re in it to stay. So F*ck bicycles,
man. Soon as you can, get the biggest muscle car you can lay your
hands on, buy as much gas as you can store, and go go go. Get a job
on a fishing boat.Sock away some dough and as soon as you can,
buy a cabin in the woods and a patch of land. You know who told ME
to do this? Allen Ginsburg, man, that’s who! You know who else told me
the exact same thing? Bob Dylan—that’s right, f*ckin’ Dylan, man.
You see HIM out there anymore, marchin’ up a storm? Hell no, man,
he’s kickin’ back down on the farm he bought with YOUR money, assholes,
and he’s got three dozen flunkies to do all the work."

At this point he laughed, as if envisioning a lazy Dylan snoozing next to a
stump while eager farm hards shoveled cow manure.

"That’s the ticket man—power. Make sure that you’re the one who’s got
it. Don’t listen to what the dumb-ass hippies say. What do a bunch of
doped-up losers and washed-up lifers like the hippies know? You think
it’s FUN to be poor? Try it some time. Try it for one week, then get right
back to me. Boycotting grapes and making your own bread is all well
and good, but it ain’t the revolution, man. The revolution starts with
cutting loose from all the stupid bullshit that stupid people tell you
about how to live. Revolution starts in the head. Be your own
person—don’t let nobody ever tell you what to do. You only got one
life—be a shame to lose it in a stinking tiger cage or slaving away at
some dead end gig in Podunk. I look at you kids, I look into your
eyes, and all I see is one fact: Mind Control, baby. Mind control.

He chuckled.

"They already got you plugged into the grid, and before too very long
you’re going to be too scared to death to even think about pullng the
plug. You better do it now, is what I’m saying, before you’re too balled
up in all the tangled up bullshit they're laying on you to even think
about striking out on your own. Go places, DO things, BE
somebody, even if it’s only a stinking pillhead. You’re looking at me
now, and you’re thinking to yourself, now, or maybe you’re even
laughing at me, saying, oh, HIM, he’s Baby Boy Maddox, everybody knows
he’s crazy. Yeah—I’m crazy all right—crazy as a fresh-fucked fox in a
forest fire! I got everything I need and can’t nobody ever take it
away! That's how crazy I am! Do you run YOUR life? Can any of
you say the same thing about yourselves, and still keep straight face?

He paused to let the full implication of his words sink in to his audience.
I noticed with mild alarm that some slightly older guys had begun hanging
around, and they didn't look any too happy about what he was saying to the
younger kids. I crossed my fingers together and hoped they wouldn't
cause any trouble. By this point, I badly wanted to hear the rest of
what Baby Boy Maddox
had to say.

He resumed. "Now, maybe you’re thinking, ‘Hmm--this guys full of hot air and I
ain't listen to a word he says. Noooo...maybe I'll go to matchbook
university there,out in the sticks and get me an asswipe diploma and a
plastic job where I pull down a cool thirty grand a year. I'll marry the high
school homecoming queen and have a half a dozen kids and all that and drink beer on the
weekends and barbecue on the back porch patio just like Mom and Dad--
and then, when they hand me my gold watch and I retire, then, by gum,
I'll finally get to build that ship in the bottle!' "

He spit. "Well, so--you know what I say to all that? Horseshit! Here's what's
actually going to happen.Out of community college, shitty no-pay job doing
shit and feeling like shit, too tired to think or f*ck or even feel a
thing. Your wife is fat, your kids are stupid, your house is falling
apart, and you're on the train to NOWHERE, Dumbo! Maybe after thirty years the kids are
grown and the house is paid off and you got the rest of what remains of your miserable life
to sit in the La-Z-Boy and get stupid on beer and watch Lawrence Welk
and his f*cking bubbles. Oh boy, oh boy oh boy," he suddenly cried in a
comically squeaky voice, "Now THAT really sounds like a life worth
living! Don't it?"

Four of the slightly older guys--three of whom I recognized as being on the
High School Varsity Football team--drew nearer to the front of the crowd.
One of them had his mouth hanging open, as if at the very sound of Baby Boy's
blasphemies, but the other three were turning red with ill-suppressed rage.

Baby Boy Maddox acted as though they weren't even there. "You think for one
minute that the war pigs who run this show buy into ANY of that crap? Hell, no!
They're perfectly happy to see you run and chase your own fucking tails until
you fall over stone cold dead--because it means there's gonna be more for THEM.
But that ain't how THEY do. How THEY do is like this--they sell broken toys to
sick children at a huge markup, and THEY make out like bandits! And that's the
way of the world since the story began. They didn't write the script, maybe,
but you can bet your ass that they back it to the hilt."

It was at this point that he seemingly began to acknowledge the angry
high school athletes who had moved forward and were standing even
closer to him than before.

"What we got right here in the U.S.A. is the world's fattest slaves.
And while the rest of the world is starvin' and eatin' bugs and shit,
we're sitting on our big fat flabby asses drinking diet soda pop! Well, you mark my
words--sooner or later it's all going to go to shit, and it's you all that's going to be left standing there holding the bag."

By now, some of the older guys were at the front of the crowd by now and were
beginning to circle around him, menacingly. The biggest one of the four
of them yelled out, "What are yuh, ya hippie fag--some kind of Commie?"

He stopped their approach dead with a steadfast gaze from those awful
black eyes of his.

"No, asshole, I ain't no hippie. I've been in prison most of my f*cking life.
I've killed people who tried to turn me into a punk. You wanna try me out?"

The big guy looked for a second like he was going to step forward, but then he
seemed to think better of it, and hung back.

"Lemme tell you a little secret, Junior. I sure as hell ain't no Commie.
You wanna know why? I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Here’s little story.
Imagine for a minute that you had a chance to sit on on a cabinet meeting.
You wanna know what they really talk about during those things?
They talk about how much they all hate hippies and fags and commies.
“Listen ‘Comrade,’” they say among themselves, “We’re on to you
and your dirty game. We don't need your kind around here—
with your idiotic prattle of 'racial equality' and 'unions' and
'eight hour days' and 'free health care' and 'taxing the plutocrats'
and 'punishing the malefactors of great wealth' and 'putting the
pie on the lower shelf where the little guy can reach it.'
You filthy hippies ought to go and peddle your Pravda papers elsewhere,
like in Soviet Russia, where you can take your marching orders directly
from your Red Commie Slavemasters who want to rule the world.
S'matter of fact, don't bother—we’re going to have the cops gun
you down in the street the second they see you, and we'll probably
pin a medal on em, too, because radicals like you are a stench in the
nostrils of every God-fearing white man, and from where we sit,
you're just lower than the filth that swirls down the gutter.
And, uh, by the way, in the meantime, don’t forget to vote and pay
your taxes. Because there’s no such thing as a free lunch--unless
you’re the one who runs the diner.”

The football guys looked at each other, confused. The one whose mouth
had been hanging open before was drinking in every word, while the loudmouth
who yelled out the challenge was beginning to back up even more.

As I remember it, Baby Boy Maddox then deliberately turned his back on
the four big boys and put his guitar back in its case and picked the
case up by the handle and held it to his side as he once again turned
to face the crowd and
make his parting remarks.

"So do yourselves one big favor--learn how to shift for yourselves. Before
you make a single commitment to anyone or anything else. Because nobody,
but nobody, is gonna feel sorry for you if ya don't. It's like they
say--you can wish in one hand and shit in the other--and see which one
gets filled up first."

With that, he turned his back on the crowd once again and stole softly into the
woods. I had a funny feeling that this was also my cue to haul ass on
out of there.

Years later, thinking back on it, it always seemed to me that where Baby Boy
Maddox was, the cops were never very far behind, although, of course,
I didn't know it then.

That night I lay in bed wondering--who is this guy? Where did he come from?
Is everything he was telling us actually true? Must be. He didn't look
as though he was lying. It was those eyes of his. They never looked away and
they never wavered .When I closed my own eyes to try to sleep, it's
almost as though I could see his black, dark eyes, boring in on me, uncovering my deepest
darkest secrets.

I remember that my shoulder ached that night. I also remember that I
slept poorly.

But most of all, I remember the chilling look that hobo gave to the
big kid who was a tough gridiron star. I had a feeling that if the kid
hadn't backed down, I might very well have witnessed my first murder. The thought of
it gave me a feeling, midway between panic and an almost sexual, all-encompassing
warmth in the pit of my stomach.

I knew then that somehow, I would have to see the man again, and hear him speak
some more.

8. BABY BOY MADDOX--THE EARLY YEARS: LITTLE LAMB, WHO MADE THEE?

Baby Boy Maddox was not born is a “crossfire hurricane” in the most true sense of the hero of blues, rock, folk, punk, or what have you. Because he was no hero at all. What I find most curious about the other so-called “definitive” or “unauthorized” biographies of Maddox is how little space they devote to his genesis. Perhaps this is because not much is known.

By some accounts, his folks were miserable, lower-middle class strivers who spent their entire squalid existence in Littleton, a down-at-the-heels rust belt neighborhood in the Gibsonia suburb of Anytown. The neighborhood was a spoiled remnant of the even then long-ago industrial revolution. It was a village--and perhaps scarcely even populous enough to be accounted a village—which had once thrived solely owing to its proximity to central rail transport and to the Salt River. But, by the end of the 1940s, even the lowliest and filthiest canneries and woolen mills and shoe factories and parts manufacturers and fabricators and such had utterly abandoned the village. By the end of the 1960s it was a neighborhood chiefly notable for the fact that nothing was there. No bakeries, butcher shops, grocery stores, drug stores, gas stations, restaurants, barber shops—in fact, no retail or manufacturing businesses of any kind. And certainly nobody like Baby Boy Maddox, who had long since fled that accursed brownfield of futility and failure and nothingness.

Before everything went to hell, his mother—actually, I was later to learn, his foster mother--was a housewife who addressed envelopes at home to make some extra money on the side. His father, for the short time he was there, worked on a loading dock down by the Salt River, and had allegedly once served in the national guard, or maybe it was World War Two. Pulling these details out of Baby Boy Maddox was like trying to extract rusty nails from a rotten board. I doubt he would have spoken to me at all about such matters if he had had even the slightest inkling that I had had any intention of writing this memoir. Other contradictory tales that Maddox told about his father—whom he never knew—were that he taught gym, drove a school bus, and was a hobo of some kind during the great depression. His family owned no car. Their house was falling apart and smelled of mildew and sour milk and shitty diapers. His father only had a sixth grade education and was unduly strict. By the age of forty, he was tending to baldness and farted a lot. The kitchen always smelled of cabbage. Never once was a fresh salad ever served there. The father force-fed the household on expired vitamins. The bare patch of raggedy lawn behind the house was hopeless for growing anything but crabgrass and thistles. Their dog had fleas and would always hump your leg. It was a starveling cur which the mother despised. It was fed on cabbage scraps. It’s a wonder that the animal had energy enough to even stand on four legs. Maddox’s family was hardscrabble all the way.

Also, they weren’t his real parents, about whom very little was known. They were, it is alleged, in some distant way related to his biological parents and they took him in when he was too young to remember. Official records are nonexistent or contradictory. It was always under extreme protest that Baby Boy Maddox ever showed anybody any actual official identification.

(Was this even HIS life at all? Or a neighbor’s? A life he once had once heard about--and had thereafter merely contrived to make a part of his own “script,” as he would have called it? )

Also in doubt is the actual year of Baby Boy Maddox’s birth.

In Mike German’s soi-disant “biography” he lists 1939 as Baby Boy Maddox’s date of birth. Was that truly the year he was born? I have my doubts. As a matter of fact, I would place his year of birth at absolutely no earlier than 1944 and possibly on or after 1948, which is what it said on his actual driver’s license, which I caught a fleeting glimpse of in the summer of 1969. (Though, admittedly, it could have been a fake, like all the other identification he carried.)

So answer me this—why would Baby Boy Maddox claim to be younger than he actually was? It stands to reason that a forged credential was useful for one purpose only—the purchase of liquor. (Though Baby Boy Maddox eschewed the use of alcohol.) I suspect that Baby Boy Maddox may have actually been born as late as 1953. It would be relatively easy for even an amateur forger to alter the 48 d.o.b. to a 53. (Though maybe the question was moot--since the I.D. was a fake to begin with.) Question: Where and how did he procure such a document? Admittedly, in 1969 there were many people who sold such items. The going rate was about twenty dollars (equivalent to about 120 dollars today).

But I know for a fact that Baby Boy Maddox was nearly always stone cold broke. Where would he have gotten that kind of money? I can’t see him finding, gathering, and returning a thousand soda pop bottles and paying the man in pennies. Most likely, that fake I.D. was fair payment for services rendered. Three or four clandestine assignations in the park, late at night? It seems highly unlikely, given his hatred of “punks”—but I wouldn’t put it past him. Baby Boy Maddox was strangely uninhibited about sexual matters.

But let’s not go there.

Maybe he found the money in an old library book, or in a lost wallet, or when digging through some old lady’s purse left lying unattended on a bench in Holly Park. Maybe he did a stint as a substitute cloakroom attendant at some swanky nightspot and found the dough when rummaging through some old gent’s jacket. Possibilities abound.

Let’s split the difference and assume that he was born in 1951. When I fist met him, he looked to be about 17. Though I am convinced to this day that he was actually a very old man from the very day he was born.

Of course, any actual supporting evidence that Baby Boy Maddox was actually born in 1951 is scarce. However, during an unguarded moment in the summer of 1968, he himself told me that he was actually 18 years old and that he carried identification stating he was 21 because it made it so much easier for him to perform in concert venues where liquor was served. (Of course, back then, the Over-21 requirement was much more often honored in the breach than in actual practice.) The driver’s license also assisted him in his confrontations with the police, since, inevitably, their first demand upon seeing him was that he “show some I.D.” (Baby Boy Maddox would very occasionally give very amusing replies to that request—like, “Officer—I’m ALL Id,” or “How’s about I show you my superego instead?” The cops didn’t like this one bit.)

But usually, as befit his sense of survival and his selective use of tactical strategy, Baby Boy Maddox would act in a respectful and slightly dimwitted fashion in front of a uniformed police officer. He would slur his words slightly (even though he wasn’t drunk) and claim that he was on his way to the package store to “get something for his thirst.” The indulgent cops, upon seeing this disheveled bearded man carrying a battered guitar, would assume that he was a harmless lush rather than a dangerous hippie radical, and, much more often than not, they would cut him loose.

Had they followed him to his lair—a lean-to located deep in the woods of Holly Park—they might have been very interested to find his collection of lock-picks and other burglar tools…but that’s another story.

I have every reason to believe Baby Boy Maddox’s story about having been born circa 1951. Unless somebody comes up with a birth certificate—somewhat unlikely, since he was largely raised in orphan homes and institutions, and such documentation would be somewhat difficult to come by—we are forced to simply take his word for it that 1951 was his date of birth, in spite of the dates ranging from 1939 to 1953 posited by other, less diligent biographers. (It seems impossible to me that he was born any later than 1953, but I suppose we’ll never know for sure.)

One of my earliest encounters with Baby Boy Maddox took place when I was about twelve years old. He was sitting on a grassy knoll, devouring a piece of chocolate cake. “I ain’t no cake eater,” he said, by way of greeting, “but sometimes I get me a sweet tooth, and that’s no lie.” He told me that he had bought the cake from the grocery store from the day-old section. I could see that the cake had the word “Mom” written on top of the brown frosting with white icing. “I guess it was a cake for somebody’s Mom, only they didn’t want it, and they were afraid they couldn’t sell it, so they marked it down to forty cents. Man, this was a four dollar cake, at least, and they had it marked down to forty cents. Maybe they made a mistake, but I don’t care, because their loss is my gain, so I laid down my coin, and the cashier, she gave me the stink eye, as if to say ‘You ain’t Mom,’ and over there at the other register, a bunch of teenage girls was talking about how they was scared to drive on the highway, especially at night, and on the front page of the newspaper they was saying something about the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia."

It was late August of 1968, and Baby Boy Maddox sounded to me as though he were hopped up on something, though maybe it was just from all the sugar from the unaccustomed icing he was eating. “Mom,” he grunted, as he got up and walked to his lean-to hidden in the woods. “That’s funny. And that’s the first part I was going to eat because I don’t even want to be reminded of my Mom, and I haven’t thought about her, either, not for ten or twelve years. She left me when I was seven, or maybe eight. Haven’t seen her since. Actually, she actually didn’t GO nowhere, she just sent me away, got rid of me. Maybe because I was getting’ in the way of her drinkin’ and carryin’ on and she couldn’t lock me in a bathroom no more and stay out for 36 hours carousin’ because I finally learned how to pick locks with a bent bobby pin, it’s a useful skill to have lemme tell ya, remind me to teach you some time. Anyway,” he breathed, and I swear I could smell the sugar on his breath from the other side of the lean-to where we had now arrived—he was now sitting huddled up in his sleeping blanket, even though it wasn’t at all cold—“Anyway, she never much cared for me and I suppose you could say I kind of returned the favor. Last time I saw her, oh, it might have been a year or two ago, she was carrying two shopping bags and wearing a shitty wool coat and she looked like she was 100 years old. She was drunk, too, unless I miss my bet, and she was weaving and her eyes were bloodshot and the only thing I could think of was, ‘I hope she don’t see me and call my name because if she does I’ll have to pretend I don’t see or hear her.’ Anyway, it was snowing, and she’s too vain to wear her glasses outdoors, so my guess is that she never even saw me, and even if she did, maybe she was too drunk to care.” He lapsed into a silence. It might have been a gloomy silence, but he didn’t look gloomy at all. He was thinking. “Anyway, that there cake was good. Been awhile since ate anything sweet, and it was a pretty good joke, too, eating her name off the icing, because my birthday is when she gave me up.” He wouldn’t tell me when, or in what year. Was it 1945? Or 1958?

The answer is lost to history.

I also recall that in the summer of 1969 Baby Boy Maddox shared with me why he saw fit to live rough, in the park. “Animals like to be outside. I like to be outside.” He paused, as if considering for the first time the novel solution to an amusing equation. “I guess that I must be an animal, then. Anyway,” he resumed, somewhat laboriously, “Anyway, you want to know why I live outdoors? Here’s why. I’m tough. I don’t mind rain or snow. I like to see the sun and the moon and the stars. Here’s what I hate—electricity. Ticking clocks. Television. I can barely stand the radio. I’d rather listen in on a transistor. Electricity interferes with what’s in your mind. X-rays—forget it. Telephones are phony. I need to SEE the people I’m talking to. You got to see them, to see the blood pulsing in their brains. Talking on the telephone is a plastic horn devil form of death. Plastic is poison. Give me wood and stone. They have a presence. Plastic is just a great big soul gap. Even steel and iron can breathe. Give me cotton, wool, leather, fur. Polyester gives me the creeps. The willies. The whim-whams. The screaming meemies. It sends the crawling cold all down me. Makes me think that someone’s walking over my grave. Nylon, forget it. Glass is good. Tin cans are fine. Silk is great. Don’t ask me to drink out of a plastic cup or bottle. That’s a death trip. I wish they still made records out of shellac. Vinyl is bogus. Someday, and someday soon, it’s all going to go smash, you just mark my words, and in the far future some super-advanced race of hairless bigheads is gonna be rummaging through the Styrofoam and naugahyde rubble and that’s going to tell them all they need to know about the kind of people we were. Credit cards, plutonium, cellophane—I can guarantee you those double domes are going to shout, ‘Man alive—those people back then, they were TOXIC!’ They’re going to call this The Age of Poison!”

He paused for a moment, and actually looked thoughtful. “That’s why I’m convinced that animals are the only free spirits out there. Have been for a good long while. And that’s why we’ve been killing them, left and right. Not for food. Because we’re jealous. If you’ll slaughter animals without a second thought, just for the sake of killin’ ‘em, then the next step is people. For that matter, there’s nothing wrong with killing the killers. Oh, some of them may LOOK harmless, but just TRY to get in the way of what they really want, and then you just watch out. Stalin wanted to be a monk. Hitler wanted to be a painter. Napoleon, who knows what he wanted. They didn’t end up getting to be what they WANTED to be, and the result was that they were stone cold killers, every one of ‘em. Animals never tell you what they’re going to do—they just do it. And sometimes," he breathed, "sometimes—they’ll kill."

And with that he turned his face away from me.

Afterword:
While scrolling through the microfilm archives at the Gooch Memorial Library, I came across the following item--one of more than merely tangential interest. Note the individual identified in the text as “B.B.M.” Could this possibly be Baby Boy Maddox? The likelihood is high.

September 2, 1968
VAGRANTS VANISH; POLICE CAPTAIN "UNCONCERNED"
By "Boomer" Green
Current Events Reporter, Daily Chronicker

Residents of Big Town have been talking about the recent disappearance
of the town's "tramps" and vagrants. Are the police attempting to
solve this vexing puzzle? No. Police Captain Proctor Purson has stated
his position quite succinctly.

"Police resources are stretched to the breaking point as it is; I see
no need for our men to pursue this matter. In fact, I don't see it as
a problem at all. They're all probably off sleeping under some bridge
somewhere. They'll be back, soon enough."

District Attorney Zachary Mope was equally dismissive:

"I have to say that I'm with the Chief on this one. We must act to
allocate our resources in a manner which benefits all the town
citizenry; not merely the favored few."

When reminded that, far from being favored, town vagrants have few
defenders, Mope replied, "There are plenty of service jobs and the
like, for a man who wishes to perform honest work. As far as I'm
concerned, deadbeats and panhandlers should go back where they came
from."

Mope, who in recent months has been nicknamed, 'The Fighting D.A.,'
and who is currently up for re-election, finds a great many town
denizens in essential agreement with him.

But meanwhile, rumors abound, as other, more concerned, town residents
have given hints as to what might be really going on. Few of them
however, are willing to be quoted by name.

One town resident, currently residing in Arcadia Asylum, has said that
a "religious revival" has swept the town, and then enigmatically
suggested that many of the town vagrants must have "Found Jesus" and
"Gone to the Lordy." He then stated that he was having one of his
"blinding headaches" and began to fashion a crude hat made from
aluminum foil.

A man who wished to be identified only as "B.B.M." said to this
reporter, "Hey, you might want to ask around in the Cannery, find out
where all the winos used to hang out….They're being hired out as
slaves, that's what I heard."

A man calling himself "Fish" told me, "There's big doin's down at the
Cannery, I hear, with that weirdo priest…."

I was able to speak briefly to the Priest in question, one Maundy
Skortersdag, who simply said, "The Lord will provide for his flock."

Shortly after speaking with the reluctant Skortersdag, I was set upon
and attacked by two brutal thugs. However, whether the disappearance
of the vagrants and this seemingly random attack are linked is a
question that cannot be answered at the present time.

Whether this mystery will be addressed at all has all the earmarks of
potential scandal for the City. Perhaps older residents of Anytown
will recall the "Grand Sweep of Pestilential Vagrants" following the
re-election of William McKinley in 1900; the "Great Hobo Purge" of
'35, or, more recently, the "Stamp Out the Tramp" campaign of 1954.

However, in this instance, town officials offer no intelligence or
even profess any interest regarding the matter.

A high town official, speaking off the record, who reluctantly gave
his assent for his opinion to be quoted but asked not to be named, has
said that if there is any "foul play" involved, then he had every
assurance that eventually "The truth will surely out."

Let us hope that he is correct.

9. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE COLONEL
Not too long after the disastrous concert at the Speedway in faraway
Altamont, Baby Boy Maddox spoke, in the dead of winter, from the cosy
fastness of his lean-to, warm with the heat of a stray dog or two, about
the degraded mores of our unspooling era.

His comments came across as not quite than spontaneous--as
though he were rehearsing some kind of odd stage patter or even
a recruitment speech. Nevertheless, I listened, and from time to time
was even able to take notes. (This was just before I had the equipment
to tape-record his rantings on the sly.) Here, in essence, is what
he said on that day, which was February 1st, 1970.

"I am convinced that a thousand years from now that the present day
will be considered a part of the so-called Dark Ages. People living in
superstitious terror of both science and religion. Feudal lords
replaced by big-ass corporations. Knights of the realm replaced by
stupid celebrities. Foolish neurotic romanticism replaced by fawning
over the nonexistent deeds of nonentities. There is an emptiness at
large in this present age--an emptiness that people hunger to see
filled by some great event. But the only events they have to feed on
are things which are hardly even really there. You watch TV, right?
Do you remember exactly what you saw last week, let alone last month or last
year? I’ll bet you don’t. Nobody does. Nobody wants to, or needs to.
Same thing with movies, too. And let me ask you something else—in what
way are people’s stupid little arguments and opinions in any way
different from Medieval debates on angels and pins? Only nowadays people
wonder how many Hell's Angels can dance on a pinhead. We are just living
in a modern day version of the dark ages, is all. The lords still run
over the poor slobs with their horses and all they do is pay a fine
and they’re off the hook. And the lords still live in castles
surrounded by moats, only now these are called Apartment Buildings and
country estates. They still hire footmen and chefs and even
high-priced court jesters. They preside over their own territory and
nobody can ever bring them to book for nothing.

In many ways, we are worse off than we were even back in the
dark ages. Back then, people who disturbed the peace were
put to death. Nowadays, even the most worthless scum and
dregs have 'rights' that need to be respected. Back then, people
feared the wrath of the Almighty. These days, they pay lip-service to a distant
point of light that they nickname God and go their merry way regardless,
Unless they are truly deluded, in which case, they are doomed to
irrelevance. This world has always been run by one small gang of about
400 people, only nowadays, they simply keep a lower profile. The cost of
safety is eternal servitude--service to the fear of what has yet to happen and
probably never will. The numbers game has replaced patron saints; slow
death has replaced dying young; and puppets are still very popular
everywhere. Appearances, only, have changed."

Quite a bit of mystic woo-woo for an impressionable 13 year
old to absorb. I was, however, duly impressed.

I spoke to him several weeks later, on April 26, 1970, and
his opinions on religion seem to have changed somewhat.

We stood on a high hill overlooking a valley, watching tiny
pebbles tremble and fall from the rim as we looked down upon
Lilliputian church-goers spilling from out of a Matchbox church,
"Religion," said Baby Boy Maddox, "is a machine." He
paused. "A machine for building delusions. And turning otherwise
honest people into hypocrites."

Again, the phrasing of his words gave me the distinct impression
of something rehearsed. Again, I took notes, and managed to
capture only the gist of what he was saying.

"And the ones who actually walk the walk are even worse. Ever noticed the
glazed look that comes into their eyes when they dispense charity with
their hands, while, in the meantime, with their mouths they are spouting
fairy tales? They are like wild animals who have sores--always licking
at the same sore spot, and if you try to touch them there then they are
likely to bite you. You'll notice that a great many powerful men say
they believe in one sort of religion or another, but their actions
belie their words, because if they really believed in this stuff they
would be performing good works instead of holding on to every dollar
until the eagle screams. The fuckers are hoarders, man—they’re just as
crazy as the lady with the shopping bags who pushes a shopping cart
everywhere and mumbles to herself. Only difference is, they got a
slicker front."

He paused, as if pondering where his own place was in this
impromptu cosmology. Then he resumed, with more fervor than before.

"Look--you might say that religion is just like every other kind of drug or
addiction--there's the set and the setting and the ritual.
The daily affirmations. The songs that celebrate the vice.
The moaning in ecstasy once they've mainlined a hit of their savior.
Far be it from me to say there's anything wrong here. People need
their faith. Dig they must. Or otherwise, they wouldn't hang onto to it so
tight. Dig--the family that lives in a shit-house but gives over all
their food money to the church fund. They live in garbage, but instead
of cleaning their house, they march off to the church of Give Us Your Money
to howl at the gods for their deliverance. Now, the way I see it, the
only reason religion even exists is because the big boys on the top of
things see it as a way of controlling people who have weak minds. It's
all a racket, see. Sure, it's been said before. Again and again.
And most people know it, only they just don't want to admit it.
The big boys put on a big pious act, but it's all a charade.
When it comes to being outnumbered a million to one, having
religion on their side is the ace in the hole that trumps everything.
The big boys always need to have a religion of some kind.
Even if it's the religion of Stalin or the religion of Hitler.
Or even the religion of money, like you hear about on Wall Street.
Or the religion of power in Washington. I only wish that
someday people would wise up and realize say that a little
bit of religion is all right but you get too much and it'll drive you
absolutely crazy, so let's not go there. City living is best. City
living breeds skeptics, and skeptics are free--until they
hedge their bets and decide to recant--usually when it's
too late to change a thing.”

He paused to see if I were shocked, or if his words were having any
effect. They were. I was strangely excited by his heresies. I wanted
to hear more. Baby Boy Maddox duly obliged.

“I'm a skeptic. Not an atheist. Because I have seen God. I was in a
pool hall in Belle Avon or maybe it was Plaza Del Sol or maybe it was
the bad part of Dynamo, on the other side of the river.
The place was empty; it was only ten in the morning; most
pool hall loafers don't even bother to wake up before twelve noon.
There was a pool table in a room with plywood walls and
bare wooden floors and it was lit with only a single bare light
bulb swinging back and forth. And as I looked into the light I could
see the filament and as I looked at the filament I felt myself leave
this physical universe. It is impossible for a mere man to understand
my words but I will tell you this: we were never intended to meddle
with electricity. The Greeks knew it. Ben Franklin, for all his
smarts, was none the wiser when it came to the lightning. There is a
direct connection between lightning and the Gods. Electricity is the
motive force behind everything, I'm convinced. Time, space, and
gravity. Do you think some stupid ape can fully understand this
insight? I'm no ape. I looked into that filament and that filament
took me to the far side of the cosmos. You might think I was on drugs
at the time, but I wasn't. From my vantage point, standing the far
side of the universe, I saw all of cosmic history unfold. I saw the
beginning of the cosmic force. First, the blackness. Then, the
pinpoint of light. And then the universe was flooded with light, and
in the aftermath from where I stood I saw that everything is mostly
darkness with just little pin points of light here and there. Don't
you see? There is a direct connection between electricity and what we
call God. Heaven is just one big dynamo--a fountain of sparks and
light and voltage. That's why I'm very careful never to have
electricity next to me unless I want it there. Electricity is what
powers the heavens. It is the spark of light we see coming out of
God's fingernail. The world is NOT a dead end. It is only the
beginning of something that will never end until the last spark dies
out and the whole process starts all over again. I know I am right and I
will be proven right."

"When?" I blurted.

"You remind me of me," he said, "Of when I was about your age.
Difference being, I didn't ask questions. I wanted to, but I never did. I
just kept my mouth shut and went along with the program. Maybe
I shouldn't of. Did I ever tell you about 'The Colonel'?

'No."

"I guess I told you before that I never knew my Daddy, and that
was true. Never knew for sure exactly who he was. But there was
this guy. Everybody called him "The Colonel." I used to know his
name, a long time ago, but I forgot. Maybe some day it’ll come
back to me. I had a funny feeling about him. He kinda looked
like me. I never was sure that the Colonel was my Dad. I never
asked. Should of. Could of. Would of. He might of been. Maybe
not, though. I didn't want to know for sure. What if he said 'No'?
I preferred to maintain my illusions. Anyway, there's more than
one thing he taught me, The best thing he ever said, though not
in so many words, was right to the point. 'Kid," he said--he always
called me Kid--'Kid there's no percentage in wising up a sucker.'

'
"I fell in with The Colonel one day when I was about twelve. I was living in a foster home that Summer with Auntie Carp and Uncle Pike but I could tell they didn’t much want me around so after I did my chores I made myself scarce.. I was watching this retarded guy named Jimmy Ravenscroft. Everyone in Gibsonia called him the town idiot. Big drooling imbecile. Always
wore a little black cap like you'd see in a kindergarten kid, or a
trained monkey. Never brushed his teeth. Always smelled like
sour milk and something else that was nasty. Any way, Jimmy
Ravenscroft was carrying something heavy in a big cardboard box.
Careful-like. Like it was the fucking Spear of Destiny or something.
The Colonel's standing in front of the pool hall. He sidles up to me.
Says, 'Hey kid, want some fun? That goof is up to somethin', you can
tell. See that box? I'll bet he's off to the junkyard to sell whatever he's
got inside. Why don't you string along with me? Maybe you and
me can get in on something.' That's another thing the Colonel
taught me. 'Never pass up a main chance.'

"So we follow the dummy on the sly, and, sure enough, he's off to the
junkyard, over by the far end of the railroad tracks, near the spur.

The place is incredible. Right next to a partially dismantled train.
More steel and iron and grease and old tie rails and dust and dirt
then you've ever seen. Now, it's summertime, and I'm at loose ends.
They pretty much left me alone at the home I was at. Just so long
as I did my chores in the morning, they didn't care when I came home.
As I remember it, it was a cloudy day. Maybe around four in the
afternoon. I was wearin' jeans, tennis shoes, and an old t-shirt.
"So the dummy brings the junk to the yard. It's a big load of copper.
Who knows where the kid got it. Probably pulled it from some deserted
house. 'Now,' says the Colonel, 'I know the junkman is going to cheat
'im. Pay him a couple of bucks and turn around and sell it for
twenty-five. But I ain’t gonna queer his pitch. Instead, I'll just
get me the rest of the money he shoulda paid out to the dummy.' Then
the colonel takes me behind the junk man's shed. Tells me to take off
my sneaker. Says, 'This is gonna hurt. But don't yell. Don't yell. Not
yet.' Then he gets a big old piece of glass out of his pocket and he
rams it right into my big toe. I manage not to let out a peep, but it
hurt like holy hell. He puts the sock back on my foot, and the shoe.
He rubs dirt all over the piece of glass and puts it on the train
tracks there, where they were covered over with grease. 'Now,' he
says. 'Now let's hear you set up a holler.' Believe me, it wasn't
hard. And I wasn't entirely acting hurt. It stung like fuck. So I let
out a holler and the junk man comes running over, and so does the
dummy. I start jumping around, and the Colonel, he says, "Holy shit!
Look at that foot! The kid looks like he's bleeding to death! You
better take him to the hospital!" The junkman, he's one of those
bohunks, can hardly speak a word of English, and this is his worse
nightmare. He knows he can't leave the yard unattended or the
boss will have his head. People could rob him blind. So then the
Colonel plays him out. 'Look,' he says, 'I don't really have time to be
hustling him over to the Doc, but if you gimme a twenty I'll do it. Otherwise,
you're gonna need to call an ambulance, and that'll cost ya thirty bucks.'
The junkman haggles him down to 15, which was probably exactly the
profit he made off the copper. The Colonel acts pissed, but says he'll
make up the difference out of his own pocket because he don't wanna
see the kid bleed to death. Meaning me.' So then the Colonel picks me
up--pretty strong he was, for a low-down grifter--and carries me out
of eye-shot of the junkman and the retard. The second we're out of
eye-shot he puts me down and says, 'You done good.' Then he starts to
walk off. I yell at him, hey--what about the dough? And he says,
"Hm. You're a smart kid. How much dough do you think you oughta
get?' 'All of it,' I says. 'It was my foot.' 'I'll give you five, and
consider yourself lucky, because it was my brains and hustle that got it.'

He hands over the fin and starts to barge off.

Only he turns to me just before he's about to go and says, 'You take
care of that foot. Try not to walk on that toe. When you get home, wash
it good with soap and water and put some bleach or rubbing alcohol on
it, and Mercurochrome. Then bandage 'er up. She'll be good as new in a
day or two.' And then he pulls a fast fade. I didn't see him again for
awhile. Nice of him to say, though. He didn’t have to. And he easily
could of waltzed off with the whole fifteen bucks.

I got back to Auntie Carp and Uncle Pike’s house in time for supper and managed to clean the foot with some bleach and no one the wiser. Man, that bleach stung bad--even worse
than the cut. But it did the trick. The toe healed up fine.”

At this point, he pulled off his shoe and sock and showed me the faint
scar ridged along the big toe of his left foot.

"You can hardly even see it. Anyway, it was worth it. I got a five-spot
out of the deal and I kept it hid for a good long time--I didn't spend
it, like some kids would of done. Because I learned another thing that
day--you gotta have a front. Always. Beg borrow or steal, or do what
you gotta do, but always have a front. You gotta have a front--
because you never know. And some walking around money is never
a bad thing to have...because...you just never know."

He threw me an intense stare.

"Do you?"



This post has been edited by dimenno: Jul 3 2012, 04:35 PM

[dimenno]

10. BABY BOY MADDOX: ALL THE SINNERS, ALL THE SAINTS, AND EVERYONE IN BETWEEN

In the early 1970s I often had the undivided attention of Baby Boy Maddox, and vice versa. How this came about is hardly a complicated story.

Like most poor people, however little he had, and often that was very little indeed, Baby Boy Maddox always shared it, and, in his own turn, he expected anyone he encountered to show him the same hospitality.

And so it was that I would often sneak him into my house when I was home from school, usually during summer vacations and holidays. This was a risky proposition because I don’t think my father would have appreciated sheltering unbeknownst to him a full-grown feral street messiah beneath the roof of his suburban split-level ranch house. And man, could that Baby Boy Maddox eat! More than once I would smuggle a whole roast chicken up to my room and he would pick the thing clean in twenty minutes flat, and wash the whole thing down with a quart of milk.

I never had any problems with Baby Boy Maddox overstaying his welcome at my house. Although he was the law in Holly Park, when he was on my turf, he was a good soldier. In 1972 I got my driver’s license, and often, very early in the morning, just before the sun came up, I would smuggle him out of the house, borrow the car, bundle him inside, and drive him back to Holly Park and then return, with my father none the wiser.

What he did notice, however, was the missing food. He would joke about my having a tapeworm or a “hollow leg,” and my mother would insist he stop teasing me because I was still “a growing boy.”

In his later years, Baby Boy Maddox was not always quite so circumspect about accepting people’s hospitality on the terms in which it was offered. Often, if somebody he thought of as weak-minded and easy to dominate would give him the run of their house or apartment, Baby Boy Maddox would set up shop there for weeks at a time and would prove very difficult to dislodge. Only a threat to call in the police would remove him, but such a threat was usually utilized only as a last resort, because Baby Boy Maddox would then become your enemy for life, and he was not somebody you wanted to tangle with, because he had very little to lose and therefore there were no limits on what he might or might not do in order to get even with a person he deemed a “rat” or “stool pigeon.”

It was always better to tell him at the outset and straight out that you were in no position to give him shelter.

Come to think of it, during particularly cold nights in the wintertime, I would sometimes find evidence that someone had been camping out in our heated garage, but I never mentioned it to Baby Boy Maddox or to anybody else because, whoever it was, they were uncommonly discreet—even our dog failed to notice any trespasser. Mostly, in fact, it was through my sense of smell that I noticed a visitor had been present. Whoever it was left behind a lingering odor that I can only compare the smell to the musty interior of a small town general store—part pine, part fruit, part grease, plus the sour smell of sweat.

When I knew for certain that my parents had planned to be away for several hours, I would also often invite Baby Boy Maddox to my home so he could take a shower and wash his clothing, two activities he was always very keen on. Whenever I would offer him something to eat, he would gratefully accept it, especially if it were meat. He was no ascetic; in any public venue, he would tell anybody who cared listen that he regarded protein as ‘the king of foods’…a strangely formal statement which actually sounded rather odd, coming from his unkempt bearded mouth.

As to drink, unlike most tramps, he did not seem to care much for booze. However, even though he disliked drunkenness and would only accept the smallest sample taste of anything fermented, he was particularly disdainful of coffee, which he would always call ‘that black and evil brew,’ or, ‘that devil potion.” Whenever it was offered him, he would invariably crow, “Why should I drink coffee—I already have a bitter taste in my mouth first thing in the morning!” He also said that the desire for coffee was a “conditioned response,” although where he came up with that particular phrase is a mystery to me, given the fact that, by his own somewhat proud admission, he was a sixth grade drop-out, and never much for reading. “Get real, Kid. Too much book learning,” he always liked to say, “will ruin your shootin’ eye.”

His objections to coffee were wide-ranging. First, he declared that it was made from a “slave bean” and therefore had “loads of bad karma attached to it.” (Just as the devil could cite Scripture for his own purposes, Baby Boy Maddox would and could cite such nonsensical hippie verbiage to bolster any particular point he was anxious to make.)

Secondly, he declared that it was a “hateful mafia brew.” He also believed that the government sought to promote because it “keeps the people from dreaming” and makes them want to be “busy all the time for no good reason.” With that he would pause, and conclude, “Just like zombies, as a matter of fact.” Zombies, he maintained, do not dream, which is why they stumble through life in a perpetual half-waking and half dozing state. (This, I should add, was in the early 1970s, at least a decade before the ad campaign which touted “the coffee achievers”.)

Related to this theory of government mind control of millions of unwilling coffee slaves was his conviction that the big bad government quashed all the enlightenment-provoking hallucinogens and stamped out all the sleepy, happy hash and marijuana so they could hook the “ordinary dupes” on coffee and “other forms of government speed,” like cocaine and amphetamines, and fatten them up on beer and whiskey to keep them stupefied and quiet. “They do this,” he said, “for a very simple reason. The government doesn’t want wide-awake dreamers. The government wants dozing robots that will only wake up to do what they’re told and then crawl back into their lockers. The government is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. It doesn’t need any fancy ideas put forward by Joe the Dreamer. How would you like it if you came home one day and on the TV there were all these weird pictures of cows vomiting up cows and whatnot? Most people have a hard enough time with reality; they don’t want to also have to put up with nonsense spouted by wide-awake dreamers.” He paused, and gave forth an eerie laugh. “Like me.”

Thirdly, and most implausibly of all, Baby Boy Maddox complained that coffee bushes didn’t even originate on earth. “I don’t know where they came from, but I look on coffee beans with fear. Just like Kiwi fruit, and potatoes, and tomatoes. Something not quite right about those fruits and tubers. It’s like some alien race planted them here and are toying with us, to see if we’ll eat them and get with the program. Fattening the herd for slaughter. You know where that’s at. Pretty jive-ass trip. Stupid coffee bushes. Think we were put here to service THEM. They were here first; we were planted on earth solely to ensure their survival. That’s the way it is with all the enslaving poisons and engines. Machines give us convenience, the better to make us their slaves. The more money you make the more you need to make--just to maintain the lifestyle the machines have grown accustomed to. Whenever you’re in doubt, I would say that you should always head for the light, young man—because the material world is a snare and delusion.”

As for tea, he also avoided that brew for the most part, although once in awhile he would partake, declaring that an occasional cup could do no harm and was actually mildly beneficial, “provided that you always drink it on a full stomach.” As I mentioned above, Baby Boy Maddox had this theory, which may seem crazy to some, that tea, and, particularly coffee, were the result of alien spores which landed on earth with the express intent of enslaving mankind to caffeine. “That’s why the Mormons are such a threat,” he said. “The one thing I admire most about them is that they never touch the stuff. And that, to the powers that be, can only mean one thing—that the Mormons are on to something. On to their secret game. Some big dark secret game that the Government want to keep under its hat, no matter what. “

Baby Boy Maddox also had a great deal to say about farmers. “Look around you,” he said. “Steel, glass, harsh bright lights. Now, if you ever go back to the farm, what do you see? Wood, glass, stone, running water. Peace, tranquility.” He spoke with growing relish. “Crickets in the fireplace. Hay glistening in the moonshine. The smell of the dew on the pumpkin. Throwing that fresh cracked corn to clucking hens. Feeding the runt of the pig litter from a baby bottle. Putting in the garlic just after the first frost. Fertilizing the tomatoes with horse manure. Curry-combing the old gray mule to gentle him down some. Pickles made from fresh cucumbers. The honest smell of honest sweat.” He was in a reverie.

But then he suddenly grew solemn. “Come the revolution,” he said—and his voice creaked slightly, as though his vocal cords were the inadequately oiled and protesting hinges of the doorway leading to doom—“Come the revolution, the first people I would want to have on my side would be the farmers. Why? Look around you, Kid! They control the nation’s food supply! OK, so maybe you think they’re all a bunch of drunken stoop-labor hicks in bib overalls, crazy as bedbugs from dreaming of pulling up weeds. But don’t kid yourself—they got the power! How many years of canned goods do you suppose the government has got stored up? They’re not stupid, and they’re not shy—they’re hogging it ALL! How come when you go into one of them piddly-assed little so-called convenience stores in the big city, all the canned goods you see there on the shelves are covered with soot and dust? Simple! They don’t sell that shit! It’s just there for window dressing! They buy it in job lots from the government surplus! They’re only in business to sell smokes and snack foods, and who knows all what else under the counter. Only it wouldn’t look so good if that’s all they sold and so they also have food on display, as part of their deep cover. Anybody who actually buys FOOD from one of those places is probably some communist who doesn’t know better! And the canned goods are tagged with little electronic bugs so the government can keep track of them loafers and subversives. Anyway, it’s a known fact that canned goods are heavily dosed with lithium salts to keep the rowdier elements of the population at bay. Count on it--they also put all sorts of shit in the frozen foods as well. You ever notice how much salt is in processed food? Mind control, baby. Mind control. Salt to make them stupid, and corn sugar to make them fat so they can work, and television twenty four hours a day to keep them hypnotized. Fresh food is solely for the elites. Sure, the common man can go to farm stands, so called, if he can make the time to even get to them, and where they mark up the prices about two thousand per cent, but I’ll tell you right now that there’s a very good reason why the government allows it—they keep track of every single person who buys from those places. That’s why the small farmer is dangerous and the government knows it and wants to replace every one of them with factory farms—because fresh food will set you free, baby! Of course, the government makes them put pesticides on most of it. And what pesticides do, mainly, is to rob people of their ability to reproduce. Farmers are dangerous, baby. Stalin knew it, and Uncle Joe was no fool. Look what he did to the Kulaks! Mao knew it too—he put ‘em all to work making steel out of old junk and most of ‘em ended up starvin’ to death in a huge famine. Every ruler from Caesar on down knew that farmers hold the key. Look at old Roosevelt—during the worst depression in history he paid them NOT TO FARM.”

By this point, I observed that he had grown strangely agitated. “Tell ya what—if I ever get my shit together, gonna buy me a cabin in the piney woods and live off the LAND, baby! A 22, a 30-ought six, and thou—and even wilderness were paradise enow!”

As I’ve mentioned above, as well as in earlier entries, Baby Boy Maddox wasn’t much on book-learning, but he always had a great deal of time on his hands and throughout his life he gained a reputation for being what the hippies called a “heavy thinker”. One time, a few weeks later, while he was secretly bunking in my room during a snowstorm, I asked him where he got all his ideas. He looked at me startled, as though I had apparently struck him, but then I suppose he decided that since I was his friend and benefactor, that I meant him no harm. He then said that all his ideas come to him as the result of microscopic wormholes that leaked out from the greater cosmos into his open mind. I asked him to elaborate.

He would not. Instead, he said, “I don’t ‘get’ my ideas from anywhere, Sonny Jim. My ideas come to me when I’m dreaming or half asleep or half awake. Everything I know, every idea I ever had has come to me from nowhere, suddenly—maddeningly!—from out of the everywhere, as though I was in a dream. Don’t be surprised. You look like you don’t believe me. Like you think I’m lyin’ to you or somethin’. Only I don’t tell lies. Never have, never will.”

I noticed that he pronounced those last four words as though they were a slogan or a mantra—almost as though he were extolling the virtues of lemon-lime soda. “Look--think of it this way: We are all part of a hive. One person in the hive knows what every other person in the hive knows, and every other person also knows what that one person knows. Get me? It’s like a keyhole. And you just have to be unable to unlock it. Most people can’t do that. Because they’re blind. Ever try to stick a key in a lock in the total dark? Or plug a lamp into a socket? You have to fumble around a bit. Most people don’t have the patience. Most people can’t stick that key in the keyhole, or plug into that socket, because they’re blind. Either that, or else they won’t do it, because they’re afraid of trouble, of stirring up the hive, and rightfully so. They don’t want to be exposed to the light. Because then they’ll stand out. Because they know that if they stand out, they can be attacked. That’s why mice and moths are brown—so they can blend in to the forest. Once people see you, once they know your colors and know your name, they can destroy you. So if you really want to use your power, always travel under a false flag. People look at a pirate flag, the old skull and crossbones, and they think know what to expect, but they forget who it is they’re dealing with, because they all stare right into the eye sockets of that skull and they’re mesmerized by eternity. In order to work, flags have got to be vague. Flags are useless when they’re too specific. Coats of arms, fancy titles, forget it! Lay low. Blend in. Get back, Jack—get back! Once people know who you are, that’s when they have all the power over you. Dreams are really very potent. They are the source of all the hidden knowledge there is, and hidden knowledge is far more powerful than even the regular kind. Listen--if we didn’t dream, we would still be living in caves by the seashore and living on oysters and seaweed. Never mind building the pyramids and the great wall, Stonehenge or Easter Island. You can tell how far the world has fallen from the quality of its dream work. Towers, skyscrapers, the Hoover Dam, and big, ugly machines. The ancients could have built all of these things, but chose not to. That’s what they had slaves for,” he concluded, somewhat incongruously. “To do all the heavy lifting.”

He looked at me sideways, and resumed. “Nothing gets done without dreams. There are people who see things a different way, and I happen to be one of them. You look at a valley and you just see what’s there. I look down at the valley and I see the past existence complete. The methane sky, the broiling hot volcanoes, the rain, the snow, the earth cracking open, and the torrents. It seeps along. And I also see the present The growth of the town into the city. And at the same time, I see the future. The cities, the towers, the dried up rivers, the highways, the floods, the earthquakes and storms, and the meteor showers that come with the sole purpose of destroying all life on this planet. Never turn your back. You got to learn how lay chickee on the cosmos.”

"Lay chickee"?

“It sounds funny. It means to keep a look-out. For harness bulls, see. The fuzz, the heat, the Man, the pigs. The boys in blue, the po-po, the 5-0, the blue meanies. The coppers, the dicks, the politzei. Johnny Law, the Rollers, Smokey the Bear. The big whoop-whoop that’s gonna come and destroy all of you some day.”

He paused. “All the sinners, all the saints, and everybody in between.”

11. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE WIZARD OF CONSPIRACY
"Do you really think that some guy came up with that whole Wizard of
Oz schtick out of whole cloth, thin air, the clear blue sky? You're
crazy," said Baby Boy Maddox, after a recent televised showing of the
classic film. We were in Holly Park. I'm pretty sure it was in 1972.
It was Easter Monday, April 3rd, and you'd expect it to be cold and
damp, but the weather was not raw but rather, it was a bright sunny
day; one so unseasonable that it was almost frightening. "The Wizard
of Oz is some kind of benign fairy tale, right? Guess again, Boyo. It
KILLED poor Judy Garland, for openers." I wanted to ask him how it
managed to do that some 30 years after the fact, but I decided to keep
my mouth shut.

I think you can see by this example why his strange stories were like
drugs and left me feeling dazed.

"The whole story of the Wizard of Oz was a script. A script that was fed to the
guy who wrote it. By aliens. How do I know this? Well, I wasn't there
in Eightteen-hundred whatever, at least, not personally, but all you
have to do is read the fucking book and you'll see right off the bat
that the whole thing is laid out as a serious outer-space recruitment
ad. Basically, the whole thing reeks of satanic black magic."

At this point, I rememebr thinking, "Huh? Aliens? Black Magic? Which?
Make up your mind." But again, I said nothing.

"Remember the little dog, Toto? Totalitarianism, that's the way I read
it. Flying monkeys? Those are meant to be black people, by my way of
thinking. The Wizard? The Great Beast, by my estimation. The whole
story is very far from being a light-hearted fantasy for the kiddies.
In the book, do you know what the Lion does? He goes on a killing
spree, that's what. He's the Lion of Judah; that's all I have to say
about that. The scarecrow? A typical rationalist fool. Thinks
education alone can unravel the great mysteries of the occult. He
couldn't be more mistaken. He's just a straw man, literally, and he's
the one they end up putting in charge. A puppet mounted on a set of
wooden planks. And the tin woodsman? A machine man. Mechanized cannon
fodder--helpless without his oil can. Now, the so-called Wicked Witch
of the East is actually the victim in all this. They drop a fucking
house on her! It's that fucking Glinda who's the real mastermind! She
sets a helpless little girl up as her cat's paw to kill the Wicked
Witch of the West, who's actually very sane and tries to make peace
any way she can. She represents the dispossessed minorities and the
wise traditions of the pre-Christians. The whole thing is just a
fucked-up parable about how aliens manipulate two-dimensional earth
people into treading into the forbidden realms of the fourth
dimension. The Munchkins are clearly aliens, just like the ones they
found at the Roswell crash site. The Wizard's balloon is one of those
unexplained UFOs that people were seeing back in 1897. The Land of Oz
is the new slave farm and zoo that the aliens want earth people to
migrate to once the dust bowl in Kansas is completely depopulated.
It's all a part of their master plan, and we bought into it right from
the starting gate, hook, line and sinker. That's why they show that
damn movie on television year after year after year. What better way
to indoctrinate the kiddies? Man, that thing used to scare the shit
out of me. And Dorothy--dig, she's an orphan. Just like Little Orphan
Annie. And she has a dog. Kind of makes you wonder, don't it? They use
the dog, of course, to keep the kid in line. Stupid kid doesn't care
what happens to her, just so long as no harm comes to the mutt. Creepy
stuff, man. And this business of following the yellow brick road--it
just means that you should be a good consumer and keep your head down
and do as you’re told. Follow the gold. It all seems perfectly obvious to me, as it
should be to you, or anybody who even takes so much as a minute to
really think about it. And that stuff about 'Somewhere Over the
Rainbow'? Yeah, that's right--traumatize the kid by threatening her
dog, then make her accomplish a pointless series of tasks, and then
you show her singing some song in which she longs to be taken far away
from earth into some magical sprinkle-dusted fairyland populated with happy
freaks. A candy-colored loony bin. A place where they put her to sleep
with poppies and wake her up with snow. I'm telling you, the powers
that be--they don't even have the grace to sneak around--no, they
gotta show they have balls, so they rub our faces right in it. Mind
control, buddy boy--mind control. "

Baby Boy Maddox paused in his peroration as though weighing his next words carefully.
As though each one were the equivalent of spending a gold coin.

"Listen, Bub. Hitler was just an alien mind control experiment that went a wee little
too far. They couldn't control him. Some of his pals were a bit more easy to handle,
so they were allowed to live and prosper. Hitler's problem was that he was so good at the mind
control tango that people could tell. What you really need in high office is a smooth
operator; somebody like Roosevelt, or Kennedy. Somebody you can sell to the people
like so much soda pop. Television is their seething monster. Tailor-made for mind control.
Lines on a screen that hypnotise you all into willing dupes. Nanny state by day;
police state by night. All Mind Control, all the time. Take it to the streets? Go ahead,
you dirty hippies! Paint a target on your backs! Make it even easier for them to follow
you and track every last one of you down to your filthy lairs! And then watch me--as I laugh"

And then Baby Boy Maddox launched into one of the most extraordinary rants
I have ever heard.

"At least the beatniks were smart. But hippies, I have no use for hippies,
because hippies stink. Literally. These pot-smoking, patchouli wearing,
lentil-eating maggots are an eyesore. It's gotten so that a good, honest
beggar can't make a living no more."

"They steal peanut butter from grocery stores. They scrounge in Goodwill boxes
for old clothing. They turn children into good for nothing drug addicts.

Hippie chicks give so much of it it away that honest prostitutes have to
go to work slinging hash. And they're threatening to put all the barber
shops and liquor stores completely out of business.

"I recently actually saw a hippie who was teaching his DOG to beg!
Can't you SEE? It's turning into a FRANCHISE!

"I've never once ever met a hippie who knew what the hell he was talking about.
They're illiterate. Most of 'em can't even read those filthy little comic books
they like to sell in head shops, just to piss off the cops. And they're, most of
them, real ugly. To make matters worse, they don't much go in for brushing
their teeth or combing their hair. They own nothing, so of course they want
to share everything YOU've managed to scrape together. Your dope,
your crash pad, and, before you know it, your old lady, too. When's
the government going to finally get wise to itself and throw all these
punks in jail, or, better still, wash this filthy scum off the streets with
high-pressure hoses? All the hippies and bippies and zippies and yippies could
vanish off the face of the planet, and it wouldn't mean a thing to me.
Their filthy little enclaves smell like bongwater; they're always in a daze,
and they dress in torn and ugly clothing even when they don't have to.
What does it say about our town when some healthy young guy is
crawling around in giant dumpsters in back of the bakery looking
for stale doughnuts? And another thing--whenever you try to talk
to one them, all they ever say is nonsense words like "Far
F*cking Out" and "Heavy, Man." These flea-bitten plastic hippies
need to be shipped out on a raft and floated to some frozen island
where they can earn honest money gaffing monster fish onto a steam-fired
boat. The hippies would take over the whole town if we let 'em, so
I'd be perfectly happy to see every last one of 'em vanish so honest
musicians like me can make a living without having to put up
with freeloaders who sneak in to see the show for free and act
like you're John Law when you try to hit 'em up for a lousy dollar
so you have some cake money. Now, you might mistake ME
for a hippie, buit I'm not. I'm a hobo, and proud of it. I hustle
to stay alive. Those zombie slugs would wither on the vine
if anybody ever so much as mentioned the word 'work.' So while
they're off huffing reefers and talking to God, maybe someday somebody
will come upon them some time like a thief in the night.

"And it won't be pretty.

"And then they'll REALLY see the face of God."

And then he laughed, and it was the most chilling sound
I ever heard, from him or from anybody.

12. BABY BOY MADDOX: WEAVING A CRAZY CONSPIRACY QUILT

“Like I’ve told you before,” said Baby Boy Maddox, in the autumn of 1974, right after Nixon resigned the Presidency, “I ain’t got no use for hippies—none. Their crazy conspiracy theories are what turns me off most about them, I guess. As far as I’m concerned, conspiracy theories,” he said grandly, “are sports for people who can’t get laid. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not sayin that there ain’t any conspiracies. But the big boys ain’t stupid, either. Their crimes are so well hid that they never get caught. That there is the be all and end all of their morality—do what you want, but don’t get caught, or ‘we will disavow any knowledge of your activities.’” Ha! They really gave themselves away with ‘Mission Impossible.’ No gimmick quite as swell as hiding in plain sight. ‘How I learned how to stop worrying and love the CIA.’”

What followed then, from this uncharacteristically lucid recapitulation, was an epic speech in the park, on the grassy knoll, with red leaves falling down from the trees all around him even as he spoke. His speech was a wide-ranging if somewhat rambling pontification regarding a number of very interesting topics. At this time I was eighteen, just old enough to not take everything he said at face value, but just young enough to want to be open to new ideas, no matter how strange and contrary to my own assumptions and those of my parents. On the other hand, I was also more inclined than I was in earlier years to listen to him with a skeptical ear.

“The best way to get ahead? I say that you got to hide your bloody hands under snow-white gloves, then throw them a white hat and call it 'The American Dream'. Politicians are sneaks. The only thing their good for is getting fat at the expense of everybody else. You can hardly blame them. If someone left you in a locked room full of money, would you do the right thing? If you would, then you’re a fool. No, I don’t care who you are—95 out of 100 men and women would be stuffing their pockets full, and the number would be even higher if there was no chance of ever being caught. Money is basically just shit and death, you know. Anyway, there’s one thing we can all agree on—people have gotten awful good at killing other people. The bomb, germ warfare, chemical warfare, you name it. That’s if we don’t choke to death first from the smell of our own burning rivers of garbage. Or maybe forty years down the road there’ll be so many people on the earth that we drown in a burning lake of our own shit. Or maybe some crazy Russian or American will drop an H-bomb on someone by mistake and make the whole world go smash. Things are complicated enough in reality without making up all sorts of conspiracy stories that don’t even matter. So, Oswald didn’t act alone. So what? What difference does it make? What can you do about it now? So, Nixon is a corrupt son of a bitch and he’s controlled by the Bilderbergers, and Skull and Bones, and 33 Degree Masons, and the CIA, and the Illuminati, or maybe even by the Old Gods—deep space aliens from beyond time. So what? How does knowing any of that change a Goddamn thing? Big Oil and the Military-Industrial complex are the shot-callers—who cares? People get sick and die and the air quality gets worse and the water is undrinkable and evil people peddle defective drugs and more and more prisons are being built every day and fewer and fewer schools and hospitals—what did you expect? People who have the power are mostly only in it for themselves--is that so hard to believe? Thoughtful and kind on the face of it, with their loved ones, but grabby both in public and in private. There is no other explanation for any of this. The universe is a cruel and random place. Marijuana is not going to solve the world’s problems. Getting rid of Pussy-face Nixon ain’t gonna change a damn thing. Mr. Christ is not likely to come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. Look, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the ruling class has always been obsessed with money, power, drugs, and whores. To keep their place on top, they have also grown skillful at stamping out troublemakers. But just because they do these things, it does not follow that they also dabble in black magic and force feed people with experimental drugs. At least, not ALL the time.

“Do you want to know how to make a difference in this world? Don’t even bother to try. Because you’re bound to lose, just like any riverboat gambler. If you want to change your own situation for the better, you either have to push everybody out of the way like a bunch of ten pins or get down low and crawl between their legs while they’re too busy looking at the men on the moon. You can put on a charade of honesty, but that won’t get you very far, because nobody is honest and the more you babble about morals the more the smart people will realize you’re nothing but a bullshit artist, which nowadays is the only artist to be if you expect to make your way in a world full of cut-throats and thieves. If it just so happens that you actually have something to say, people will avoid you like the plague. But if you have a nice big estate and an expensive car and a beauty contest winner for a wife, then most people can’t do enough for you. They peg you for a winner, and figure that some of it might rub off on them. But they sure do avoid the stench of a loser, because it’s a known fact that the loser disease is catching. Hang out with a loser, and people figure that you must be one too. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

I thought about this for a minute, and figured he was right. I knew plenty of kids in junior high who were unpopular from day one and remained unpopular until the very last day of high school. If they were lucky enough to go to college, the very first thing they did was put aside their loser buddies just like they were waking from a bad dream. If they were too scrupulous to jettison their hopeless pals, they very soon became the very same losers in college that they were in high school. By sophomore year, I noticed, if they hadn’t changed their ways and begun to hang out with a new, hipper crowd, they were toast.

Baby Boy Maddox resumed. “Anybody who don’t look out for themselves deserves everything they get. Because if they don’t care about themselves, that’s a sure-enough sign that they have some kind of death wish, and before too long they’ll end up dragging down anybody who tries to help them up to their level. It sounds ruthless, but it’s true. We live in a natural world, and that’s a law of nature. The cripples get left behind and the strong survive, and that’s because they deserve to survive, and for no other reason. Now, you might say I ain’t got so much as one drop of Christian charity, but then again, neither do lions and tigers. Rabbits are meek and mild, and I’ll say this much for them--their meat makes a mighty good dinner on a cold winter day.”

Again, I thought about what he had to say, and had no reason to find fault with the inexorable progression of his ruthless logic.

Baby Boy Maddox turned to face me, and his eyes glistened with an unnatural light from a source I could not name—in fact, a source that I did not care to speculate about.

“Whatever you do, wherever you go, remember—now is not the time to get tied down by anybody. The world is in flux right now, and things could go either way, and you would do well to wait ten or even fifteen years before you jump one way or the other. Hang on to your ego; it’s the only way to stay true to yourself. Don’t let no hippie chick bamboozle you into thinking you’re a major dude. Sure enough, no more than a year later, you’ll be saddled with a baby on the way and a wife who all of a sudden wants you to take a job in her Daddy’s used car lot, and that’s if you’re lucky. No, the way to make your way in the world without money is to put on a good front. Like attracts like, and to get money you got to look like you’re made of money. I know I sound like a bitter old crank, but it’s the God’s own truth. Once you get a reputation of a scrounger who will settle for crumbs, then the gig is up for you, because crumbs is all you’ll get, and you’ll have to scramble hard to even gather those. Better to have a reputation as the supreme Scrooge bastard of all times; you may not be surrounded by moochers who call you their friend, but everyone will respect you for your money. Even,” he added, “the hippies.”

He paused to let this sink in, and then resumed. “We would all be powerful men if we could. Even the hippies. Especially the hippies.” He turned to me. “You’re smart. Tell me about the hippies. Explain them to me. I just don’t get it. Who are they? Where do they come from?”

I’ll admit, I had no idea. I was stumped.

“I’ll tell you about the hippie,” he said. “Hippie is a disease. A disease called stupid.”

Coming from a guy who was a self-confessed sixth grade drop-out, this was pretty puzzling talk, but I let it pass.

“They live in filthy ghettoes, by their own choice. Run down barracks that even a concentration camp survivor would turn up his nose at. Flaking paint, rotten floorboards, peeling wallpaper, holes in the plaster, broken toilets. I’ve been there; I’ve seen it. They create a miserable hell for themselves, and they call it paradise. They put more work into selling lids and nickel bags and making shitty crafts and they make less money than they would in any straight job, or even begging on the street. These are people who are physically adults and will remain emotional children probably until the day they die. They are all lost in a cult of good vibes, or what they see through a haze of pot smoke as good vibes. I don’t like hippies,” he declared. “They ain’t my kind of people. “

This was rather a stretch, I recall myself thinking. He was, after all, a musician. Hippies were his main audience; without their coins in his guitar case, he might have starved. It was at this point that I began to think that maybe Baby Boy Maddox was actually deluded. But what he had to say next took me completely by surprise.

“They believe in all kinds of goofy shit that I just can’t get a handle on. Like ‘Peace’. Who are they trying to kid? Themselves, I hope, ‘cause I ain’t buyin’ it. Life ain’t peace. Never has been, never will. Put any two people in a room and wait long enough and sooner or later they’ll arguin’. Like hippie chicks. Fun to f*ck, but then all they want to do is fight with you. ‘There’s a bug on the wall.’ ‘No, that’s just a speck.’ ‘I saw it move.’ ‘So what. Leave it alone.’ ‘It’s a spider. Kill it!’ ‘No, spiders are harmless.’ ‘It’s a centipede! Kill it!’ “No, centipedes eat other bugs.’ ‘Kill it!’ ‘Leave it alone.’ And on and on and on. They say they’re into peace and love, but the second they see something weird they want to crush it. And I don’t like the way the hippies talk, either. ‘Heavy, man.’ What’s ‘heavy’ mean? What do they know about ‘heavy’?”

I wanted to suggest to him that strumming a guitar for coins that people tossed into your guitar case was not what anybody would call particularly back breaking labor, but again, I held my tongue. Who knows what his life had been like when he was in prison? How many big ones he had to make into little ones while slaving away on the rock pile? Or how many hours a day he sweated while chopping cotton on a prison farm? So I decided to let him say his piece.

“I really don’t know what to make of most of these hippie chicks. At twenty-six, they’re still babes in the woods. Where I come from, a woman drops her foal at fourteen, fifteen, seventeen at the latest. And two or three years later, she’s all dried up. These hippies—they haven’t suffered at all. They’re like pampered pups. Fat little lapdogs who will follow their leader even into the crack of doom. Guess I shouldn’t complain, though. They’ll all be handed a major-league ass-kicking soon enough. Or maybe not. Depends on which way the wind blows, I suppose. Yeah, hippie is a disease. I’m not saying he shouldn’t grow his hair long and do his fucked-up ‘thing,’ while he still can, but what gets me is why he has to be so smug about it. His Dad hates him. The old man is a World War Two vet who slogged through the stinking Mud of the Solomons and married his high-school sweetheart and now he’s trapped, and he’s out there breaking his balls at General Pig Dynamics or whatever. And his Mom is a pill-popping biddy who starts into lushing at 10 am because her life is a soft hell, but, ‘whatever,’ Maan, like, ‘everything is everything,’ and ‘do your own thing,’ and, like, steer clear of all the ‘bad trips’ and ‘bummers.’”

“Yeah,” I said, and wondered if he was indirectly, talking about me. “Yeah,” I said again, “They’re pretty worthless, I guess.”

He turned on me. “That’s just it,” he said. “You guess. You guess, because you don’t really KNOW, now, do you?”

“I guess.”

“Don’t GUESS. Either you know, or you don’t.”

Baby Boy Maddox was beginning to sound an awful lot like my old man.

“Guessing is for chumps. Glad-handers. Ass-kissers. Latch-key kids. Lock on to your script, and dig in. If it don’t work no more, toss it in the weeds with all the other trash. But don’t ‘guess.’ It makes people nervous. It makes ME nervous. A man’s got to know what he thinks. Save the guessing and the asking why for later. It’s a cold world, Sonny Jim. Guessing ain’t gonna keep you warm. In fact,” he said with a wicked smile, “it will really do a number on your head. Do a number, huh! Most of these hippies can’t even count to twenty-five, that’s how dumb they are. Kind-hearted, but dumb. Sheep for the shearing. They don’t even know what a whole lot of nines are. They think they can love the world into dropping their weapons. Huh! Don’t you put no flowers in my big gun, that’s all I got to say. Or else,” he said, laughing his nervous little laugh which almost sounded like a titter, “You’re REALLY gonna have your mellow harshed.”

At this point I couldn’t help wondering whether some of Baby Boy Maddox’s bile wasn’t directed at people demonstrably younger than himself, in whose presence he felt himself to be a ghost.

I myself now know the feeling. Many years later, having recently witnessed a high school function, I discovered that the outdoor social habits of the concert-going young vary little from decade to decade. There’s always going to be the weird guy with the mismatched socks; the mousy little blonde with glasses who hangs out with the homely fat girl; the delightful midinette who sits on a stone wall nodding her head while wearing some kind of liberty cap ala Marie, the symbol of France; the kids who crowd around the stage and the one guy—it’s nearly always a guy—who stands off far to stage right with his arms folded dispassionately, taking in the unfolding spectacle and conspicuously betraying no visible signs of interest whatsoever. You’re always going to have the beefy athletes, identified by their cocky stance; the slouchy art slobs who hover together on the fringes of the crowd, haplessly silent; the cool young girls who stand as far away as possible from the geeks; the slackers who sit near the stage as close to the speakers as humanly possible; and, finally, the lovey-dovey couple who seat themselves a considerable distance away from the scene, bathing in both the ambiance and the presence of one another.

Given that the habits of the young deviate so little from a script which, in its basic form, varies little from generation to generation, it is no wonder that Baby Boy Maddox had become disgusted by their predictability. Even, perhaps, disgusted by me. I was the guy who always stood back from the crowd with supreme indifference and watched the passing parade unspool. But who else, other than me, or a person of my distinct type, would sit still long enough to hear him preach? His ideology was toxic to grown men and women. And he utterly despised the young. What was left for him to do but to parade downtown with novelty beggar’s signs like “Why lie? I need the money for beer.”

The end of the active U.S. involvement in Vietnam had happened less than a year ago when Baby Boy Maddox gave his speech about his hatred of hippies. So it is small wonder, then, that Baby Boy Maddox, like so many people of a protesting mentality, felt that the rug had somehow been pulled out from under him. What alternative banner could his corrosive personality support? Ecology would seem to be a natural cause, but he was far from sentimental about the forests and trees and the natural world, having lived rough for too many years to be sentimental about the great outdoors.

I believe that at this time he turned his hatred toward individuals whom he felt were even more exploitative than him. And toward one man in particular, I believe; a professor of music named Frank Zagan.

He wasn’t actually professor; he merely gave lectures on music theory at Ivy University.

Zagan was known locally for a long time as the mutton-chopped and mustachio’d singer for a number of 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s music groups. Accompanied by an assortment of sidemen, Zagan played in venues as varied as The Adventure Club, Big Loochee's, The Celebrity Room, The Cracker Club, The Devil's Lounge, The Drinking Club, The Eight Ball Café, The Firefly Tavern, The Glass Bar, The Golden Fleece, The Hop Joint & Coffeetime Lounge, Frank's Juke Joint, The Knock-Out Place, The Lobby Bar, The Low Dive, The Magic Wallet, The Old Log Inn, The Purple Passion Pit, The Pink Pussy, The Play Den Disco Strip Club, The Player's Club, The Pleasure Bar, The Purple Zebra, The Roxy, The Shuttle, The Silly Boy Lounge, The Snak Shak, The Terminal Café, Trader Hornee's, The Underworld Café, The Vice District, and the XXX Moviehouse.

The roster of the bands he played in was long: he was in a doo-wop band called "The Sweaty Chefs" (they all worked part-time in restaurants); then he led a folk band, "The Recycled Hillbillies," and when the folk boom went bust he led a short-lived calypso band called "Aloha Suckers." Next he led a surf band, "Water Sports," then a blues band, "Old Man Evil," which in 1967 became "Thee Quick-Acting Hypnotics", a "psychedelic" band. In the early 1970s, Zagan did stints as vocalist for "Christ Is Crucified and Yet You Laugh", a born-again Christian Gospel group, "John Warrior," a heavy metal band, and even an arena rock band, "The Apocalyptic Cuties." (He later became an arranger, songwriter, and bandleader for ensembles such as the acclaimed rock super-group, "The Celebrity Troublemakers"; a C&W outfit, "Big Twang And Ding"; a new-wave group, "The Rotten Pennies," and, also, the avant-garde ensemble "Chimeras Of The Enslaved Will."

His singing career effectively ended in early 1974, after he was throttled and left for dead by a mysterious assailant while walking home from a gig in Jivetown. At which point he gave up singing, since, after the incident, he now spoke with a distinctively croaking voice.

He had received an odd note prior to the attack, but police were baffled as to what its significance could have been. The contents of the note were never released to the press, but Zagan himself later told me that it was a poorly spelled, almost illiterate screed accusing him of being a “plastic hippie” and telling him that if he didn’t watch out, and desist in his “stupidity,” then somebody might come upon him “like a thief in the night.”

“One thing about the wording was rather odd,” he told me years later, “and strangely poetic. The beginning of the note said that I was hiding my ‘bloody hands’ under ‘snow-white gloves.’ I’m wondering if maybe someday I can use that in a song.”

I could have told him not to bother. For the phrase had already been used in a song—a song which had already been written by none other than Baby Boy Maddox.

13. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE PENDULUM
"There's something terrible going to happen next year," said Baby Boy Maddox, the hobo sage and would-be prophet. This was in late 1967, when I met him, or at least, observed him, for the very first time. I was about eleven years old and had read all about those mysterious creatures called "hippies" in the pages of Life and Look magazines--publications which my parents assiduously read, along with The Reader's Digest and The Saturday Review. I had even seen a few of these so-called "hippies" depicted on television news shows, when the Summer of Love was taking place. But I had never seen one of this exotic breed up close until one fateful Saturday, when I wandered into Holly Park on an unseasonably warm day in late November, looking for...hippies.

Nor was I disappointed. There he was. A supreme novelty. He had short but somehow looked taller than he was; he had long black hair, and a shaggy beard, and was dressed in what might charitably be referred to as ragged clothing.

I sat on a park bench to watch him. There was the usual band of bedraggled looking teenagers who didn't seem to have anything better to do who were lounging in the park and who paused in their blabbering and tooting of wooden flutes to sporadically listen to him as he addressed them.

He did not speak at that time with great forcefulness, but rather, with a quiet assurance which was almost hypnotic. He didn't look very much older, in 1967, than the oldest of the hippie kids who were gathered there.

"1968 will be a year of decision," he said, and I immediately locked on to his words. To me, 1970 seemed like a remotely distant future, and I had not the slightest interest in 1966, but I was at least mildly interested in what he might have to say about the year to come.

"Every 22 years or so, like clockwork, every generation rising comes of age and unleashes a karmic shit storm. And so every 11 years, you see enormous changes. Back in 1957, it was the beginning of the space race. We had eleven years for ramping up for going to the moon, and some say that we'll be there in a matter of years, if not months."

That was not particularly prophetic; everyone at the time knew that President Kennedy had pledged to reach the moon before the decade was through, and, in fact, six months before the decade's end, astronauts did actually cavort on that powdery surface, playing golf and planting masonic flags. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"Some of the madness from 1957 is beginning to subside. But 1968 will be a year of rebellion. And a year of war. And a year of revolution. Just like 1858. And 1913. And 1935.

"Then there's going to be some other kind of war--probably by the end of 1979. And that will be a nasty one. And then, yet another war, some time around 1990, but that one won't be so bad. And in 2001, there's going to be one hell of a war."

My head was beginning to spin. 1979 seemed impossibly remote, to say nothing of 2001. (The movie of the same name had not, at that time, been released.)

"You think I'm joking?" He challenged the crowd, daring them to disagree. Not one of them responded, but by now all of them were listening to him, with rapt attention. "It's a twenty-two year cycle, and it ebbs down and rises back every eleven years.

"Back in 1935 it was the fascists coming to power, and it took ten years to stamp that out and another twelve years of fighting the communists and then the whole space race broke wide open.

"Back in 1913, there were all these European nations and their pissing matches and like that, and that led to World War One and everything else that followed.

"In 1891, of course, you had all sorts of shit going on, with all the rich guys and the bigots gearing up to completely take over, and back in 1869 we were still dealing with and fighting the crony capitalists and in 1847 we were busy gobbling up Texas and California and in Europe they were all starting to go nuts.

"Back in 1825 we had a contested election for president and Andy Jackson got the shaft and in 1803 it was Napoleon and in 1792 it was the French Revolution. In 1781 the American revolution was just winding down and in 1760 you had the French and Indian War. I could go back a lot further, but why bother.

"And I'll bet you that about 45 years from now we're going to have a real big shit storm--probably some kind of revolution in this country. There's always going to be some new war of some kind every 11 years or so. It's a rite of passage. You think 1968 is gonna be bad--just wait until 2012. That's all I got to say."

Whence came this erudition?

Eleven years later I might have stumbled upon a possible answer to this question.

I had plenty of subsequent occasions to see him in Holly Park; one of the most memorable was in 1978, also in November. I had just graduated from Ivy college some five months before, and was working a temporary "straight" job, mostly so I could save up enough money to travel. I was twenty-two years old and was then at something of an impasse in my life. I was certain that I didn't want to go back to school and climb back on board the academic treadmill, but I was also quite uncertain about a choice of career.

"I hoped," said my father, "you were going to go to law school this year, but maybe you'd feel better about it if you took some time off and applied next year."

I let him go on thinking that I intended to do just that (though without actually lying to him and stating that this was my firm intention).

But a career filing briefs was just about the last thing on my mind at that time.

I was on my lunch hour, and since the place I worked at--a nonprofit organization at which I spent an inordinate time pasting labels onto envelopes--was very near the Park, I decided to stroll on over there and see if Baby Boy Maddox happened to be around.

Baby Boy Maddox, on this occasion, was there. He was in one of his periodic "clean-shaven" phases, although his raggedy and eccentric dress belied any claim he might have made to normality.

For a man who didn't have much use for book learning--who was, I suspect, barely literate--nonetheless, like most self-styled street people, Baby Boy Maddox spent a good deal of his time in libraries. Often, on the coldest winter days, he would take down a book and pretend to read it, so the librarians wouldn't try to throw him out. Usually, this book would be some sort of illustrated Bible or textbook about ancient history. "You can really learn a lot that way," said Baby Boy Maddox. "Read the paper," he said. "I got too much time on my hands, and I read it every day. Look at the signs. The economy is going down the shitter. Next year there's going to be another war, whether they declare it or not. I know I am right, and I will be proved right."

And then he winked.

He was also very fond of the periodicals section. In the latter 1970s the main branch of the Gooch Memorial Library in Gibsonia, his library of choice, had a complete collection of Life Magazine, and BBM would systematically work his way through it, volume by volume. He told me that he was particularly fond of the wartime issues, though he didn't explain why. Perhaps the women who posed for their cheesecake photos reminded him of the mother he knew so little about.

But it is not my intention to speculate. Nor did he ever tell me why he preferred that era over all others, even ancient times.

He could, however, wax quite eloquent about World War Two, and on that day, he gave me a quick and dirty history lesson that I was not soon to forget.

When we fought "them Nazis," he said, it was not merely a war. It was a "primal conflict," he claimed, just like those of ancient times. It was an era of "legendary heroes" and was "the ultimate conflict between good and evil"; one which, according to him, "the losers became good and the winners became evil." In his opinion, ultimately, "Hitler won. The United States took over the role of the Third Reich. Do you think for one minute that we're not an imperial nation? The Soviet Union is our enemy. Every empire needs an enemy, even a week one, and the Soviets are it. Cowboys and Indians all over again. Why is it always the Asians and Arabs we're fighting? Because they're not like us. I know, the Nazis. But to the Germans, we were the mongrels. The Germans loved reading about cowboys and Indians. Hitler was a big fan of Westerns. And he wanted to wipe us off the face of the planet because he thought we were just like Indians who needed to be put onto reservations, and if he had his way that's what he would have done, but who's to say he didn't? What are ghettos, after all, but concentration camps of the soul? And who runs the outer space program to this very day? Nazis, that's who."

He winked again.

"'Nuff said."

And then he vanished into the woods.



This post has been edited by dimenno: Jul 3 2012, 05:08 PM

[dimenno]

14. BABY BOY MADDOX: LIFE AS A MOVIE
Baby Boy Maddox, the hobo sage, spoke to me at length one warm spring evening. It was the night before he was booked to play a gig.

We sat in a diner, where I staked him to a meal, and we talked. Mostly, he did. I asked him about his philosophy, and this is what he said:

“My whole life is a movie. Even when I was a small boy, I always imagined that angels with cameras were filming every move I made. Does that make me sound crazy? Well, it is crazy. Not in a small boy, maybe. Certainly in a grown man. But I knew many a hard con in stir who kept himself from going crazy by keeping to the script. Now, before your brain has fully developed, you’re apt to imagine a great many things that just ain’t so. That’s the trouble with the people I meet. They have never transcended their ego, or risen above the way they was brought up to behave and believe, both of which amount to the same damn thing. They just adapt to it, adapt to living the lie. They’ve just gotten better at it. Still following the same old worn out tired out script they managed to memorize at the age of eight, or ten, or twelve. Home, wife, family, job, lots of stuff, some small thing they did once that gives them a sense of being special, then retire, rot, and a slow death, as they wilt into irrelevance. None of them see it coming until it’s practically on top of them. Not one. This car wreck called life. Except, maybe, me. By the time I was twenty I knew all too well what was in store for me. When I turned fifteen I was already fifty and by the time I was twenty I was eighty years old. That must have been how people lived back in the caveman days. Nowadays, people are encouraged to remain children forever, because you’re a big fat nobody unless you spend all your spare money on shiny toys. Even the most serious people you meet are just like children, licking their lips in concentration as they pencil in their homework assignments on paper with big fat lines. There’s not enough desperation in our day to day existence; hasn’t been for nearly a hundred years. I have nothing against machines. Machines are good. But not when they take you over and make you into their slave. Light bulbs, electric motors, indoor plumbing—wonderful things, but where do you go when you don’t want to go deaf and blind and be cooked from the inside out by all these fucking machines? Answer: nowhere. Because living without these things is a job in itself, and it’s no job for the faint of heart. Which is the great mass of men. But it ain’t me.”

I called for the check, I paid it, and we left. He went to Holly Park to sleep rough, as he always did on warm spring nights, and I returned to my college dorm, and slept a fitful sleep.

I remember that he had said all this to me just before a gig he had wrangled in a nightclub that featured folk music. It was just some dingy cellar at the far butt-end of town, in the basement of an even dingier rat-trap called The Arcadia Hotel, which, incidentally, was hard by the then-infamous Arcadia Insane Asylum. In its advertisements, mostly to be found in the underground press, the club styled itself as a home for brilliant new talent, though it was so remote from anywhere else, least of all the entertainment district downtown, that it apparently felt the need to give itself a grandiose name: Heavens Door. (No apostrophe.)

BBM had actually cleaned up nicely for this engagement, for which he would be performing for the gate, or a portion thereof. The year, I think, must have been 1975. I was in my second semester as a Freshman at Ivy and had crossed town to see him debut in this venue. Perhaps even with a thought of reviewing the performance for the college newspaper.

By then, under the sway of one or two charismatic professors, I think I had partially weaned myself away from his hypnotic grip. Perhaps he sensed this. Anyway, it was on that occasion that he opened up with some insights regarding his early life.
He was strumming his guitar, and half talking and half almost singing to the rather sparse crowd gathered to hear the performances, yet it seemed to me as though he were directing the bulk of his comments to one set of ears alone--mine. And so, once again I found myself enthralled by him, almost in spite of myself.

Here is a paraphrase of what he said. My notes were not of the best, so if the following monologue seems to be more cast in my language than in his own, that is one possible reason.

“Now, when I was a student in a one-room shack out in the red clay country with the town dump right there in our back yard within smelling distance and all the old tires and bottle caps and broken glass, and the sneezy musk wafting from a slow-moving stream filled with garbage and toxic waste, I’ll tell you, there was just two things on my mind. First, when would I escape this hell-hole and finally get to do what I wanted when I wanted, and second, how I could get my hands on a car so I could fly away from there with sixty horses under the hood to get the hell away as far away from there as possibly fast as possible. Of course, back in those days, they still had the draft. But it never once even entered my mind that I would go into the army. To me, it would be much worse than going back to that one-room school. I can remember looking at that mud filled creek and thinking how much I hated the flies and mosquitoes and centipedes, and of how I would never have anything to do with the outdoors ever again for as long as I lived if only I could get out of that country hell and make my way to the big city. How little I knew! But that terrible little one-room shack did prepare me for life in the wider world, and I suppose I ought to be grateful. When the fuzz would sap me over the head when they wanted me off of the street corners, I remember thinking that it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the beatings I would get with a ruler, and a cane, from old lady Johnson in music class. And whenever the cops tried to roust me for sneaking into the park after sundown, I remember thinking, as I crawled through the woods just out of reach of their flashlight beams, ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Sonny Jim—I’m a past master of sneaking out of a boring one room school!’ Scrooching on my belly through the woods was easy, compared to having to somehow tip-toe my way across rotten wooden boards that seemed to creak even if you even so much as looked at them. And lying to the cops was easy once I’d mastered the dozens of excuses I had to make up for getting me out of trouble with the teachers and the school principal. Seriously, though, I learned a lot of lessons the hard way at that one room school. If you have a weird name, and no folks, the teachers would always be a lot harder on you than if your family was a bunch of churchgoing types who also did volunteer work and gave to charity and shit like that. You spent three months memorizing multiplication tables, which comes in handy when people in stores try to cheat you of your change by pretending to ring up your purchase but actually pocketing as much of the dough as they can. You spend another three months after school studying Catechism, which comes in handy when you’re caught red-handed by some old mackerel-snapping harness bull as you’re boosting supplies from the hardware store and you show him the Bible and give him the old sob story about how your aged mother would croak if she knew what disgrace you had brought unto the family and that if he could only cut you loose you would be gosh-darn sure to Go and Sin No More. Most of all, more than anything else, a school like that teaches what what’s the normal way to behave when people think they have a right to boss you around. You hang your head and say Yessir and Nosir as you plot your revenge and what you’re going to do to get even with them the second you manage to wiggle off the hook. You might say it’s a temporary stopgap, to mouth all the right words while thinking the blackest thoughts. And maybe it’s so. But it keeps you sane, and in the game. When we was in school I also remember that they told us a pretty little story about the boy and the nuts. Seems as though some little bastard kid was so greedy that when he was invited to reach into a jar of nuts, he grabbed so many that he couldn’t get his hand out and he had to let go of all of them. No nuts for him! The moral of the story is, when you latch on to a good thing, don’t work it to death right from the get-go. Take it slow and easy at first, and leave some for later so that nobody catches wise until you’ve managed to come back and grab ALL the nuts. American history was also a good thing to know about. The whole history of the country can be summed up as ‘Divide and Conquer’. The Indians, the Revolution, Mexico, the Civil War, all of it. If you can sow discord you can split their forces, and leave them faded fucked and forgotten, and with yours truly in the catbird seat. Also, that it’s always better to be the man with the Big Nuts because when people go around looking for a scapegoat, the fly gets caught in the net while the big old road-fed crow easily breaks free and says, ‘What are YOU looking at?’ Some people go into the military because they imagine that somehow, by making themselves the slaves to a process, they will find the ultimate freedom to follow their destiny. What they don’t know is that education and the military is a machine for molding destinies. The further you get from those machines, the better off you’ll be, and the more freedom you’ll have to come to your own insights in your own time. Nothing to me is more pathetic than some rigid ornery shave tail who brags about how all the poor people overseas admire him for his shiny uniform. If those are the kind of people you feel pride in being able to dominate, then there must be something wrong with you. The ones you want to dominate—if you really want to score, first you capture the hearts and minds of all the free thinkers. And then the rest will follow you blindly. Because one man of destiny is worth a million peasants. The man of destiny gets the smart people and the stupid people, and he gets all of them by the balls. Nobody remembers a dead cop, or a dead soldier, for that matter, except his own family and his brothers in arms. But everybody remembers the guy who stands up and says ‘This is how it REALLY is.’ The saints, the sinners, and all the rest. So what you want to do is find a way to grab ALL the nuts, but at the same time be slick about it, and do it in such a way that nobody knows what you’re up to until the deed is done. And to do that, you have to remember one thing and one thing only. Talk to whoever you talk to in just the same way that they talk to you. Then you’ll be irresistible, because then they’ll think you’re telling them something that THEY ALREADY KNOW. One time, I was walking down the street in Gibsonia and I saw a little girl standing under one of them trees with the cigar-shaped pods, I think you call them catalpas, and she was crying. She couldn’t have been more than five or six years old, but she was dressed in rags and she looked like she’s been abused. I walked up to her and I said, ‘Little girl, I am an angel sent by the Lord and he sent me here to tell you that you’re not bad, you’re good. What happens to you is unimportant because you’re not bad, you’re good. No matter what happens to you, remember—you’re not bad, you’re good.’ And after I handed her that happy horseshit, she gave me a pathetic little smile that would have broke your heart as surely as it almost broke mine. I think that at that moment, she would have followed me to the ends of the earth. Which goes to show. Tell them what they want to believe—that nothing nowhere is none of it ever any of their fault—and you’ll have them eating out of your hand like a little dog. Even if they don’t understand anything else you tell ‘em. Another time, I saw a kid who was skipping for joy. I walked him what he was so happy about and he said he had just graduated from the sixth grade. I took a close look at this kid and locked his eyes with mine and I told him that the worst was over and that from here on in, he was old enough to decide whether or not he should believe what people tell him, or whether he should simply keep his mouth shut and draw his own conclusions. I told him that elementary school is a hospital where they amputate your imagination, and that now he was going to have to build his imagination up all over again, from scratch. You can imagine that after I left him standing there in the dirt path leading away from school, he was one confused kid. But I planted a seed there, and I’m not a gambling man but I’ll bet you cash money that the dumb little kid will never forget a single word of what I told him. Like I said, it’s not what you say so much as it is the way you say it. You know, there are worse things than dying. One of them being that you never lived at all. That your whole life has been lived for you—through, if not exactly by, somebody else. I’ll say this right now—nothing is more important than to protect your thoughts. Your thoughts are who you are and if somebody is able to change them, then you’re no longer a person but just a machine, doing what a machine does, which is to make a little noise and then a lot of noise just before it breaks down and it gets hauled down the towpath and gets sent to the junkyard, or the dump behind the schoolhouse with all the other broken toys. Imagine if, instead of being that machine, each one of us were to wake up to the possibility of stopping all the gears of civilization--with the power of our ideas alone? The question we all ought to ask ourselves every day is, ‘What have I done to clear my mind and keep me free of all the influences that make me want to settle for a life of ease—where everything is all laid out and independent thinkers are shown the gate?’ It’s an easy life that many people choose, but those people ain’t got it as soft as you might imagine. They are fearful…superstitious…and living in a make-believe world in which the men in the white hats always win just before the final reel. That ain’t my movie, and I sure as hell hope it ain’t yours, either. Look, I live rough, and a lot of times I am cold and tired. But don’t pity me. My mind is my own. I’m hungry, but I’m proud. THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN MINDLESS DRUDGERY IS MINDFUL DRUDGERY.”

With that, he ended his speech-song on a series of resounding chords that sounded like a bell tolling to summon the town. The scattering of people in the crowd—at least three of them, I suspect, were inmates from the local insane asylum-- applauded enthusiastically, but he had already passed beyond the curtain and had left that building, filled with the crazed ghosts of the not so recent past and ready to be filled once more with the madness of times to come.

15. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE INTERVIEW
[Originally published in STATUS QUO ANTE #3 (Summer 1968)

SQA: How do you get your ideas?
BBM: I close my eyes.
SQA: I mean, where do you get your ideas? What are your major influences?
BBM: The wind. The rain. The stars.
SQA: What is your opinion of drugs?
BBM: Drugs are good, because you pay the price. The only way to wisdom is
to pay the price. You grab hold of the experience while the experience shakes
you but will not let you go. Stay pure and you learn nothing.
SQA: Some people say you've sold out...
BBM: You have to buy in before you sell out. Nothing familiar to you is anything I want
or can take for granted. I live in the in-between of what IS and what never can BE.
SQA: They also tell me you have no sense of humor.
BBM: You want clowns, go to the circus.
SQA: What's the worst audience you've ever played in front of?
BBM: Myself.
SQA: Who taught you to play guitar?
BBM: I learned to play guitar from hanging around with criminals and watching what they do.
The music industry is overrun with them. They're either criminals or suckers, every one of them.
The only alternative is to beg. Criminals will sometimes take pity on the blind. They're superstitious that way.
SQA: What are your favorite books?
BBM: I hate people who talk about books. Talk about who YOU are.
SQA: What's the most unusual place you've ever gigged?
BBM: Singing to myself inside of a madhouse.
SQA: What would you do with a million dollars?
BBM: Burn it.
SQA: Who are the current musicians you most admire?
BBM: None of them. If they're not dead, I have no use for them.
SQA: Then who are the great artists of the past whom you admire most?
BBM: There's no future n wallowing in the past.
SQA: People say you're difficult to interview.
BBM: People ask the wrong questions.
SQA: What sorts of questions would you like to be asked?
BBM: You tell me.
SQA: Maybe you'd like the opportunity to tell people more about yourself...?
BBM: I would, if I had an ego.
SQA: Any plans for the future?
BBM: There is no future, there is only the present, and right now I'm through with answering pointless questions.

16. THE WHITE ALBUM ACCORDING TO BABY BOY MADDOX
“I guess the real reason I hate the Beatles,” said Baby Boy Maddox on a cold winter’s day in 1969, “is mainly because, number one, I’m jealous. I listen to their songs and I watch them shake their asses and say yeah yeah yeah and I notice how some people practically worship them as gods and I say to myself ‘Wow! How can I get in on THAT?’ You listen real close to any one of their songs—even one of the shitty ones, even the ones they gave away to clowns like Freddie and the Dreamers—and you say, ‘Great God! How did they DO that?’”

I had smuggled him into my room late one February night, and we sat, listening to the latest Beatles album, called simply ‘The Beatles’ and also known as ‘The White Album’.

He resumed. “After a long time thinking about it—and believe me, I’ve had all the time in the world to sit and think—I finally figured it out. THEY don’t write the songs! They’ve got a whole STABLE of songwriters and producers and sound engineers to HELP them write the songs, and the four of them just chirp real pretty-like and shake their asses and my GOD how the money rolls in.”

By this time—I was 14—I knew better to argue with him or even to signal my disapproval by grunting derisively, or even rolling my eyes. He had an uncanny ability to read body language, and he would have jumped on any sign of disagreement right away. So I just sat back and listened to him pontificate.
“You see,” he said, looking at me seriously, to be sure that his words were having the desired effect, “The Beatles are actually like a lighthouse. Beacons of the coming New World Order. All the young people in this world feel lost and hopeless and they’re looking for something to believe in, and who should that be, other than The Holy Trinity—plus Ringo. Note that Ringo doesn’t really get any credit for writing any of the songs. Of course, none of them actually do write those songs, like I said. Everything they sing about is planned well in advance by the intelligence agencies—I’m not going to say which ones. Let’s say that the big boys feel the need to replenish the Anglo-Saxon world with white people. So then they write songs of love propaganda. Let’s say you want to dose the weak culls with powerful mind-altering drugs so they’re too damn stupefied to pick up guns and fight back. Then you write songs about peace and love and groovy trips. Pretty soon, all the kids figure that’s the way to go and pretty soon they’re so busy fucking their brains out while tripping on orange sunshine that they fail to notice that their civil rights are being snatched right out from under them. They’re all being led like blind cattle frothing at the mouth, straight to the slaughter pen. Oh, I know you’ll laugh and say I’m jealous, and I’m telling you that I’ve already admitted as much, right off the bat. You see, certain sound frequencies and modulations can affect the human brain in certain ways—make people act agitated or depressed or whatever you like—and the people behind the Beatles have had at least twenty years of practice in manipulating these sounds to best produce the results they’re after—and guess what it is? Mind Control, Baby. Don’t make me say it again.”

We then sat and listened a couple of times to the White Album, and I jotted down Baby Boy Maddox’s running commentary on the then just-released album.

After the first time we had listened to the record all the way through, Baby Boy Maddox looked thoughtful and said, “I think it's safe to say that something bad happened to the Beatles after Brian Epstein died. They lost their focus. Word is that Johnny’s been gobbling orange sunshine like it’s St. Joseph's Baby aspirin. And it sounds like Paul has given in to all of his worst impulses and is churning out crap like somebody was holding a gun to his head. And George is finally being given a few album tracks and the results are, um, mixed.”

As the record spun for the second time, Baby Boy Maddox gave a blow by blow account of what we were hearing, as though he were the star of ‘Juke Box Jury’.

Back in the U.S.S.R.
It's not exactly the classiest move going to mock the f*cking Beach Boys.

Dear Prudence
I wonder if Frankie Sinatra ever got wind of the fact that this was about his sister-in-law? I imagine that if he ever found out, he’d have some of his goons stop by the Apple HQ and rough them up a little bit.

Glass Onion
You can smell the stink of exhaustion from here. Now they’re writing songs that refer to the lyrics of earlier songs! Jesus, Guys, write a NEW song already!

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Sometimes I used to think that Paul was not a really disgusting human being, but this confirms how wrong I was. What a load of garbage.

Wild Honey Pie
Jesus--this sure does suck.

The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
Yoko should not be allowed to sing on this or any other song.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Great—George finally “writes” a decent song, and he has to have Clapton help him. I’ll bet he’s going to coast on this one for years to come....

Happiness Is a Warm Gun
I think this is a really cool song, because it shows us just how f*cking crazy Johnny really is.

Martha My Dear
Yet another McCartney piece o’ shit...about his f*cking sheepdog, for the love of Christ. The only thing that would make it worse is if the mutt were dead and he’s sitting there crying his eyes out over her bloated corpse.

I'm So Tired
Funny how Johnny has gotten so good at “writing” songs about how exhausted he is, and about how all his sources of inspiration have dried up. A real downer, in more ways than one.

Blackbird
Whenever McCartney farts around with politics, he just embarrasses himself.

Piggies
Harrison really is a strident jerk.

Rocky Raccoon
What a piece o' crap.

Don't Pass Me By
Ringo, you've had just about six years to come up with a decent song. Is this the best that you can do?

Why Don't We Do It In the Road?
That Paul--a real jokester.

I Will
One of Paul's bits of fluff that makes me want to say, "Yeah? So??"

Julia
Awww....

Birthday
Takes way too long to get to the point, and when it gets there, it's a big "so what?".

Yer Blues
Yada, yada, bla bla bla. Tell it to Lenny Bruce, man.

Mother Nature's Son
Paul, we know you can write syrupy crap--you got nothing to prove....

Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey
Listen, Johnny--maybe you should have hidden this song and replaced it with a one that actually has a melody....

Sexy Sadie
We all know you’re talking about the Maharishi--why the big cop out?

Helter Skelter
Like "Monkey," yet another piece o' crap--all furious motion, no ideas....

Long, Long, Long
At long long long last--a decent melody from George.

Revolution I
Geez, glad to see you're working on your street cred, Johnny.

Honey pie
What is this? The 1920s revival? Why? Why? Remember 'Winchester Cathedral?’ What is it with these stupid Brits? That shit is horrible!

Savoy Truffle
Yeah, I have problems with my teeth too, but I didn't write a pointless song about it....

Cry Baby Cry
Well, this is a nice first half of a song, but where's the rest of it?

Revolution 9
When I spun this backwards, it sounded like the guy was saying "Let me on, young man"....The hell of it is, this is probably the best thing on the whole damn album. Mind Control, Baby. There—I said it again.

Good Night
Phil Spector, call your office...somebody's trying to steal your wall o' sound....

17. THE PHILOSOPHY OF BABY BOY MADDOX
"You have put on your blindfold and you call it your philosophy."--Baby Boy Maddox, 1968

I personally have always been skeptical of any pop star who claims to be a philosopher. leave weighty thoughts to the intellectual heavyweights. That has alway been my instinct.

But baby Boy Maddox was different from any man I have ever met, musician or otherwise. He was not simply an opposite number, a negative counterpoint. he negated even negation. he belonged in outer space among he aliens, the truly super-rational who could look down upon our puny human race with cold obsidian eyes and pass judgment on us all from an infinitely higher plane.

He himself told me, on more than one occasion, that he never worried or felt fear because, in fact, he felt nothing--nor was he worried or even concerned about his lack of feeling. It was simply a fact. He was not, he said, a narcissist--for they were all effeminate in some way. He himself was a rock. You could bury him in the autumn but he would always work his way back to the surface in the spring.

And for what purpose did he live his own life?

To give nihilism a chance to grow and take root in young minds for when it would be needed. True, in nine out of ten cases, this nihilism might distort and blight their lives. he was not concerned with such "collateral damage." It was nature's way of "culling the herd." He was just the catalyst. Those who were fit to live in a cold new world with no verities would be all the stronger for it.

And they would rise.

You might say that his songs were like ticking time bombs.

His was an anti-spirituality which replaces the soul with the black sucking void of the universe as it was before the earth was formed.

You might imagine that he was a left-wing radical but to me he seemed more like an extreme purist.

He sought to tell the truth and only the truth and that made him a very dangerous man, because he was very persuasive.

He taught reality, and some were driven mad.

He taught the power of not thinking at all and some were made sane.

He was a con man and a holy fool; a shaman and an arch-demon. Some people only manifest their true selves once or twice in their lives. Baby Boy Maddox was manifested every day. That is why he would never answer questions.

He would only ask you: "Who, then, is this person within you who needs answers--where none exist?"

18. BABY BOY MADDOX: SONGS AND ALBUMS HAVE A LIFE OF THEIR OWN
A kind of Poor Man's Pantheism always seemed to be a central tenet of what we'll call, for lack of a better term, "The Baby Boy Maddox Philosophy." Where he picked up the notion, I'll never know. For a man who never cracked open a book that I ever noticed, he seemed remarkably well-informed regarding all the most trendy notions that afflicted true believers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Shamans, hypnotism, mental projection, ESP--he seemed well up on all of these ideas which, to be sure, were a part of the very air one breathed during those unseemly and tumultuous times.

But he also seemed to have a more than rudimentary knowledge of semiotics and other, more advanced means of influence. The way he gestured when he spoke--it sometimes seemed as though he were trying to mesmerize his listeners. And when he sang, he would often stammer or pause or use other performer's tricks that would leave a lasting impression--and yet, no two of his performances were ever quite the same. He was adamant about not being recorded while he was singing unless he chose to be--less from a superstitious apprehension that his soul would be stolen--did he even have a soul?--and more from a conviction, perhaps, that some vital, mystical spark unique to him would, somehow, be captured and then reproduced in some unauthorized setting with neither his knowledge or his consent. Paranoia, some would call it. He wanted to leave no tracks behind. In that way, he could vanish whenever he chose.

Another odd thing about him was that he never signed his name the same way twice. I have seen dozens of the autographs he dispensed. Each and every one was different, as though he were a completely different person. not only from day to day, but from moment to moment.

Furthermore, this paranoia about being recorded partially extended to having his picture taken--he preferred to be allowed to strike a pose, during which procedure he would alter his expression in subtle ways to ensure that no two snapshots ever looked quite the same.

"Everything," Baby Boy Maddox would say, in one of his monotonously predictable diatribes on this topic, "has a life of its own. So be careful when you seek to alter reality. To move a piece of paper or even a stone from one place to another could very well be the cause of a tidal wave in China."

"Even ideas," he claimed, "Have a life of their own. Every song is a new world. Every album is an new universe."

When asked to elaborate on this theme, BBM would shake his head and touch his nose, as if to assert, 'Those who know do not say; those who say do not know.'

On one occasion, however, I did manage to draw him out. It was directly after sunset and the moon was full after a summer shower and the sky was permeated with a peculiar light--one might almost call it a beige fog--and we were in Holly park, seated in a rude lean-to constructed from boards and other bric-a-brac which he had presumably liberated from a nearly construction site.

"Notice," he said, "There are no atheists in asylums. Try telling the insane that God does not exist--and then watch their faces!"

"We travel through this life," he resumed, refusing to swat at the mosquitoes which had stared to come out in squadrons, "and we alter it in subtle ways as we go, but if you look at how wild animals behave--not domesticated pets, they're too much like us--you'll notice that they never put a foot wrong. Why? Because some force drives them to do what they do, and that force is never wrong. Man is the most tragically flawed of all the animals because once we are no longer children we stop our ears and close our eyes to the force that drives the universe until finally we can no longer feel it, or much of anything at all. That is our first mistake--we shuffle like automatic machine-driven zombies and every now and then we glance at our watches because we can no longer tell the time from the sun or the moon. Of all the animals, man is the most truly alone. It is a rare man who can operate purely on instinct. Such a man, if he is given the power, becomes a great leader of other men."

I did not dare to ask him what becomes of such a man--if he is thwarted.

I didn't have to. The evidence was before me.

19. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE DEATH OF ELVIS
Insofar as the insignificant nightclub impresario calling himself Joey Heroin has had any impact at all on the musical career of Baby Boy Maddox, the hobo sage, it was a negative one. A musician of small talent and even less originality, Joey Heroin (nee Jerry Acheminer) seems to have latched onto BBM in the fall of 1977, a few weeks after the August 16th death of Elvis. Joey Heroin, as I recall, was beginning his junior year at Ivy University. He had a laughable sense of reverse entitlement, struggling to establish his working-class anti-establishment bona fides while at the same time, as a would-be music impresario, acting as reprehensibly as any major-league capitalist piggie. Longing to make a splash in the then still-nascent punk rock scene at the College, he had sponsored an appearance of BBM at one of the college dormitory common rooms. The room happened to be a rather large and spacious auditorium-like setting, and its substantial windows faced the main street of the college town. I happened to be present when the two first encountered each other, and have an interesting anecdote to share.

Before introducing BBM as the main event, Joey Heroin sought to bolster his own fragile "career" by seeking to "honor" the memory of Elvis, the recently deceased rock monarch. He attempted to do so a few badly rendered and even less appreciated vocal "tributes" to The King. These attempts were not appreciated by the assembled crowd of some fifty students, street people, and townies, some of whom were dressed in jeans, others in faded hippie gear, and still others in black clothing which perhaps they imagined were an approximation of the "punk" look. All of them were drinking, and not a few of them, mostly women, were getting rather drunk.

Baby Boy Maddox took up Joey Heroin's guitar (far superior to his own rather battered five string model) and then proceeded to announce to the assembled crowd, "Fuck Elvis."

He then performed a remarkable song based upon that theme, with lyrics which suggested that Elvis was born to follow a plough but instead became "the music industry's fattest cow". He improvised some more verses along that same theme, suggesting that people in "the here and now" have no business worshiping "an enormous sacred cow," and that, "anyhow," Elvis was less interested in entertaining and far more interested in filling his "putrid face" with "chow."

One would have thought that by this time his inspiration would have been exhausted, but, indeed, as it happened, he was just getting warmed up. Baby Boy Maddox mentioned that Elvis would puff "on a little cigar," while at the same time "ingesting every drug in the PDR"; that he had a reputation as a "great lover" but that "...according to the book/All he ever really liked to do was look." He then proceeded, in turn, to refer to Elvis as "a manufactured Buddha"; "the Colonel's clown"; "figurehead of a billion-dollar racket"; "a pompadoured snitch"; a "chop-socky cuckold," and much, much more. By the time he had finished, all fifty-odd of the assorted jaded collegiate spectators had risen from their seats and were giving him a standing ovation. (In the meantime, of course, Joey Heroin had discreetly left the room.)

20. WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BABY BOY MADDOX
History would be appreciably different, perhaps, if powerful SSRIs had been widely prescribed during the late 1960s rather than during the 1990s. Those of you who are in the know are well aware of what I am talking about. Those of you who are “normal” should perhaps stay that way and not read any further because it is perfectly obvious to me (and a few like-minded souls) that the “forbidden fruit” spoken of in Genesis was actually some sort of mind-altering drug.

Of which, admittedly, there were plenty in the late 1960s.

Not all of them good, and many of them not pure.

Heroin was a bummer. Speed was a death trip. Booze was a balm to soothe the lifer.

All this, according to the Gospel of Baby Boy Maddox. From God’s own lips to mine own ears. I call him “God” because the possibility is there.

To quote from the source:

“Whatever you do unto the least of my Brethren, so you do unto me.” And, more importantly, “Place not your trust in Princes.”

Baby Boy Maddox had a greatn many unique interpretations regarding The Good Book.

That Devils live in an underground city and frequently climb up to heaven on a “shiny ladder” and need to be frequently kicked back down to Hell by ever-vigilant angels with callused soles.

That Lot’s Wife was turned into a pillar of salt by an atomic blast. “That should be obvious.”

That a physical copy of the Bible has the magical power to repel bullets.

That the whole bit about "ten good men in Sodom" was most likely merely the setup to an elaborate shaggy-dog story.

That the “tablets” brought down from Mount Sinai were, in reality, powerful drugs.

That the Whore of Babylon was actually a pretty nice lady.

That Jesus should have ridden into Jerusalem on a dinosaur. "That would have been a REAL game-changer."

That Jesus would love us all even if the Bible didn’t tell us so.

That Isaiah 13:3, and 5 refers to the atomic bomb: “The LORD of hosts is mustering the army for battle. They are coming from a far country, From the farthest horizons, The LORD and His instruments of indignation, to destroy the whole land" .

That priests wield glowing brands with Bible verses on religious retreats which are part of what they call their “Midnight Initiation for Big Boys.”

That Hollywood is a pagan idol that demands human sacrifice.

That Frosty the Snowman is a modern-day messiah.

That the story of Popeye is actually the story of Jesus.

That King Kong, Frankenstein and Cool Hand Luke also died for our sins.

That the Bible is truly subversive; a handbook for revolution, if you know how to read it.

So saith Baby Boy Maddox.

Not one mention of any of this, of course, in the allegedly “Authorized” Biography of the man.

Not one.

This post has been edited by dimenno: Jul 3 2012, 05:19 PM

[dimenno]

21. BABY BOY MADDOX: WAKE THE WORLD
Admittedly, very often Baby Boy Maddox was rather a sloppy thinker, and all too often he rather loosely threw around terms such as Normal, Forbidden, Mind-altering, Obvious, Magical, Powerful, and even Subversive.

But BBM got truly serious when talking about what he called “magic drugs.” It was a slushy spring Sunday dusk in late March of 1969 when he corralled me in Holly Park and drew me aside to deliver the following oration. He was bearded and unwashed and looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. The air was cool and damp and smelled like smoke—perhaps from a nearby fireplace or some faraway fire. The moon was rising and his pupils were wide and he was obviously under the influence of some powerful substance.

"LSD is giving the youth of America powers of perception that are Godlike. Powers of perception that scientists can only dream of. Access to all the esoteric information only known to adepts and mages. Only look at their electric brains in action: they use them to draw maps of the cosmos and to write encyclopedias of human feeling. They can probe deepest space and know what it’s like to live in the heart of a star, and then shrink down to be inside of the center of an atom.They are all-knowing and all wise, with uncanny visionary powers beyond time and space. Insight is the new religion, and Lsd is the sacrament. Distribution of the sacred knowledge is our holy mass. The very nature of man himself is changing. We are becoming the creator of worlds. Our history is a new history, and the old history is now simply cave paintings compared to what we now know and see. We used to be animals, but now we are Gods! We can do and say anything! We can wake the world! The planet is an open faced sandwich! With the power of God-Is-Love, we can drop it so it always lands butter side up! We can alter the fabric of reality like we alter out clothing! We can sew pockets inside of our jackets that can carry the stars! We are not alone! Every turned-on mind connects to every other turned-on mind! It’s a new dawn!

"Look at your mind; who you could connect to and constantly share all things at the speed of thought! You’re never alone! Never! We never sleep! We are always awake and will remain awake for all time, as part of the Universal One! I can raise my arm and start a tidal wave! How soon is the future? Never mind? The future is now! The lines on my hand are a map of the cosmos! Never doubt it! All of history is the same lousy story—not only are we here—we are everywhere! Our pulse is the pulse of the universe! There is no way to turn the channel—we ARE the channel! With a few dozen micrograms of our sacrament we can touch every living soul on the face of the earth! And see the love! The love which is life itself! I can cough—and the whole world feels me clear my throat! I can talk—and the whole world can hear me all at once! Old men will have to assimilate to our culture and our way of thinking. Or else they will be irrelevant. Look at their game. Their game is old! They need a new game that’s for real!

"They need to come to the real! They need to join us in…a New Jerusalem!"

22. BABY BOY MADDOX: THIS IS POP

Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage, speaking, as usual from his oracular boulder in Holly Park during the Spring of '71, told me that popular music is, and always has been, nothing more than a machine for making robots. What he seemed to be getting at was as follows: 1-4-5 is neurolinguistic code. Translation: Consume; Fornicate; Die.

Indeed!

Nobody, in my opinion, knew this plain fact better than Baby Boy Maddox. Of course, he was not sophisticated enough to explicate this bald fact in scientific terms; instead, he used the pseudo-scientific, quasi-mystical terminology so prevalent during the early 1970s. A terminology in which he was, as it happens, quite fluent. Often, in his stage patter, he would offer up mumbo-jumbo styled pronouncements about how music was the great healer; how the "vibrations" he sent forth were the great "unifier" in a world "divided against itself by harmful vibes."

He would also often deliver forth nonsensical admonitions such as "listen to the music and feel the love work inside you." Rather than hooting him off the stage, many of his listeners would instead merely stare at him in gape-eyed wonderment, and not a few of them, nearly all of them girls and young women, would begin to tremble, occasionally falling in to their knees in excited fits.

The explanation of this reaction lies somewhere short of mass hypnosis. Through a combination of physical and tonal "gestures", BBM was able to influence his week-minded and therefore suggestible subjects. Plus, nearly everyone at the time was either tripping on LSD or stoned on hash and grass. This made them "hear" things and respond to these novel intonations in ways that clear-minded people would instinctively resist.

I am told that BBM was considered particularly "heavy" by people who indulged in hallucinogenic drugs. He had a way, I am told, of "peeling back your ego" until nothing was left except the "clear light of being". It is not for nothing that, particularly among these benighted souls, BBM was referred to, in hushed tones, as the "master of infinite space and time" (or MOISAT, among the truly initiated).

In an era rife with bogus gurus, to these poor misguided souls BBM was regarded as "The real deal--a genuine mystic."

Here are twenty of his so-called "mystical teachings", which he used to bolster his already existing techniques for crowd control and mass suggestion.

Make of them what you will, and take them for what they are worth.

(1) The Gods know everything, so any God you worship is a good one, and since we are all gods, you might do well to worship me.

(2) Our system is basically bankrupt, so it doesn't really make much sense to work for a living. Be like me--live free: free as the air.

(3) Spend nothing. Save every dime, or, better yet, get someone else to give you dimes and save them as well.

(4) Tell an audience things they may not want to hear, but always assure them that you were merely quoting someone else.
.
(5) I am deeply concerned about the environment. The less we exist, and exist upon it, the stronger the earth will be.

(6) Do not be opposed to the devil. This makes the devil even stronger.

(7) All our education does is teach us to accept our own undoing.

(8) Never give a prophet his due, because then he becomes an actor rather than a visionary.

(9) The old are not worth inspiring.

(10) Support everything; believe nothing.

(11) Invest in nothing. You will never take a loss on that investment.

(12) The path of politics leads to sterility.

(13) Every time you vote you sacrifice just a little more of your soul.

(14) There are no rights. There are only wrongs.

(15) Drugs may seem like a shortcut, but without some sort of guide you will likely end up more lost than before.

(16) I believe that only a “liberal” would think it is wise to be liberal in all things.

(17) There is nothing deep about deep concern.

(18) Resist the tyranny of common sense.

(19) Never listen to the words--only to the tone. If the tone does not speak to you, then the words do not matter.

(20) Do you feel exploited? You should. Life is the ultimate exploitation.

23. BABY BOY MADDOX: MYSTICAL TEACHINGS
Here are twenty-five more of the so-called "mystical teachings" of Baby Boy Maddox. Teachings which he used to bolster his already existing techniques for crowd control and mass suggestion.
Make of them what you will, and take them for what they are worth.
(1) The Gods are everywhere. I am God. I am everywhere.

(2) Nothing is easy. So do nothing and live easy.

(3) Crime? What is crime? The world itself is a crime. Crime, and its punishment. And we are its prisoners.

(4) Take 15 seconds to ask yourself what your critics have ever done, then spend the rest of your short life in continuing to do what you do best.

(5) I am deeply concerned about the environment. The less there is of you the stronger I will be.

(6) Do not be opposed to the devil. You are the devil.

(7) Being poor is the poor man's profession.

(8) People with short hair are robots; people with long hair are fools.

(9) The higher up you are, the further you can spit.

(10) If you worship mountains, every pebble is a saint.

(11) It's not so easy to kill a ghost.

(12) The more illusory the enemy the more relentlessly he must be hunted down.

(13) History repeats itself, but so do I.

(14) Do not despise a man for being transparent, for by looking through him you are also looking through yourself.

(15) When you are surrounded by enemies you are never lonely.

(16) You don't know what you are until you lose it.

(17) Tradition is what gets in the way.

(18) America is zoned for business, not beauty.

(19) Half our life is work and the rest is trying to atone for it,

(20) When you go to the human race, bet on the people to lose.

(21) There is no self that will not crumble.

(22) Being contaminates the void.

(23) The flame is hostile to the wing.

(24) To know nothing is to be capable of anything.

(25) A man who is not true to himself is wearing a mask that eats his soul.

24. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE DEVIL'S SONGBOOK
I've spent a great deal of my free time analyzing the song lyrics of Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage.

Let's say that people are sometimes deformed by their jobs. Librarians are quiet and shuffle a lot; policemen tend to be brash; and nurses go all gooey over cats and dogs because they don't talk back.
Perhaps,then, our creative impulses. too, are also deformed by the very tropes which we use to express them.
Artists, I find, frequently express their deepest and most profound subconscious concerns through the tropes they employ to put their works across to a wider public.
Musicians accomplish this by means of their mode of musical expression. Fast, caustic, violent rhythms signify the boiling of testosterone in their confused brains, while intricate, ruminative instrumentals often represent access to some higher, more enlightened form of consciousness.

But it is most of all in their lyrical effusions that songwriters in particular most truly express the core of their innermost beings.

For no one is this more true than Baby Boy Maddox.

I mean, he's a hobo, right? (Strangely foppish for a hobo, however.) He's a starving tramp. (Curiously suave for a bindlestiff, though.) He lives in the woods. (Yet. oddly insouciant for a layabout.)

He has lots of free time to think and very little in the way of media chaff or other assorted irrelevant clutter to sift through, and he comes up with gems of wisdom which would make the wisest philosophers gasp.

"God spoke to me this morning and he says that this is not your day."

(John Calvin with all his doctrines of predestination and election could not have provided a more telling explication of theology, fate, and poetic justice.)

"Why did God give you all the sweetest meat and leave me with the crumbs?"

(A profound rumination on the nature/nurture controversy, with endless ramifications.)

On the surface, some of his lyrics seem merely coarse. But dig deeper, friend, and you will find unexpected depths in the cawn bosom of these pellucid pools.

"I killed my brother once because he done me a favor."

(I could literally spend weeks trawling through Mark Booth's The Secret History of the World, Nicholas Hagger's The Secret History of the West and Manly Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages, and still not come up with a better encapsulation of The Higher Law.
Because this is not the stuff they teach you in any school.)

"If you kill yourself you die; if I kill you then you live forever."

This merely appears to be a rather banal expose of solipsistic hubris. But then I thought about it. Is this sentence intended to describe a sequence of events? If so, then it's simply brilliant! Simply change it from the subjunctive to the present tense and it becomes, "By crossing my path you have killed yourself but then I actually kill you and then you live forever."

And thus it becomes a hall of homicidal mirrors that makes Hamlet look puny!

Some of these quotes, I'm sorry to say, show an anti-social side to this usually thoughtful and introspective man that I, as a respectable adult (and certainly no prude) am, nevertheless, duty-bound to deplore. Such as his incendiary manifesto,

"Why suck up to the screw if you're living in a madhouse?"

Irresponsible credos such as these are precisely the sort of thing that compelled people to snipe that popular music is simply a soundtrack for the depredations of hooligans and juvenile delinquents.

Some of his lyrics would make splendid first lines to prizewinning genre novels.

He has provided the would-be writer of war novels with a fine opening passage:

"It's half past Death O'Clock/Time to get my Glock."

Duly noted!

And the scribe who's hell-bent on writing a hard-boiled crime novel could greatly benefit from this eloquent cri de coeur:

"I'm bounden for glory, and I'm here to tell my story."

Note the sophisticated shift from the subjunctive (I AM boundEN), in the main clause, to the present tense (I AM here to tell), in the dependent.

They simply do not teach this technique in creative writing classes (okay, maybe they do), but good writers know that the best sentence is one which exploits the possibilities of a combination of tenses.

Which Baby Boy Maddox does beautifully (See also: Nuyts, Jan: "Subjectivity as an evidential dimension in epistemic modal expressions," Journal of Pragmatics Volume 33, Issue 3, March 2001, Pages 383-400)!

From a philosophic standpoint some of this lyrics are, admittedly, rather rough sledding, but occasionally you find something that is just so simple, and beautiful, and true, that it just about breaks your heart.
For example, his uncharacteristically existential complaint:

"All of my friends are dying, some were born already dead."

I am fairly certain that on January 4, 1960, Camus was working on a novel that opened with exactly those words just before he was killed instantly when the sports car in which he was riding hit a tree.

Which reminds me: My favorite song? "Negative Universe," the opening track from what is arguably his best work--his 1980 LP THE DEVIL'S SONGBOOK. "Negative Universe" is a song which he wrote after coming off of a comparatively long hiatus, and to the best of my knowledge, it was first performed in 1979.

The song as a whole is a pastiche of half-remembered and half-forgotten sources. Issued as a single on the obscure British CORBLIMEY label, this song was one of the most bizarre productions ever to fail to even so much as graze the bottom of the Top 200, though later, many so-called "indie" bands were to claim that it was influential. Composed largely of misheard Motown lyrics ("Let my kids touch your face"; "I'll be your lonely double") the song is mostly memorable for its inexplicable chorus:

It's like some negative universe
The more you see it
The more it gets worse

This snippet alone is an epic poem in and of itself, and, incidentally, based on a true story--which makes it EVEN BETTER!

So scoff all you like about my having devoted so a large portion of my comparatively short life to chronicle this man. But in the depths of his lyrics you sometimes glimpse the cold dead-water pools of that place from which no visitor ever returns--or wishes to.
You can almost see within those words the unkind luster of a star-spanning ancient lizard brain basking in the light of a dying suns.

25. WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE: BABY BOY MADDOX AND TINY SINESTRO
During the period spanning 1936 to 1996, Tiny Sinestro Sr.was a self-styled "saloon singer" of no small repute. Mostly ill. For he was quite proud of his close ties to members of organized crime, connections which he permitted his son, Junior, to take advantage of in various small and indubitably petty ways. However, "Big Tiny," as he was fondly called by his nebulous and black-garbed "associates," was, quite naturally, far too "big" a man to involve himself in the various small-scale and penny-ante scams that the music industry, then and now, were prone to. He left these to his son, "Junior," who, during the 1960s and 1970s, set himself up as a sort of free-lance booking agent and "talent scout."

Of course, he was nothing of the kind. "Junior" had no ear whatsoever for rock music, let alone any first or even second-hand knowledge of what would "sell." Rather, he attached himself, lamprey-like, onto the reputations of local up-and-comers, and, by offering various "services"--which, in many cases, constituted little more than low-level extortion--contrived to funnel money away from deserving artists.

Many club owners, in thrall to "the Syndicate" or--let's call them what they were--mobsters--felt it necessary to "play ball" with the only son of Tiny Sinestro Sr. The son was known, by one and all, as "Junior Tiny," (a name he utterly despised) or, mostly, just as "Junior" (a name he grudgingly tolerated). In spite of his extortionate "fees," Junior would offer little in the way of musical, or even career advice. Firstly, his forte--or rut, to be more accurate--was Big Band music, a form in many respects antithetical to the type of bare-bones folk and rock and roll music which Baby Boy Maddox, and legions of other young people, favored. Secondly, the only career advice Junior could plausibly give would be advice that he knew would work because he himself had profited by it--namely, that to advance, one should be the son of a famous, and--let's be frank--far more talented father.

Like a spoiled dog who barks incessantly solely to let his master know he exists, Tiny Sinestro Jr. was something of a savage in his personal relations, both on and off the stage. A failed, small-time bandleader who lived perpetually in the shadow of his father, he could often be seen after his three-a-night concert appearances at middling concert venues disconsolately sucking on a cigarette and visibly seething in his stiffly-pressed shark-skin suit, presumably mulling over the fact that a cruel trick of fate had deprived him of a fame which was rightfully his.
Junior's entry in this book is solely due the the marginal role that he played in the advancement of Baby Boy Maddox. Fearing that the rise of rock and roll--which he detested as much of his father, if not more--was depriving him of much-needed revenue--like his father, he also lived a rather lavish lifestyle--during one period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he set himself up as a small-time impresario who took it upon himself to book opening acts at several of the clubs around Old Town and Down Town. He certainly had the right "connections"--again, through the offices of his more highly-acclaimed father.

And so it was that Junior set up Baby Boy Maddox--in more ways than one--as an opening act in one of the most vile, most mob-infested quick-buck nightclubs in town. Allow me to briefly describe this venue, which went by the name of The Yum Yum Club. (formerly "The Aragon"; formerly "The Babylon Dance Club"; formerly "Gaiety Burlesk"; formerly "The Nichol-Flopp 24-Hour Theatre"; formerly "The Shuffle Inn," and, much later, to be known as "The Self-Realization Fellowship" "The Discodrome," and "The Play Den Disco Strip Club.")
The building which housed The Yum Yum Club was built circa 1920 as a decrepit movie palace, and very little remodeling had been done since that time. It was a vast, dusty, cavernous hall which its owners were too cheap to keep properly heated, relying instead upon a series of dangerously placed space heaters via which, though strategic payoffs to various corrupt municipal officials, they managed steal enough electricity to heat the place. The formerly magnificent dome of its ceiling was haphazardly concealed through an ill-placed series of suspended drop-ceilings which served mostly to absorb the sound generated by the venue's cheap, antiquated loudspeakers. Heavy, scorched curtains had been bought cheaply at a fire sale, and were made of highly flammable materials; these curtains hung over the stage and also the walls, further dampening the sound.

The people who staffed the Yum Yum Club were the lowest variety of the demimonde. One of the bouncers was a broken down ex-pug known as "Punchy"; the other, his "supervisor," was a gruesomely obese corrupt former cop nicknamed "Spuckie Buns," who carried unlicensed weapons and backed Punchy up whenever more than simple hired muscle was needed. One of the doormen was a sleazy, nearly toothess chili pimp named "Teeth" Mancini; the other was an odious middle-aged pervert with an inordinately large belly known as Dan-the-Man. The sole bartender, "Sniffer," was a ruined drunk whose enormous nose was aflame with conspicuous gin blossoms, The two cashiers, "Harry the Spoon," and "Joker," were both convicted felons and drug pushers who slid clandestine bindles of "the powder" to their avid-eyed clientele. The "waitresses," Mathilde, Dearie Blossom, and "The Duchess," were all gruesomely superannuated syphilitic whores.

From where did the mobsters who ran this joint manage to dredge these characters up? Don't ask. But mostly they came from the lowest gin palaces and beer gardens; from county jails and half-way houses; from asylums and poolrooms and back-room casinos and any other place where vice flourished and virtue was a joke. The starry-eyed hippies and jaded juvenile delinquents who were the intended clientele of this awful den of iniquity were treated to third-rate talent, watered drinks, rude service,and, more than occasionally, a brutal beating whenever "things got out of hand," which was often. Undercover narcs roamed the place, hiding in nooks and alcoves, eyes ever sharp for unsanctioned drug transactions. Whenever they descended upon a victim, both the drugs and the money were confiscated, and both the buyer and the seller were hustled out the door by Punchy, who used his patented carotid artery pinch to persuade his resisting victims to move along in a big hurry.

At one time, Tiny Sinestro Junior "managed" Baby Boy Maddox, which meant that he handled the money paid to him by the nightclubs and ostensibly took his twenty per cent fee--plus "expenses"--off the top. It was seldom, however, that these so-called "expenses" failed to account for an additional thirty per cent of the "take." On one occasion, BBM opened to a packed house at the Yum Yum Club, some of whose patrons had come expressly to see him. But that didn't make no never-mind. His twenty per cent of the door was halved by his venal crypto-"manager" and so he received a grand total of $22.65 for a thirty minute set!

No wonder he was homeless!

26. WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE: MUSIC IS BLACK MAGIC
Some time in 1972 I was talking about music with Baby Boy Maddox, who was in a very sour mood. When I happened to mention the word 'harmony,' he interrupted me with an ominous ferocity he had seldom ever shown when in my presence.

"The devil is very keen on harmony, believe it or not. The Beach Boys are...satanic! Their twinned voices send a thrill down his black spine! Listen! The devil is especially fond of percussion. Ever see people tapping their feet and never even realizing it? They''ve been possessed! You don't really have to be very old and very wise to know what's going on there. That's why the old folk are always cracking wise about 'that damned noise, and 'that jungle music.' They've been around. They know the score. Old people are like round lumps of soft dough, and that kind of music is like jagged pieces of ice water to them. It puts them off their feed. They'd rather listen to elevator music, because maybe they think it'll lift them up to heaven, and who knows but that they're right."
He paused to gaze off far into the distance, as if he actually saw elevators full of sanctified oldsters praising the Kingdom to come as they were invisibly rising miles into the sky.

"Everything is numbers, you know. I used to read fifteen hours a day, and I remember reading that somewhere. Everything there is on earth, you can break it down and translate it, or so they say. Nature likes the even numbers and some people can't help but to throw in some odd numbers--just to fuck up the harmony."

He began to hum, softly.

"Hear that? The only real Key is the Key of C. Everything else is off-putting. I particularly dislike the key of E, and I'm also not any too fond of the key of B. I can live with the Key of A, and can just about tolerate the key of D, and I have no beef at all with the Key of G. But the worst key of all is the key of F. A great musician once told me that F is the relative major key of D minor, which is the saddest of all the keys. No wonder then, that everything in life which is bad is all there, in that key of F. Fire alarms. Police sirens. Women screeching. God is the key of C. The devil is the key of F. Don't even get me started on the Key of F. War Whoops. Steam whistles. Mindless wild dogs howling off in the wilderness. The key of F poisons everything it touches. It can literally drive you crazy. Combine it with B and E, and you got yourself a toxic stew. Now, sometimes you want to throw the Key of F in along with A or D, just to make them sound dangerous. Don't do it! Because if you lean too hard on the Key of F, it can ruin your life. It's bad muck! Bad Ju-Ju! Ill-omened! And I know exactly what I'm talking about!"

He coughed a couple of times, and then he grinned at me.

"Harmony," said Baby Boy Maddox, "is something I understand. And really, what it is--what all music is--is black magic. The naming of things. Calling things into being and responding to the voices of those things. Channelling the Old Gods. You can church it up all you want. Those poor deluded saps singing their so-called Gospel music are really only singing so to keep the dark forces at bay. But what they don't know is that it's the music itself that's attracting those very dark things that they fear so much! And don't you ever forget it!."

I did not ask him how he would know this. Forget it I would not. His eyes shone with a peculiar glint, and his lips had all of a sudden grown white, beneath his dark and tangled beard.

27. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE TELEVISION PROGRAMS

Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage, the hippie singer-songwriter, and vagabond mystic, would almost never watch television--indeed, living outdoors as he did, he seldom had the chance. However, on those occasions, mostly during the late 1960s, when I was able to smuglgle him up to my room, he would sometimes turn the thing on, stare at it, enraptured, for a few minutes, as though it were a wild beast, and then look away quickly and turn it off.

Baby Boy Maddox justified his behavior by saying that television is a "dream box" devised by "the old men of the mountain" to "take the place of real dreams." He also insisted that it is a patent means of "government programming and control". It was the government's "ultimate attempt to pollute the hive mind with evil static" so that "the people" would be confused and would therefore be unable to "stand up for their rights."

When I pointed out that some television was actually educational, he vehemently replied that anything that was labeled 'educational' was always simply another attempt at brainwashing, and that television was the most insidious form of hypnotic mind control ever invented. He told me that old movies were mostly shown only late at night because they weren't "designed" for television, and therefore didn't further its mission. Furthermore, he said, "far from being a mindless diversion," television was actually a "propaganda engine" designed to make "everybody think the same," while at the same time falsely flattering them about how "oh so unique" each and every one of them were.

"If Jesus had had television," said Baby Boy Maddox, "they would never have crucified him."

I replied that I very much doubted that the historical Jesus even existed. He looked at me and snorted. "More of your crazy book notions," he said. "Look at all them churches," he whispered, because it by now it was getting late, and I had cautioned him not to wake my father, who probably wouldn't have been any too happy to find a bearded hippie stranger in my room. "Millions of churches. What a grim joke if all of them were built to honor a man who never was. Where else do you see people worshipping a fictional character by building a billion monuments?"

I came right back at him.

"Television?" I said.

He nodded. "You're exactly right. Television is the Jesus of today." (Later on he wrote a song by that title, though I don't think it was ever recorded.)

"One more thing," he said, "The test pattern. Channel X. That's like the Hare Krsna mantra. You could imprison a man inside that sound, and it would take years and years to break him out. Even once you freed him, he would never forget it. And he could always be enslaved again by just one more exposure to it. And that's why I never watch television. That test pattern is hidden under every show you watch."

I asked him if it was too late for me to stop watching it and he told me that I was very young and had probably had less than seven years of constant exposure to the thing and so there was hope for me yet, but that I must never watch it again. "Television is a disease to make zombies. Turning it off forever is the only cure."

For the next eleven years, I very seldom watched television. In that way I missed the entirety of the televised 1970s.

I don't think I missed much.

This post has been edited by dimenno: Jul 3 2012, 05:23 PM

[dimenno]

28. WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE: WHITE ROOM
Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage, the Homeless Troupadour, the Barefoot Cinder Dodger and Fuzzytailed Hippie Mystic, had a great many strange beliefs, as you may have gathered, but none of his beliefs were so strange as his conviction that every song ever written was an individual entity which had a literal life of its own. This belief went beyond merely referring to certain songs as though they were his old pals. He actually thought that every song had adventures of its own, in the actual world.

I'll give you an example. One time Baby Boy Maddox told me the following story.

Just yesterday I had a run-in with a dude who looked just like the song 'White Room'. He was a big fat guy in a motheaten sleeveless t-shirt with tight red corduroy pants cinched around his waist with a frayed rainbow macrame belt and he walked into Bull's Tavern like he owned the joint and flashed a Central Depot bank roll.

I asked him what that was.

A twenty dollar bill wrapped around a stack of Monopoly money. Don't interrupt. So then he yelled 'Set 'em up'. And then he started talking to all the regulars in the bar just like he was their oldest pal.

How ya doin', Doc?

How's they hangin', Evil Genius?

Long time no see, Moose.

Hey there, Mister.

Whatta you have, Chum.

Hello,Jocko.

Ahoy there, Mookie.

Greetings, Jasper.

Name yer poison, Big Man.

Whatever you need, Chilly Willy.
After White Room has spent his twenty, the barkeep ignored him and gave him the breeze, but then White Room threw a penny on the bar and he turned to the barkeep and said 'Chuck You Farley.'

Easy there, Beerheart, says Bull, who was both the barkeep and the owner.

Hey you, Scumbozo! says Doc.

Lissen up, Punko, says Genius.

We don't need no sass, Chiefy, says Moose.

Take it outside, Boss, says Mister.

Sez who? Sez me, Assface, says Chum.

Don't start no trouble, Tuffy, says Jocko.

Yeah, Dog, he's talkin' to YOU, says Mookie.

Yeah, Satan, you, says Jasper.

You must think you're a Ruff Tuff Creampuff, says Big Man.

Don't start nuthin, yuh Lousy Pillhead, says Chilly Willy.
G'wan, beat it, Lusho, says Lucky 13, the bouncer.

Take a hike, Boozeheart, or I'm callin' the fuzz, says Bull the barkeep.

Can you believe the nerve of that asshole? says Lucky 13.

And then White Room turned to ME and out of the clear blue sky he says, "Fuck the World." I told him that I agreed with him a hundred and ten per cent, and White Room started getting loud and he said he had done all right for himself and didn't need no sympathy from no Rummy, not like SWLABR and certainly not like that drunk idiot Strange Brew. Then he jumped up on a creaky wooden table and started doing this way-out fat man's dance and the disgusted barkeep watched him for about ten seconds, And then he had his bouncer, Lucky 13, escort him out the door using a fireman's lift, White Room all the while screaming 'I'll kill you all!'

I didn't know that White Room was such a sorehead. Who woulda thought?

And Baby Boy Maddox was quiet for the rest of the afternoon, sunk deep in thoughts which I did not dare attempt to intrude upon.

29. BABY BOY MADDOX: "WHAT'S NEW LUCIFER?"

I have spoken at length of Baby Boy Maddox as I have known him, as a hobo sage and failed singer-songwriter struggling to survive during the late 1960s and early 1970s. I have not yet spoken of the curious turns his career took during the 1980s, and perhaps it is time for me to interrupt the chronology of this narrative long enough to give at least some hint of the star-making machinery behind his sudden rise to prominence.

Spinoza, it is said, took unseemly pleasure in feeding flies to spiders. In just the same way, as part of the industry-wide move to hype the music and the persona of Baby Boy Maddox, the record industry seemed to take unholy pleasure at the fat that his novelty song, "What's New, Lucifer," received a fair amount of airplay in 1984--admittedly, mostly on noncommercial college radio stations.

What is it, anyway, about devil worship, real or otherwise, that gets supposedly sophisticated college students all a-twitter? I suspect that many people hold a distorted view of just how iconoclastic college-aged people actually were back then. They may have smoked pot and swilled beer until they were green to the gills, just like their counterparts in the seventies and latter part of the sixties, but when it came down to their core beliefs, most of them were a hidebound as Amish burghers. I am sure that they regarded such vulgar encomiums to Satan as a sick joke, and hardly something to be taken seriously. They nervously chuckled at the clucking of their elders while staunchly retaining their childlike beliefs in both Testaments, Old and New. Only the most tendentious or straight-laced would have dared to shame themselves in front of their giggling peers by professing their utter revulsion at such a theme--even at the most benighted of backwater Cow Colleges!

To be frank, very few people know very much at all about the ferocious power of the occult. When these figures are named, they are, in fact, being evoked, and if and when they make their appearance, the consequences are often quite unpleasant. Even if you do not personally believe in such beings as Lucifer--to give the matter of Freudian spin--by invoking him you are invoking a dark side of the Id which is bound to warp your thinking and to therefore have an effect upon those events which surround you. I am not talking here about the (mostly deluded) acolytes who shut themselves up with musty tomes and chant while seated inside of pentagrams in the flickering light of blasphemous and blood-red candles; I'm talking about the inevitable and cumulative effects of clarion calls to The Evil One broadcast over radio airwaves. The events of 1984, if anything, would seem to bear me out. In that year, the forces of darkness were regnant. And the ill-advised promotion of Baby Boy Maddox's dark message certainly did nothing to dispel the encroaching gloom.

30. BABY BOY MADDOX: "SO THEY FALL"
Baby Boy Maddox's 1975 masterpiece. "So They Fall" is a significant song in American musical history, and an important precursor to Punk. In two minutes and twenty-two seconds, playing solo on an eccentically tuned guitar, singing with a quavery voice, he explicates a demon-haunted world view which makes "Sympathy for the Devil" sound like a slapping party between pantywaists, and "Working Class Hero" come across as a grotesque tea ceremony for retards. I think it would be worthwhile to quote the lyrics in their entirety,

They worshipped and played ball.
Fat and lazy and nearly crazy.
So they fall.

They lived inside a mall.
Their greedy brains forged ugly chains.
So they fall.

They married in a hall.
But married bliss is not worth piss.
So they fall.

Feeling ten feet tall.
They put their faith in pride of place.
So they fall.

They heed their country's call.
They lived by pride and then they died.
So they fall.

Their joys began to pall.
Every thrill was run of the mill.
So they fall.

Their lives began to stall.
Couldn't give a damn until the throttle jammed.
So they fall.

Their hearts will filled with gall.
Their devil's deal was all too real.
So they fall.

They had to have it all.
Their hearts are in their mouth.
It all goes south.
A terminal wall.
Living well inside a cell.
And so they fall.

Only 1500 copies of the vinyl single were pressed (the b-side was an instrumental), and of those, nearly 750 were lost in shipping and presumably destroyed.

It has been rumored that every person who actually purchased a copy of this single went out and formed a band, and when that proved too hard, they went out and became a serial killer.

I believe this rumor to be more true than otherwise.

31. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE WHITE BEARDS

Baby Boy Maddox was not shy when it came to discussing the details of
his career, and he told me lots of stories from the day I first met
him in Holly Park, but none was more astonishing and unbelievable than
the story of how The White Beards.

Apparently, "back in '67," he was sitting on a rock in Holly Park,
looking down and out over at the city below, strumming away on an
out-of-tune guitar which desperately needed new strings, when an utter
"square from nowhere"--a person he had never seen before--approached
him.

"The cat was sporting a three-piece and it must of been 96 in the
shade. He was also packing heat. You can always tell. Tall, crew-cut
creep--looked like fuzz. Blond hair, square jaw, nose slightly out of
joint. He asked if he could discuss a business proposition. I thought
for sure he was setting me up for a bust, but then I figured there was
no way would even the most un-hip narko come across as such a super
cube, so I told him he could bend my ear all he wanted, it was a free
country.

"Now, get this. He said that 'The Boss' was looking to audition some
'young men' for a 'special musical project,' and would I like to check
it out? I told him I needed some new strings for my axe and quick as a
wink he hands me a ten spot. Fresh off the presses, from the looks of
it. He didn't look like the kind of guy who would be pushing funny
money, so I figured what the hell, I'd take him up on it. He gave me
the address, all friendly like. I tried to rib him along. 'Who's your
Boss,' I asked. 'J. Edgar Hoover?' The cat flinched like I'd just told
him his wife had met with an accident and was actually dead. 'No,' he
mutters, "That's not important for you to know.' So I figure the Boss
is someone higher-up than even Hoover. I figure there is only one cat
with a swinging dick bigger than the ace G-Man, and that was
horse-face Johnson himself. I told the Cat I would be there to check
out the scene, but i wanted no part of it, so I never showed.

"Check this out: Two weeks later there was a flier posted in the Top
Ten Record Shop. 'Auditions being held for a new musical group--The
White Beards.' Six months later, they were headlining at the Muni
Auditorium. What the fuck is up with that? That's what I said. All
their songs were about God and country and our brave boys fighting
overseas and all that jazz, and they all wore fur vests and had hair
down to there. Strange and stranger, that's all I can say about it,
and thank God I didn't get roped in to going to that audition."

I said, "You don't care if you succeed?"

He snorted. He said, "I might of been world famous. But it's one
thing to be a professional, and it's another thing to be a slave.
I didn't need a job that badly to shill for a prick like Johnson.
Listen: Always remember that a real men has got pride. Even if
that is all he got. It's the only thing that makes us better
than sheep."

I did remember.

32. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE STARMAKING MACHINERY

Sometime in 1984 (inauspicious year!) the publisher of a local fanzine called INVICTUS (odd name, that) had decided, in collaboration with his chief editor, to give Baby Boy Maddox a "big build up". As I recall, it was a fallow, and not particularly fertile time in the Madport music scene: the Punk movement had all but disappeared; the Hardcore scene was all but nonexistent except for a pathogenic assemblage of about twenty musicians who all went to each others' shows and tried their best to keep their subculture on display and thus a going concern, largely for the benefit of a scattering of highly anti-social underaged teenagers, a thrill-seeking deviant or two, and occasional crowds of pathetically bored college students. Indie wasn't yet happening on any appreciable scale. What passed for new music was as follows: former hippies playing incomprehensible renditions of sludgy psychedelic music, drunken ex-jocks fronting heavy metal bands, and weedy dolts fronting tinny synthesizer combos. Deeply unintelligent acolytes of REM and U2 playing pathetic third-hand knock-offs were far more the rule than the exception. Here and there you would see a diehard or two express an appreciation for the Clash or some other cutting-edge band of five years previous, but otherwise the scene was dead as a doornail. Dead as a mackeral. Dead as Broadway. It was expired.

Baby Boy Maddox hadn't had a major release since "So They Fall," some nine years previous, which, in that scene, was practically pre-history. However, a demo of his recent, largely satanic-themed tracks titled "Resurrection" had somehow crossed the editor's desk, and it was decided to hype these crude four-track recordings which sounded exactly as though they had been recorded in someone's basement (because, in fact, they were). Moreover, they were to be over-hyped--as though they were some sort of Rosetta Stone of popular music. It was a slow news year.
The first track, "Acid," was performed on a ludicrously out-of-tune acoustic guitar (the basement must have been very damp indeed), and it featured vocals in which Baby Boy Maddox was singing in a reedy voice clearly an octave above his normal range. This was billed by INVICTUS MAGAZINE as a "spectacularly innovative avant-garde statement" that "exploded" like "a bolt from the blue" across what was otherwise a "complacent musical landscape." The second track, "Requiem," was sung in a dreamy Goth drone backed by a weepy, sweepy synthesizer soundtrack. This was designated as a "stone cold classic." The farcical "What's New, Lucifer," was, according to the scribe at INVICTUS, "obviously pointing to a brave new thematic direction," though whoever copy-edited that particular encomium was probably laughing very had up his sleeve. As mentioned earlier, this song eventually received a fair amount of airplay--admittedly, mostly on the local (noncommercial) college radio station.

Other songs covered allegedly "unusual" topics such as the travails of the artist, the travails of working in a boiler room, the travails of having to sleep in a boiler room, the sexual peccadilloes of barmaids, the sexual diseases of barmaids, the power of callous policemen and politicians and the callousness of power-mad politicicians and police. These sometimes innovative but by no means awe-inspiring rants were interpreted as constituting "a brave new strain of realism previously unheard in popular song" and as "grand cultural statements". The remaining songs, mostly dreary paeans to "My Sweet Satan" and "Mighty Morning Star" and "The Unholy Wholly One," were treated as though they were so transgressive that they practically threatened the tranquility of the state.

How did all this hype go over? Like gangbusters. I'm convinced that it gave Baby Boy Maddox's career a seven-year lease on life.

How do I know?

I was that editor.

33. BABY BOY MADDOX: "THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION"

"The International Sensation." That was the billing on many of the ads
for Baby Boy Maddox, beginning in the year 1984. It was my innovation.
From that day to this one, it was a lie. Baby Boy Maddox has never
even owned a passport and the only time he was even ever out of the
country was the time he ran off to Canada when he got his draft
notice, but after two weeks he found it was just too damn cold up
there to sleep in the park so he sneaked back into the United States
by way of Rouse's Point.

In my mind, all the egregious hype was justified because I had no
doubt whatsoever that he deserved at least some kind of recognition
for all the dues he had paid, and blatant hype was the only way he was
going to get it. He may have been a pure artist who didn't much care
for what he called material things, but seventeen years busking for
chump change in a nearly deserted park has an eerie way of altering
your priorities, I suppose. When he first started out, around 1967,
those were the days when even the most mediocre novelty act could
appeal to the stoned-out hippies as somebody who was "heavy-duty" and
"down with the cause" because he "refused to be a sell-out" because he
had what the hippies (and nobody else) called "integrity".

If these hash-addled hedonists had ever suspected for even one second
just how profoundly nihilistic and intrinsically conservative Baby Boy
Maddox truly was, in his outlook toward both music and life, they
would have dropped him as fast as the pinched-off ember of a hot
roach. Fortunately, Baby Boy Maddox was a truly adept con man who knew
exactly which buttons to press long before others had even latched
onto the fashionable beliefs of the era.

For example, he played the "concerned about the environment" angle
most convincingly. (Of course, conservationism is, by its nature, just
another form of conservatism.) He stumped for equal rights for all,
but this, too, was a less a leveling impulse on his part and more of a
cynical ploy to preach to the converted.

By 1984, nobody knew better than he how the game of music politics was
really played. He also favored the legalization of all drugs, but this
was because in his deviant heart he was firmly convinced that drug
abuse was merely nature's way of culling the weaklings from the herd
so the clear-eyed sociopaths such as himself could take the share of
the good things abdicated by people who had neutralized themselves
through chemical overindulgence. Never had the Devil cited scripture
to suit his own purpose better than Baby Boy Maddox.

Even as late as 1984, he masqueraded as an avid consumer of illicit
substances, but surely he almost never inhaled, snorted, or swallowed
any of those drugs, relying largely on sleight-of-hand and
misdirection to make it seem as though he had. And to seal the deal,
he used an actor's talent for seeming wasted..

For instance, when pretending to be doped up, he would babble at
interminable length about the most tedious banalities.

When, for example, he happened to hear one of his songs played on the
radio he would say, "I remember exactly where I was the day I wrote
this song. I first thought of the idea when I was reading in
Scientific American about anti-matter.

"I wonder if in Russia they have a magazine called 'Scientific Communist?'

"Anyway, I got to thinking, like, 'What if there was a whole universe
just like ours, only, instead of being made of matter it was made of
anti-matter. Then it would be a negative universe--only what's good in
our universe would be bad and theirs, and vice versa.'

"I remember I was also listening to WHIP in 1967, and they were
playing 'Eve of Destruction' by Barry McGuire and you don't hear much
about him no more, nor about Barry Sadler, who also had a big hit,
only it was in 1966, I think. I wonder if they knew each other? They
had the same first name. Maybe they were even related. It's a small
world.

"Barry McGuire was no singer, he was a croaker, but somehow his song
struck a chord and I think Jan and Dean did an answer song, no, it was
somebody else, it was called "Dawn of Correction," by the Spokesmen,
who never did anything else as far as I know, but I do remember that
they all wore black turtlenecks and they were basically a cover band
and I think I heard somewhere that they were all mobbed up which makes
perfect sense because everybody knows how much the Boys hated the
Commies and who can blame them, because the Commies didn't want no
competition and, man oh man, neither did the Mob.

"Funny thing about that song though, 'Dawn,' I mean, it had a Jew's
harp and I think that's the first rock song ever to have one and for
all I know it was also the last. I also think it was the first song to
mention the United Nations, except for 'Summertime Blues' by Eddie
Cochran, and that don't count, hardly, and I hear that when 'Dawn'
first came out the lawyer guy who was the brother in law of the guy
who was the head of A&R over at Decca told Phil Sloan to get fucked
because the song was parody and parody was covered under Irving Berlin
et al. v. E.C. Publications, Inc., and according to the Supreme Court
parody of that kind scarcely amounts to a 'substantial' taking, unless
the standard is to be woodenly applied.

"You know, everybody was afraid back then. Afraid of Commies and
afraid of race riots, and they all drove this big-ass cars, Woodies
they called them, station wagons with wood paneling, and how asinine
is that? and gas was really cheap, I guess it was about 33 cents a
gallon and a gallon of milk was only a dollar and a stamp still only
cost a nickel can you imagine that and I remember someone telling me
that Lawyer's exact words, 'Let fucking Phil Sloan sue and make an ass
of himself, we'll tie him up in litigation for a quarter century and
he won't get squat,' and then the word came back that Sloan wasn't
about to sue anyway, I guess the Boys, and I don't mean
the Beach Boys, got to Sloan somehow and advised him that
maybe it would be better for his health if he forgot the whole thing
and to this day some people still say that if you play the Spokesmen
single at 33 instead of 45 you can hear a voice in the background
saying 'Ha Ha Fuck you P.F. Sloan you Commie.' only I must have heard
it a hundred times and I never heard that message but maybe I wasn't
listening hard enough.

"Anyway, when I wrote that song I was drifting off to sleep in a
sleeping bag in the park when this old lady came by, she was walking
her black Schnauzer, Smoky Two, he was called Smokey Two because the
first Smokey got run over by an ambulance while he was chasing a fire
engine that day of the big warehouse fire in Madport you remember it?
where the whole town smelled like roasted salmon for twelve days and
thirteen nights, and the damn dog started barking and so I worked it
into the song, "It's like some negative universe, the more that you
hear it, it only gets worse," and that was a reference to the dog
because the more you heard him bark the more aggimated you got until
finally you started thinking not so much about the dog but about the
kind of ordnance that would take out not only the woman and her house
and the dog but also her family and her whole neighborhood--a bazooka
wouldn't be enough, though maybe a grenade launcher would do the trick
only I'm not so sure that wasn't kind of overkill because I never was
in the army.

"I mean, I did get drafted, but they never did find me and when I
finally turned myself in I had stayed up late the night before and I
didn't eat for about three days which wasn't hard because I was living
in the park like I said and I had no money anyway and so they said I
was 4-F because they thought I was mental because I told them I wanted
to learn how to kill a devil dog who was keeping me awake at night and
they thought i was a psycho but I wasn't, not at all, because it was a
clear and present danger at the time and based on true events but just
to be on the safe side I also told them that I strongly believed in
the separation of church and state and that the Bible said thou shalt
not kill and that I would either have to be a c.o. or a C.O. so that
my own hands wouldn't get dirty.

"Mind you, I have nothing against the church or ordering shave-tails to
kill, because I'm not some dirty Commie, that's exactly what I said to
them, I believe that all men are created equal and to each his own,
and do you happen to remember what was number one when my song was
bubbling under the top 100? "Incense and Peppermints," which was a
really shitty song, though I did have a sneaking fondness for "Rainy
Day Mushroom Pillow", which was the first track of the flip side of
the LP.

"Anyway, the flute player later went on to play with Oingo Boingo and
you wanna know what? That guy still owes me a five spot back when I
bailed him out when they caught him trying to steal a frozen steak at
the local Buy-Rite and just as he got to the door it fell out of his
underwear because he was wearing boxer shorts and it was a real cold
day and his balls were completely frozen I guess and he couldn't stand
walking crabwise out the door with it so in I breezed with a smooth
line of patter and said my friend here is a little retarded he didn't
mean any harm, savvy? and I greased the store security with a fin
which was all the money I had.

"I'll bet you remember the day that my song almost hit the top 100
because it was so cold that sparrows fell out of the trees and later I
went on tour with the song, only it wasn't really much of a tour
because I never got more than twenty miles out of town and I was
backed by The Baked Potato who were stranded in Madport because their
concert was canceled out from under them because the frontman had
gotten busted for pot in Canada and couldn't get a visa and
unfortunately he owned all the equipment. Someday the whole world is
going to remember where they were the day my song, which should of been
number one, almost hit number 100 on the hit parade."

At about this time is when people would slowly begin to back away and,
some of them, not very slowly, and the word got out that you shouldn't
offer any more drugs to Baby Boy Maddox because that cat was seriously
out there already!

And that was exactly the impression he wanted to create.

There are four types of people in the world. Those who are insane, and
act insane. Those who are insane, and take every measure they can to
act sane.

The vast majority, of course, are those who are sane, and act sane.

And, most inexplicable of all, those who are utterly sane, and act insane.

Baby Boy Maddox was firmly in the latter-most camp.

For reasons not difficult to divine.

[dimenno]

34. BABY BOY MADDOX: ON THE AIR
As previously mentioned, by 1984 Baby Boy Maddox was becoming a sort
of quasi-celebrity character of no small local notoriety. One DJ, who
will here remain nameless, went so far as to refer to BBM as "The
worst musician in town." Word of this slur quickly reached him, by
means of his growing tribe of young acolytes, mostly teenagers in high
school, who visually (if not genetically) recapitulated the tribe of
hippies who were his willing auditors during the late sixties.

But much had changed in the ensuing decade-and-a-half. His new crop of
teenage fans were nearly old enough to have been the sons of the
previous generation. And "cool" had taken on a new definition from one
generation to the next. Previously, BBM was well-regarded owing to his
hobo ways, his free-wheeling nature, and disinclination to take on the
persona of a "plastic" pop star. By 1984, this free-wheeling nature
had itself, in fact, hardened into a persona. I know for a fact that
about this time, BBM no longer "slept rough", but instead prevailed
upon his youthful friends, and their older brothers and sisters, to
"coop" in various sheds, basements, cabins, and other habitations
which were at their disposal to offer. By now, BBM had even acquired a
substantial asset--an implausible off-white van, a boxy, rusted 1970
Ford Econoline 300 Cargo Van, in which, during nights which weren't
too cold, he slept.

Youthful fashions had changed. The atmosphere of the Eighties, poised
between recession and recovery, placed a greater generational emphasis
on "making it" that had not been seen in youth culture since the
fifties, or possibly even not since the Great Depression. I speak from
personal experience, having lived through that ghastly hardscrabble
era and personally suffered from its chronic unemployment; its oafish
disinclination to deal with any but the most anodyne developments; and
its undiscriminating eagerness to latch onto the next big thing, no
matter how soul-less and false. The United States was in the thrall of
President Reagan, a man whom some radicals called "The One Minute to
Midnight Cowboy," and those who weren't complacently accepting, or
scared to death, were more than likely to be ignorantly caught in the
embrace of an injudicious hedonism which was so profoundly solipsistic
as to beggar description. Cocaine was the drug du jour, and its
ability to make people babble pseudo-profundities even as their brains
were steadily rotting away under its influence was a potent driving
force of our culture--or what was left of it.

To reflect this toxic culture, musical fashions had greatly changed as
well. Disco and Punk had given way to new wave, and post-punk, and
music fans, weary unto death of rebellion and experimentation, were
defecting in droves from the unfamiliar and comforting themselves once
more in the decadent, the overblown, the ridiculously
disproportionate, and the larger than life. It was a paradigm shift
similar to that which had taken place on the cusp of the 1960s and the
1970s. Psychedelia, itself little more than a gimmicked-up form of the
blues to begin with, had given way to baroque rock and soft rock, and
singer-songwriters, which, in rapid succession were displaced by the
early stirrings of heavy metal--still more regurgitated blues--and the
dreaded "Progressive" rock.

I will not use this forum to denigrate Prog rock. Abler critics have
done so at length. But I will say that Prog rock made something of a
comeback in 1984, only this time it was melded with soft rock to give
the music consumer a deadly mix of hopeless sententiousness and feeble
bombast. Some called this movement's leaders "The New Romantics," but
that was just a hokey label. It was essentially the old mainstream,
with all its emphasis on craft downplayed and all its deadly emphasis
on gimmickry greatly enhanced. Small wonder, then, that a movement
known as "indie rock" began to arise, as a reaction to this fatally
cheap, meretricious, and soporific development. And Baby Boy Maddox
was at the forefront of this movement. Less for what he did than for
what he said when interviewed on the radio. Here is a transcript of
one such ludicrous "Interview", from a college radio station circa
late 1984:

Q: How do you account for your sudden popularity?
BBM: People finally caught up to the reality.
Q: Isn't that somewhat hypocritical? You never much cared about
popularity before.
BBM: Everybody prevaricates. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
But usually I just order a t-bone steak.
Q: What do you think of your fans?
BBM: We all need to care for something other than ourselves. Pets are
the answer. Cats become crotchety old ladies; dogs forever remain
innocent little boys. fans are just pets of a larger growth. Look at
Liberace! I am the Liberace of the poor.
Q: So what's it like, to finally be a celebrity?
BBM: Awful. Celebrities are just show dogs whose stud habits are part
of the public record. Listen: If Sinatra was starting his career
today, he'd probably call himself something like "Frankie Rape
Master."
Q: I suppose you have something to say about politics...?
BBM: Politician is the most boring form of human life on then planet.
Every politician reaches a point where only his enemies still find
him worth talking about. It's all crap. If Hitler won the second world
war, we'd probably all be sitting around and watching genocidal game
shows. You ever notice how when kids dress up for Halloween, they
dress up like witches and hoboes. people we used to burn? 100 years
from now, they'll be dressing up like Hitler, and Stalin. I'll bet
Stalin would be really glad if every child in the United States was to
wear a Stalin mask for Halloween.
Q: Do you think we're headed for another war? What with people having
to register for the Draft, and all?
BBM: The real war is between the haves and the have-nots. And class
warfare was never so dangerous than in 1946. People just home from the
war discovered that cowardly slackers had been making out like bandits
while they were off doing the dirty work. It's probably the only time
in our history when a majority of people realized that this is the way
it has always been and the way it always would be.
Q: What do you think of the whole notion of "artistic integrity"?
BBM: It's a game for suckers to lose at. Listen: sometimes it's wise
to not tell the whole truth. You should never tell a cop that your
hobby is "collecting homemade license plates." And let me tell you,
from personal experience, that "Meow" is never a good answer when they
ask you for your license and registration.
Q: Well...um, that about wraps it up. Will you be making any area
appearances this month?
BBM: I'll be at the Hi-Way Bowlarama all this week, in the back of the
loading dock, looking for deposit bottles. Next week, I expect to be
at the Cloverleaf Greyhound Park, scrounging for spare change. And
I'll be making an appearance at the VFW most nights the following
week, sweeping the floor in exchange for a crack at the hot buffet. On
the 24th I have a show at the The Top Ten Record Store. It's on West
Jefferson Boulevard. You can't miss it. It's got a yellow sign with a
red awning. It'll be standing room only, because the place is kinda
small, but you can bet that everyone who's there will be a musician of
some sort.
Q: One more question: Will you be performing any new material?
BBM: No, I'll be mostly playing a medley of my hit.
Q: Well, that's all the time we got, and thank you for tuning in to
VOLITCOR, Voices of Liberty in the Cradle of Revolution. Good night!

35. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE WASTED YEARS

Baby Boy Maddox's sudden rise to local musical celebrity in 1984 is all the more amazing when we consider that, from 1974 to 1983, relatively little was heard or seen of him. If we assume that he was born in 1951 (though some sources give his birth-date as being 1946, or even as early as 1938), we can assume that at the age of 22 (or 27 or 35) he died--not physically, in the sense of Jones, Janis, Jimi or Jim--but in every other way possible, and that he did not truly surface again until he reached the age of 33 (or 38 or 46).

How do we account for this nearly ten year lapse? We could attempt to reconstruct a year-by-year account of his doings during that lost decade, but there would be a great deal of guesswork involved. At the very least, both the domestic and foreign policy of the United States during those years was both deterministic and confused. Perhaps, as a child of his times, this combination of singlemindedness and fatalistic paranoia could not hep but to affect this sad, confused man. At the very least, it is very likely that Baby Boy Maddox, for reasons of his own, felt the need to lay low.

What I do know is that, during those "lost" years, Baby Boy Maddox stayed close to (what he considered) home. I do know that he spent a good deal of time hanging around in two places--the Madport Town Dump, far down in a gully through, to this day, there wends a toxic stream, and in Holly Park, overlooking from its southern side that self-same gully.

Holly Park now reminds me, for reasons which are more intuitive than factual, of that high mountain in the desert spoken of in three of the Gospels of the New Testament, upon which the devil appeared to tempt a bearded and hallucinating nomad on a forty day fasting pilgrimage. If you'll recall, the Devil tempts Jesus to make stones into bread, leap from a high tower and rely upon angels to break his fall, and, eventually, to take possession of all the kingdoms of the earth that could be seen from atop a high mountain. One interesting implication, which some interpreters have noted, was that even after the final temptation, the Devil was not yet done with Jesus, and he was destined to appear yet again to torment and tempt Him.

What Baby Boy Maddox actually did during those ten years remains something of a mystery. My researches have uncovered a brief, but tantalizing newspaper account of his setting up a sort of free soup kitchen in Holly Park during the early winter moths of the year 1974. I assume that the stews and bread on offer were salvaged from various sources--presumably supermarkets, bakeries, and possibly farm stands. This Soup Kitchen was eventually shut down by the public health authorities in 1976. How much the Bicentennial celebrations had to do with the removal of this presumptive civic blight is unknown, although it is very telling that the date on which the authorities converged upon it was July 2, 1776.

Very often, particularly during 1976 and 1977, his acolytes, few as though they were, would gather to hear him speak at the Madport Town Dump. Like many municipal dumps, this locality was used by town residents, and presumably others, as a final resting place for things which no longer had any use. A final resting place for America's junk; a graveyard for a culture of planned obsolescence. Through virtue of this place, Baby Boy Maddox owned, among other items, a waffle iron, a brass bed frame, and a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses with one lens missing. A white wicker chair slightly worn around the armrests; a brass birdcage designed to hold a parrot; and an assortment of stumpy clay pipes. Old milk bottles, mustache cups, tarnished cutlery.

People would often dump more deadly items. Sealed cans of lead pant, expired car batteries, dead pets. Beginning in the summer of 1976, Baby Boy Maddox began using these and other discarded items to construct a sort of wretched tower in a clearing of the deep woods not far from the dump. It eventually reached an astonishing height of some 60 feet. The most notable feature of this artistic endeavor was that it stank to high heaven. Eventually the public health authorities City of Cross Country Plaza came and tore it down. Every time they did so, Baby Boy Maddox would build it back up. Eventually, in 1977, the authorities fenced off the dump and prohibited access and any further dumping in that area. When that happened, Baby Boy Maddox once more resumed holding court in Holly Park. From 1978 to about 1983, if you knew where to look, you could find his shack. constructed in a remote area of that by no means imposingly large park. His shack was in the center of a tangle of briars in the far end of a remote thicket, and could only be accessed with difficulty--first by strenuous bushwhacking, and then by even more strenuous crawling on one's hands and knees.

In short, it was as secluded a place as any--to await the end of the world.

36. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE DEMONIC POSSESSION OF AMERICA

One of the major reasons that Baby Boy Maddox was such a popular interview subject on college radio stations was his penchant for spinning yarns which were outrageous but just short of obscene. Remember, it was 1984 when he came to prominence, and the generation of callow young DJs who interviewed him over such media were mostly far too young to recall the Kennedy assassination, but just old enough to remember Watergate, and they were all of a generational cohort which was steeped in televised media from day one and thus were well familiar with 50s sitcoms, owing to their exposure to endless syndicated re-runs of same.

Many of these striplings, having had little experience of real life, sought to engage Baby Boy Maddox in the mystical, ghostly half-life of legendary media spectacle. BBM was happy to oblige. He was a master at turning any conversation toward his own pet theories, howsoever threadbare they might be of coherence, logic or sense.

In general, his opening conversational gambit would be one in which he would ask the DJ a seemingly simple question which would steer the conversation into avenues of his choosing. A transcript of one representative interview began with the question, "Do you suppose that animals believe in God?"

DJ: I never thought about it.
BBM: Of course they do. They even worship God. Of that I'm sure.
DJ: How can you know for sure?
BBM: I can feel it. They worship God the way a dog would worship a monkey. There are, you know, pet dogs belonging to chimpanzees. In circuses, and outdoor zoos. It's a real problem. And it's been going on for far too long. How it all starts out is very insidious. A lonely chimp is given a puppy for a pet. Some numskull thinks that this is a brilliant idea. Quite frankly, I find it deeply offensive. Dogs were meant to worship men, not apes. What self-respecting dog would want to have a subhuman monkey as a master? You may not know it, but dogs are very dignified. Jack London said so, and he was an expert. And Alfred Payson Terhune. A dog man from way back. Couldn't write worth a darn, but he knew his dogs. Anyway, what does this dog with a chimp master say to all the other dogs? "YOUR master may ride in limousines and eat caviar and have foxy whores in fur coats dripping off of both his shoulders. But MY master is furry like me and he rides unicycles and eats bananas and smokes cigars and when he gets mad he shrieks and hoots and plays handball with the contents of his diaper!" By the way, have you ever seen the wise eyes of a child?
DJ: Um...yes?
BBM: You can see in those eyes the instinctive worship of the Lord above. They're not stupid eyes; they're not blank. They're filled with the love of God. Same thing goes for animals. Higher animals. I'm not sure about birds or lizards. I think those animals are under the sway of a lower form of God. A demiurge.
DJ: A who?
BBM: A demiurge. A creator from the lower depths. Animals sing, you know.
DJ: Um, birds do, yes.
BBM: Who do you suppose writes their material? God. A kind of god, anyway. God delegates. He doesn't handle everything. Doesn't have to. He's got some boys in his staff who can take care of the small stuff. Ever see a baby cry?
DJ: Um...yeah?
BBM: What's he trying to say? I'm hungry. I'm bored. Look at my screaming face. Every baby around the world cries for the same reason, in the exact same way. Coincidence? I think not. There's a a shot-caller in back of it all, and He commissions lesser gods to write the material.
DJ: Um...you're a pantheist?
BBM: Hardly. There's only one Big God. All the rest are his patsies. Like Oswald.
DJ: Oswald?
BBM: Sure! Oswald! Lee Harvey Oswald. The guy who shot Kennedy. Or so they say. Look for the Warren Report sometime. You'll find it in the fiction section of the library. Personally, I think Bobby Baker had something to do with it.
DJ: Who?
BBM: Exactly! You never heard of him because he was the hidden mastermind! And who pulled HIS strings?
DJ: Uhh...God?
BBM: Naaw! Not God! the next best thing. LBJ! The President. Vice President, actually. None of our courageous conservative journalists will go on the record with a bombshell like this, but clearly a bunch of crooks in Texas got together and said they were tired of the poor little rich boy from Massachusetts. They wanted an ranting iron man to run things. A bigheaded shtarker. A guy who would look god on a twenty dollar bill. You ever notice that you almost never see a famous woman on a coin? Unless maybe it's some Indian. But where's Anne Hutchinson? Where's Tituba, for the love of Nick?
DJ: Hutchinson? Tituba?
BBM: Hutchinson! She gave the Puritans the what-for and they chased her all the way to the Bronx! Tituba! The Voodoo slave who hypnotized those poor girls during the Salem Witch Trials! She rode a broomstick and could turn into a black dog, a wolf, a cat, a pig, a yellow bird, or a rat. A big time witch! Boy, don't you kids know nothing? Listen, this stuff is important!
DJ: You planning on writing a song about all this?
BBM: Naah. Historical songs don't sell. Johnny Horton, sure, "Battle of New Orleans," all about slave-master Andy Jackson, but that was a tie-in to a movie. Kids want to hear about love, not history. They like to read about whores, not witches. You think I'm being funny, but I'm not. I'm a doctor, not a comedian. Laughter is the best medicine, but nobody ever says, 'Is there a comedian in the house?.
DJ: Well, these are all important ideas, so maybe you should write about them....
BBM: Why bother? Talk is cheap. "Important" means "boring". You put something in a book, people forget it. There are probably two million important books that not person has ever read. Books about germ warfare, and the prime rate, and calcium. You might say I'm uneducated. But you're the one with a college education, and yet some day soon you're going to find that even though you never went to war, your boss did, and he's going to scream at you with a war voice and he'll think you're soft and weak because you never learned how to kill a man with a rusty Arkansas toothpick or be any kind of a team player. He'll holler at you like a husband yells at his wife because she left the bathwater running. He'll yell at you like he's Sergeant Carter and you're Gomer Pyle with a footlocker full of cream puffs. He'll scream at you like he's Mr. Mooney and you're Mrs. Carmichael with thirty-two thousand seven-hundred and sixty-eight cans of pork and beans.
DJ: The Lucy Show?
BBM: Exactly! Here's what you need to know about Lucille Ball. Desi Arnez very unwisely evoked the great God Babalu in a Voodoo ritual seen by millions. Lucille Ball was lurking in the wings and was possessed by the demon spirit. Isn't it obvious from her croaking speech and her psychotic scheming? But there's more. Aliens have been monitoring our television transmissions for thousands of years. When they first laid eyes on the crying demonoid face of Lucille Ball, they instinctively cringed, and they wanted nothing nothing more to do with planet Earth. It's no coincidence that they flying saucers started buzzing around just about the same time as of "I Love Lucy". They wanted to monitor the new Nazi-Communist demon weapon but they didn't dare take the risk of actual exposure. Listen! These things are important, and they need to be told! "I Love Lucy" is evidence of the demonic possession of America!
DJ: Well, thank you, Baby Boy Maddox, that's all we have time for. Any final thoughts?
BBM: Someday all of you will be living on squirrel brains and locusts and hiding from the demons in the big piney woods, and you'll thank me for trying to deliver the warning! Or maybe you'll curse me, too--because nobody would listen!

37. BABY BOY MADDOX: 1984, THE MUSICAL
In yet another of those radio interviews which were becoming a traditional and important part of the promotional machinery--which Baby Boy Maddox always took great care to exploit--the end of 1984 constituted an unparalleled opportunity for him to pontificate at length regarding his coherent beliefs, or lack thereof.
DJ: So--what do you think of the political situation? Reagan's landslide, and all that?
BBM: I doubt very many people will remember 1984 and say Oh, what a fun year THAT was! In today's insanity, we have already eaten the future and spat it out into the past. And one hour later, we're hungry again. So let's quickly remember, and just as quickly forget. Do you know the United States used to be good for? Rum, slaves, tobacco. Nowadays, we're known for the high quality of our plutonium, nitroglycerin, and styrofoam. And for loving Jesus. Let's face it--it's one thing to peddle guns and ammo to barefoot savages. It's another thing altogether to torture and rob them, just for fun.
DJ: Huh?
BBM: Oh, there's some pretty heavy duty changes going on in places like El Salvador. But I don't want to talk about it.
DJ: Well, you kind of just did.
BBM: Yeah--and I'm SORRY! Politics is just baseball for fatsos. We're all corrupt. Criticizing a politician for loving money is like Petunia Pig calling Little Lotta a plus-size chub. The way I see it, things need a little shaking up in the Middle East, and I'm tired of waiting for Israel to sell weapons to--oops, never mind, I've been sworn to secrecy and I'm not supposed to say ANYTHING about that. Maybe we ought to just throw up our hands and forget the Middle East. Let's get rid of our empire. We don't need it and can't afford it. How does that grab ya? Right? And give it to who? The Godless Russians? Yeah, That would work.
DJ: Well, you do have a point there.
BBM: Forget it. I'm not qualified to talk about politics or religion. Politics is nutty enough; you mix religion in there, and you got yourself a dose of extra-strength crazy. By the way, in spite of what they teach you in Bible class, God did not create the universe. The universe is a work in process. It's creating itself. God just gave the wheel a great big spin, and where it stops, nobody knows. You know, I actually like Ronald Reagan. He's white trash, like me. Dyes his hair; makes stories up out of whole cloth, thinks everything is about him, figures that if he says it, it must have actually happened. It's real nice that they voted him in. It's too bad the country club crowd got ahold of him, distorted his thinking, convinced him he was important. You know, I'm very sympathetic to people with fetal alcohol syndrome, but I really don't think they should be President. Joe McCarthy was drunk most of the time. That was his excuse. What's Reagan's story? And George Bush. He's proof that even white trash can have a dynasty. I think he's even crazier than Reagan, who, God knows, is crazy enough. Well, whatever Reagan is, at least he ain't a libertarian.
DJ: A libertarian?
BBM: A small-g small government fanatic. You know the type. I'm sure you do. They're the old man in every crappy neighborhood who's telling you to stay off his lawn and he won't tell you twice. Because he's got a gun, and he knows how to use it, and who to use it on. Hoboes. Troublemakers. Stupid kids. "Outside agitators" and "foreign-born radicals" who "never belonged here" and who should all be "shipped right back to where they came from." They like to talk crazy talk. No New Taxes for the Rich, Thorazine, Tinfoil Hats. Whenever they show a picture of a Libertarian in a news magazine, he's always some fat bald guy with a foul white beard that looks like fluffy dried snot. A diseased Santa Claus, out for revenge. He's got girlie pictures on the wall of his garage, and--bingo!-- a steamer trunk in the attic with a Nazi flag.He's the guy with three kids who, instead of hands, they all have snarling pit bull heads, and when they open their mouths, they spit bullets. His pickup truck has bumper stickers like THEY WILL TAKE AWAY MY PIT BULL WHEN THEY PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS. You know what?
DJ: What?
BBM: I think libertarians are at least mildly obsessed with pit bulls. Personally, I think it would be really great if someone bought a pit bull and named it "Tippy." You know what else scares me?
DJ: What?
BBM: The Second Amendment. The founding fathers had it exactly right. "The right of crazy people to own guns shall not be abridged." Actually, though, guns are not the problem. It's the bullets they spit out, all by their lonesome.
DJ: Yeah?
BBM: Yeah! That's the problem. Guns are not the problem. It's guns in the hands of crippled maniacs hypnotized by the voices saying "Kill for the love of killing look out black helicopter black helicopter truly these are the end times Messiah is coming I'm not crazy...you're the one who's crazy, let it burn let it burn let it burn burn burn.
DJ: I take it you don't like guns.
BBM: Guns are OK. It's buckshot I hate. You know, what Reagan really needs is a lavender boy to give him fashion advice, is what I think. Someone to tell him to work out more. Get buffed up. And give him foreign policy advice. "GreNADA! Tres declasse! Station the troops in St. Tropez, honey! Solidarity? Sweetie, PLEASE--Poland is so DOWDY! Oh, and don't trust Chernenko, Ronnie--his hair looks like fiberglass!"
DJ: So I hear you have a new album coming out....
BBM: Yeah, and I'm working on a new one, it's called "1984: The Musical," sort of a recap of the last year of democracy. I've already got two songs for it written, "Just an Old Fashioned Hate Song" and "Winston's Head Tastes Good," sung by a choir of caged rats.
DJ: Sounds interesting.
BBM: David Bowie, eat your heart out.
DJ: Any final thoughts?
BBM: You will get fooled again. A world to the weird is sufficient.

38. BABY BOY MADDOX: A DANGEROUS NUT

It was during a December 1984 radio interview that Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage, spoke perhaps a little too freely about certain matters better left unsaid, and thus ended up temporarily impeding his promising career as a popular talk-show guest. It all came about because an inexperienced college radio DJ, a silly young woman very much impressed by his charismatic presence, permitted Maddox to speak his piece without interjecting any meaningful caveats, until it was far too late. The transcript of that interview follows.

DJ: Where do you get the ideas for your songs?
BBM: Sometimes my songs just write themselves with very little input from me, other than perhaps that from what I get from certain little wormholes leaking out from the light of eternal consciousness and showering this poor mortal with its groovy cosmic goodness.
DJ: That's um, heavy...
BBM: Listen, Girly: Do a tarot reading for yourself, sometime; ask the cards if you are one who possesses free will. The cards will not lie--they will almost certainly answer "no," for that is what they are designed to do. However, in my case, the cards replied "Yes," and ever since that time I have had to live with this awful responsibility. I am fully aware of this and for that knowledge I have to thank the insights of Iyham...
DJ: Who?
BBM: Iyham the Great, the legendary Swami and ascended master who formerly appeared in these parts, though only once every twenty years; you are likely too young to have ever encountered him.
DJ: I never even heard of him.
BBM: He is spoken of only in whispers. He once confirmed, in strictest confidence, that I was one of those elusive possessors of the dreaded "free will." and thus I surely have been and am on the radar screen of the seventy-two ascended masters who seek to rule this plane. They, too, are possessed of this terrible free will and seek to remold the world into their own demonic image. It is very likely that they will not be stopped until someone speaks out, and the time and place is now. Thank you for reminding me. This is something I should have done from the outset. And now that I am reminded of it--thanks to you--I have a terrible thought--perhaps I too am one of the seventy-two demons which infest this town with their terrible evil.
DJ: We've got some incoming calls....
BBM: Don't answer those phones! They are agents of the dark lords who seek to silence my words! Thanks to your reminder, I now have a potent medium in which to combat their lies. You do, I trust, know all about neuro-linguistic programming....
DJ: What's that?
BBM: A siren song that makes the people want to act like their puppet-masters. Is it any coincidence that the American people are fascinated by those who pull the strings? Charlie McCarthy. The Godfather. My Fair Lady. The Muppets--demon simulacra.
DJ: I'm afraid I don't--
BBM: Wait! There's more! In a country as vast as this, the high masters are of course, helpless to control the populace unless they constantly monitor the activities of their people. That is why, over the last fifteen years, the government has sought to stifle the enlightenment provided by hallucinogenic drugs--by saturating the streets of the ghettos with heroin and cocaine, and by encouraging the middle class to become "coffee achievers"--caffeine is a potent neurotoxin, by the way, and so are artificial sweeteners--and also to depend for their livelihood upon jobs that could only be reached by long commutes. leaving them too tired at the end of the day to do anything but sit down in front of the hypno-box and enter a deep trance dedicated to making them behave.
DJ: Um, I think now would be a good time to take a call---
BBM: I can see the switchboards lighting up--don't answer those calls! Everything I talk about in my latest collection of songs points to the presence of the countless demons who sow discord and who seek to enslave us all! I know all about such matters! I am deeply immersed in the study of quantum consciousness, remote viewing, black magic, and methods of mind control--not because I love these hateful tools, but simply in my own self-defense, and the defense of the downtrodden!. Because I have free will, it just so happens that even as I live my own history I live many alternate histories, during the course of which anything might happen to alter the stream of time which is not linear but merely circular.
DJ: We have to take a break soon--
BBM: Don't answer those phones! Let me finish! There’s really something quite odd about the way we live. We fool ourselves into thinking that if we only had a little bit more, everything would be all right, but whatever we manage to get is somehow never enough. Because we're always hungry for still more. We can never be satisfied because what we need is never the same as what we can get. Money? It's never enough. You could always use more because what you want always expands to no longer fit the amount of money that's coming in. Love? Love is an illusion; you fall out of love after six months and once you do you can never again fool yourself into thinking that such a thing as love even exists. Maybe you think that if you only go to the gym and get all muscular and healthy, then people will give you the respect you crave. They'll respect you all right, in the same way they respect an animal with a shiny coat. For all your muscles, you're still just an animal, and you've just proved it to all the world. Why do you do these things? Because you're conditioned that way, from birth, because you are compelled to merely imitate the actions of all the people who surround you with their lie life. You may say to yourself, if only I study the wisdom of the ages, I could walk among men as a God. But not a chance. People only respect you for doing what you're expected to do; you get no extra credit for exceeding expectations, and if you do so once, that becomes the new normal, and then you're expected to do it all the time. So why do you knock yourself out on this eternal treadmill? Materialism is a dead end. Houses, cars, and money--these won't make you happy.
DJ: They make me happy.
BBM: They make you a target. The best thing you can possibly do is lay low and hope that the animals who are out to kill you don't even bother to notice you. Being a hero is over-rated; take it from one who knows.Happiness is within, or it's nothing.
DJ: Umm, I can see from your latest collection of songs that you've gotten pretty heavily into a philosophy of negativity. What would you say to those who think that maybe you should lighten up?
BBM: Men are free to change my music to suit the latest style--I only ask that they change not one word of my songs because it is the message in the words that are the most important thing of all.
DJ: Yeah. Well, I'm afraid that's all we have time for, though maybe we can take just one call.
CALLER: Hello, I was listening to Baby Boy Maddox--
DJ: Would you mind identifying yourself?
CALLER: My name's not important; call me Mr. X. Anyway, I just wanted to say that respect is a two way street, Respect is given when it is received in return. Me, personally, I have yet to have a problem with anyone giving me respect. Personally, I think that if you want something and you work for it you can achieve anything you want. But you're always going to run into smart alecks who are immature, who don't take direction well, and they never grow up, and they never amount to anything, and so all they can do is attract attention to themselves by bad-mouthing the people who work hard for a living and try to make something of themselves and who succeed in what they set out to do. So I think that personally, I think that your guest here is a dangerous nut and I'm very surprised that you're giving him a forum for his nonsense and I fully intend to speak to the station manager about this, he's a very good friend of mine and I'm sure he'd be very interested to hear about this.
DJ: I--
BBM: Let me take this. Are you quite finished?
CALLER: I've said my piece, yes.
BBM: Well, I don't know WHO you are, but I know WHAT you are. Whether you know it or not, you're in league with the very devils I was talking about. You're a gasbag who's hypnotized by the smell of your own farts and you think that anybody who doesn't gag from the stench of your putrid corpse is some kind of oddball. Well, I curse you, and I curse your family, and I curse all your kind, and let me tell you something else, too--when I curse somebody, they stay cursed. You will begin to feel the effects in about four hours. If I were you, I'd stay off the street. You've been warned.
CALLER: [hangs up.]
DJ: Um.... [long pause]. Um, well, that's all we have time for. It's the top of the hour...our guest has been Baby Boy Maddox, and you can catch his performance tonight at Yarble's on the South Side. Stay tuned, it's the top of the hour; we'll be giving away a pair of tickets right after station identification and the news....

39. BABY BOY MADDOX: IT
By the time 1985 rolled around, Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage, was
made unwelcome on more than one radio station by having delivered up
the following diatribe, on a popular mainstream radio station no less.
Although his comments were recorded with a ten-second tape delay, it
was undeniably obvious what word he was actually using.

What motivated him to do such a thing? The answer is lost to the ages.
But "jazzing the squares" (in the old sense of the word 'jazz') was
always his delight.

DJ: Ladies and gentlemen, we have local celebrity Baby Boy Maddox
in the studio with us today. he's a singer-songwriter who has a new album
out, and he's gained quite a reputation as a controversialist. Mr. Maddox, I hear
you've been causing quite a sensation with some of your
recent comments on the radio. What's on your mind today?
BBM: Your sponsors.
DJ: Oh, um, really?
BBM: You can quibble all you want about the details, but the plain
fact of the matter is that fast food is death food; and junk food
makes junk people.
DJ: Well, um, of course, that's your opinion, but, as everybody knows,
OUR sponsors are, um, committed to giving their customers only
the finest fresh-made food at a price that everyone can afford.
BBM: You're 100 per cent right. I would be a fool to come on here and
insult your sponsor. They're the ones who make this program possible.
Of COURSE they're the ones who serve the good fast food; it's all the
other ones who serve the non-nourishing junk that makes a healthy
person sick just to smell it. It kind of reminds me of politics. There
are two parties in America. The party of sports and the party of
books.
DJ: Interesting. And which one are you?
BBM: Well, there is also a third party; the party of Just Don't Give
a Damn. That's my party. I'm in good company. It's larger than both of
the others put together. Actually, though, I came here today to talk
about something controversial that you don't hear much about. I don't
want to name it, but it is what it is. Namely, waste matter.
DJ: Um...uh...oh, really?
BBM: Shh! IT is the most disgusting thing there is. But IT's useful,
because IT also keeps certain people from getting too high and mighty.
IT is also a form of magic; now you see it; now you don't. You can't
hold onto IT, but you never want to let IT go.
DJ: Don't hold back; tell us what you really think.
BBM [Not grasping the irony]: I always do. Shh! IT is like a governor, you know?
DJ: You're saying that the Governor is, um, comparable to night soil?
BBM: No, like, the governor on a car. The man who who didn't need to
eat or drink, or expel waste, or even to sleep--that man would be the mightiest
man in the world. A superman. A virtual God. There are certain Eastern
monks who can sit totally still for months, in a trance. I wonder what
they see? Maybe while they're in a trance they're up there in heaven,
unraveling the strands of fate.
DJ: Heavy.
BBM [Still not grasping the irony]: Shh! IT is a funny thing, you
know? Sparrows pick up the seeds from out of it.
DJ: That's disgusting!
BBM: Not at all! Farmers spread IT on the fields to make vegetables grow.
DJ: That'll remind me to wash my vegetables the next time I make a salad.
BBM: The preservatives will kill you long before anything else. The
Indians used to burn IT in fires to keep warm. There's a lesson here.
DJ: Not to stay overnight in a teepee?
BBM [Not getting, or, more likely, ignoring the joke]: The lesson is
that even the lowliest things have their higher uses. You know, some
people think that IT is funny. But IT is not. IT is a tragedy. IT is
what gets left over when the animal has had its way. IT is the one
thing that nobody wants, but you know, in a way, everything is IT.
Everything is useful and everything is useless. Am I making you
uncomfortable?
DJ: Me? No, but some of our listeners might be trying to eat.
BBM: I'm not telling anybody how they ought to feel, but they ought to
face the facts. IT is the biggest fact of life there is. IT is the one
thing that nobody likes to think about. Modern people want to flush IT
away. IT is waste matter; it's what the body can't use and gets rid of. But in
the olden days, people had a much healthier attitude. They weren't
afraid of IT. They'd throw IT out the window into the gutter. Great
steaming piles of horse apples were left to dry in the streets. Small
children were sent to gather them. People weren't afraid of IT. Least
of all peasants. When the machines took over, that's when things began
to change. For ten or twenty thousand years, IT was accepted. Then all
of a sudden we began to fear our own sense of smell. That doesn't make
us superior. That's just the neurosis of a caged animal. That just
makes us crippled. Some animals bury IT. Not because they're disgusted
by it. But because it's a sign that they were there. They don't want
to be found. We're the opposite. Nowadays, we do everything we can
think of to show we WERE here. We write books, build monuments, take
photographs. It's a different impulse than the one that the animals
have. We want to preserve IT for the next animals to
come along. I know that I am right and I will be proven right. Every
piece of IT is unique and it all smells the same. And as man is
limited by IT, so God--by the infinite.
DJ: Well, thanks for that. B--
BBM: Oh wait, I'm not finished. One more thing. One major way we humans show
that we were here is to write songs. I'll sing my songs for everyone
and in just that way I like to leave my calling cards everywhere I go.
Some people complain and say I'm rather rude. I got no couth. But I
say it's a perfectly natural thing to do. The songs I sing are just a
way for me to express myself. In some places, as you know, there are
laws against singing in the subway, or on a public street. Some people
say the only place they sing is in the bathroom. Never in public.
Certainly never on a public stage! You see, they all want a little
privacy. Whenever they sing, they prefer to do it behind closed doors.
But that's THEIR hang-up. Me, I prefer to sing everywhere I go--in
the woods, behind the barn, in the back seat of a taxicab--even on
your doorstep! If you want me to, I'll even sing--right here!
DJ: Um...no thanks.
BBM: They say I'm mad and tell me that what I do is wrong, but really,
I'm an artist. And I'll sing it for the world to hear! Who's paying
for this radio broadcast?
DJ: Um...the sponsors.
BBM: And who supports the sponsors? People who love the songs! And the
role of the radio DJ is to put the songs under the microscope. It's
what you're paid to do! Some job! Quite a dainty dish to set before a
king! Your bread and butter. Eat it up, yum! Why do I make people
consume what I have to offer? I'm doing you a favor! Once I trick you
into consuming it, then you start to get some sense.
DJ: Well, thanks for that. Baby Boy Maddox, folks. Baby Boy Maddox.
Telling it like it is.

40. BABY BOY MADDOX: ETERNAL IXIOLOGY
Implausibly enough, in early 1985 Baby Boy Maddox actually contrived to get himself interviewed on a "Public Affairs" radio show, aired locally, and he used the occasion to expound upon his status as "A Perfect Aspired Master of the fourth and final level of Eternal Ixiology." (I suspect the whole thing was an elaborate shuck-and-jive, although with Baby Boy Maddox you never really knew for sure.) He claimed that "they" came to him and taught him all about Ixiology in the space of several weeks, during a time in which he was "temporarily confined". (Where he was confined was never made clear. And who, exactly, were this mysterious "They"? Wardens? Inmates? Doctors? Government employees? We may never know.)

From here we can go to the transcript:

Baby Boy Maddox: They gave me their tests. I scored one hundred per cent on all of them. They said that I didn't need Ixiology, that I was already cured, and that there was nothing more that they could teach me. In fact, they wanted me to teach it to the other inmates. I said no. This made them mad. They put me in solitary. The hole. I wouldn't budge an inch. That's what really frightens them, you know.The bronco that would not be broken. The man who has the power but who will not use it as a means to an end. When I got out I was always running into these people.
MODERATOR: Always?
BBM: Everywhere I went. I hear they even got Debtford Pink.
MOD: Who?
BBM: You never heard of him. he was the manager of the Black Beards. It was supposed to be the latest thing in psychedelic rock, about 1967. It was a put-up job. The government was behind it. LBJ himself. He was planning to run for re-election in '68, and he wanted to hook the kids in with a hypno-rock program. Strobes, fireworks, light shows, 3D glasses, the whole nine yards. Not to mention plenty of hash, grass, and acid, and naked hippie chicks with pointy nipples to wow the horny young bucks.
MOD: [Mumbles something undeciperable.]
BBM: Sorry. Sorry. Hope I'm not out of line. Anyway, I guess old Lyin' Lyndon figured he'd get 'em one way or another. Reduce their soft hippie minds to granola mush. Convince 'em that it was worth the trouble to get out and vote for Horseface Bullshit Johnson instead of Pussyface Tricky Dick Nixon. I mean, there's no way they were going to vote for Nixon anyway, right? Anyway, you know the rest. Kennedy bought the farm--no love lost there. I always wondered how that went down. You ever see a picture of that Sirhan Sirhan? He was some kind of kill-crazy Zombie, sho 'nuff, and I'm wondering now if the Ixiology people got to 'im. Wouldn't be at all surprised. You know that as late as August '68, Horseface STILL thought he was going to be nominated and would win the pot? Wouldn't THAT have been a real kick in the nuts!
MOD: Um...I fail to see your point...
BBM: The point is that Ixiology is powerful--it's not just one of those la-di-da pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps type cult deals--but you know, like most of them do, that they do go after self-tortured depressed kids with no direction and they offer them a home, and plenty of work, and short rations to keep 'em too tired and busy and hungry to know what's happening and get angry about it and when you advance in rank you get to sell out your fellow stooges for a chololate bar and then you can make the peons lick your boots and all of a sudden you're King Sh*t.
MOD: Please watch your language. I must say, though, it sounds an awful lot like an English boarding school....
BBM: Concentration camp. more like. Ixiology is like a virus for chumps.
MOD: How so?
BBM: Well, now, you know, being God gets to be a lonely gig.
MOD: I'm afraid I wouldn't know anything about that.
BBM But it's all relative, anyway. I mean, God. GOD. Compared to what? I mean, the spider is lord of the flies. Your sixth grade bully is king of the hill. But army ants won't go anywhere near diet soda. You have to have something that the insects WANT. And can USE. And it's a pretty weak God who has weak disciples--that's the trouble with a lot of musicians; they're all right, but their disciples are thick and ordinary. In this racket, you find out pretty quick that the big boys play a whole different game on a much higher level. Now, you ask yourself, who's this messiah that all the really heavy-duty movers and shakers bow down to? You won't catch them oohing and aahing to no Hollywood trash. They only answer to someone with the juice to push them around. It gets real old real quick, looking at who's pushing who off the big merry-go-round to grab at the brass ring. Your life at the top lasts for about seven years at best, and that goes for nearly everybody, no matter what they do. The rest is coasting. Or maybe they think they're king of the world, top o' the heap, but they haven't even peaked yet. Power like that really is just a virus. Across all levels. It has no life of its own, but it creates Zombies. A virus makes you want to go off and be by yourself and you're no longer yourself anymore, you're a sick man who has a virus. You have visions of the virus eating away at you. Every time you look in the mirror you see a virus. You look out the window and it's a virus world. You're looking at the world through virus-colored glasses. You're a creature of the virus. A healthy life is a threat that stinks in the nostrils; it nauseates you to look at people who don't have the virus. You become devoted to the virus. The only questions you ever have can only be answered by the virus itself. You start to get paranoid when you run into people who don't understand the virus. And then...
MOD: And then...?
BBM: The thing you want to do most is infect the world, to MAKE the people understand.
MOD: Interesting....
BBM: But, sooner or later, every virus burns itself out. The victims die off, or they become immune, and then it's back to square one. Time for a new program.
MOD: I...see.
BBM: Stories have that same hypnotic power. The longer the story, the more powerful it is. And no story is ever self-contained; it's all part of the same story, and the name of that story is the Fall. From Grace. And the people who rule the world? They profit by these fables. And how! And let me say just one more thing...all of this, all...this is coming from God's own lips to your very own ears.
MOD: Shoo...wll now...that's quite...a...story.
BBM: It's more than a story, my friend; it's a natural fact. It's stuff I shouldn't talk about in a public forum. The dark arts. Once you tap into that virus, it's a whole different world. The scales fall from your eyes. Ordinary food and drink is loathsome. You start to hate all the weaker forms of virus, like sports for the guys and soap operas for the ladies. That's just small beer. The real virus is like a river of burning whiskey--once you feel its power as it trickles down your throat, you're totally lost. So if you're not ready for it, you're better off keeping your head down and playing in the sandbox with Grandmaw and the kiddies.
MOD: That's about all we have time for. You're going to be performing...?
BBM: Date and time to be announced. Watch the telephone poles.

The curious thing about this outcome of this interview? I was later informed by the moderator that, immediately after the show, several people called in to demand that Ixiology be either regulated or outlawed as a dangerous cult.

Even more curious was that, for weeks following the show, more than a few extremely agitated people also called the station to ask where they could sign up for Ixiology. And when they were informed that the radio station knew nothing about the cult, the callers allegedly grew quite upset.

Needless to say, the station never again booked Baby Boy Maddox to appear on their show.

[dimenno]

BOOK ONE
APPENDIX 1: THE APHORISMS OF BABY BOY MADDOX
Nothing particularly lonesome about a train whistle. Just means someone is going somewhere to do something. (1967)

Nobody can know me until they've lived like me. And nobody can live like me unless they're willing to give up everything. (1968)

People assume I'm some kind of hobo or tramp or wino, but they're wrong. Tramps, most of them, once HAD something.I never had a single thing that belonged to me. (1970)

Don't talk to me about charity. Their moldy bread is worse than no bread at all. Fear fills the hungry, the hungry head. The angry hate bread. (1971)

We don't need a New Dylan. What we need is the Old Dylan. (1972)

I hate fiction. Lies that tell the truth. I want the truth that tells the truth. Better yet, just give me the truth. (1973)

Who? (When asked if he had been influenced by William Blake.) (1974)

Life is mostly hard work. That's not for me. Call me anti-life. (1975)

In the fight between you and the world, back the world. It weighs more. (1976)

You're either the moon on the sidewalk or something else. (1977)

Listen to the words. The music is just pretty lies. The words are the truth. Cahnge the music all you want. But never take the Lord's word in vain. (1978)

Reagan is a stupid conservative. It is people like me who are profoundly conservative. (1979)

Everything changes, changes too fast. And everything stays the same. (1980)

The man who wrote the book of Job was the wisest man in the world and we haven't got too much smarter since. (1982)

Most people have brains that are like broken dishwashers, full of greasy dishes and lukewarm filthy water. (1984)

We are all just cavemen. Cavemen in Cadillacs. (1987)

When the Aliens take over, they'll be playing 'Oh Happy Day' through every loudspeaker in the land. (1990)

Rock and roll has nothing to do with good taste. Rock and roll is about power, and power creates its own fashion. (1993)

Grab your presents come on down, Santa Claus has come to town. (1996)

I dreamed I was in France, singing the songs of John Lennon, and everybody understands me. Then I wake up, and nobody understands me. (1999)

Meadow sleep--it's pasture bedtime. (2004)

Being poor is a full time job with no benefits. (2008)

Keep your Math Books, Dude. Mathematics is a piggy social construct. 2 plus 2 equals Fuck You, Man. (2010)

BOOK ONE APPENDIX 2: BABY BOY MADDOX: THE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Pied Piper of Destruction: The Baby Boy Maddox Story. By Boomer
Green, with Hy Garibaldi. 1973. 124pp.
Junkie Mage: The Authorized Biography of Baby Boy Maddox. By Mike
German and Marigold Marsh. 1986. 386pp.
So They Fall: Baby Boy Maddox in His Time by Cad Cadwell. 1989. 202pp.
The Hate That Loves to Hate: The Unauthorized Biography of Baby Boy
Maddox. By Doree Lang. 1999. 288pp.
Fury: The Life and Times of Baby Boy Maddox. By Alanna Volac, with
Rufus Toxotoma. 2008. 233pp.
The Murdering Minstrel. A film produced by Hillel Glasya-Labolas and
directed by Sol Amon. Starring "Vinegar Jack". 1999. 71 minutes.

The Pied Piper of Destruction: The Baby Boy Maddox Story. By Boomer
Green, with Hy Garibaldi. (1973)
I suppose I should feel sorry for Boomer Green, who, after 40 years as
a journalist, lost his job in 2008 and turned to writing his memoirs,
for which he has yet to find a publisher. But during the time I knew
him I found him to be an utterly clueless, impossibly retrograde
example of the “Old Guard,” the pre-internet, pre-computer brigade who
continue to long for the days of newsprint set in cold hard type and the
clacking of Remington typewriters poked at with two fingers and copy
boys responding to the sound of sheets of paper being pulled out of
platens and gruff, cigar-chomping city editors bellowing “Stop the
Presses!” and freckle-faced gamins wearing spiked-felt beanies
hollering WUXTRY on lurid street corners and that whole thankfully
extinguished hard-drinking straight-shooting, jibber-jabbering cynical
reporter jive straight out of THE FRONT PAGE and, by now, mercifully
long extinct.

No old school reporter, either by training or temperament, could
possibly hope to capture the Baby Boy Maddox story in any meaningful
way. Compounding this is that fact that Boomer Green was one of the
most deeply un-hip individuals whom I have ever laid eyes on. He would
always waltz around the City Room with his uncombed shock of
suspiciously coal-black hair and his smelly unlit Kaywoodie pipe
wearing a garish green plaid sports jacket which he refused to retire,
even after it had devolved into a garment more patches than cloth. He
had a perpetually dazed look about him as though he were mulling over
the source of his next Red Hot Scoop, but years of work on the police desk, and,
later, as the features editor, gave him the sort of pedestrian
mentality geared solely to writing stories of the broadest appeal,
which you find to this very day in the B sections of small town
newspapers: Area Youth Wins Spelling Bee; Ice Cream Vendor Reports
Record Summer Sales; Local Recluse Refuses to Dismantle Dump Deemed
Attractive Nuisance; Town Council Issues New School Bond—in other
words, the very sort of Norman Rockwell nonsense making him ill-suited
to write work of any visionary impact whatsoever, save that solely
designed to appeal exclusively to the Lowest Common Denominator of
reader.

THE PIED PIPER OF DESTRUCTION bears the distinction—it’s only one—of
being the first book written about Baby Boy Maddox, but it only covers
his early career and is grievously flawed in nearly every aspect
imaginable. I don’t know who this “Hy Garibaldi” character is—his name
isn’t listed as ever having written anything else—he was probably some
flunky at the newspaper Boomer Green was employed at when he “wrote”
this biography. I suppose some readers might remember the quickie
biographies of eminent pop stars which appeared like a horde of
locusts during the mid-1960s—thin, shoddily researched books usually
published as paperback originals, composed mainly of press releases
and transcribed chats with music biz publicists which purported to
tell the “true” story of famous recording stars such as the Beatles,
the Rolling Stones, etc. This effort is barely one half-step above
those now- yellowing pulpwood productions, which, inexplicably, now
sell for big bucks on Ebay and through other on and offline retailers.
(Actually, Boomer Green’s little book is now also quite scarce, and
it’s only because I purchased it at the time that it came out that I
even happen to own a copy.)

His “biography” is a plain-vanilla account of the man, padded with all
sorts of uninteresting and supernumerary “facts,” such as his
subject’s favorite food (canned ravioli), colors (black and blue), and
modes of relaxation (fishing; trapping; gazing intently into a
campfire).

His book shovels out the usual boilerplate about the future star’s
hardscrabble upbringing—not one word of which, incidentally, is based
on any factual account. The book also discusses the subject’s
struggles to reach the top by paying his dues performing for little or
no pay at any venue which would deign to have him. But there is no
hard evidence whatsoever that Boomer Green actually ever met Baby Boy
Maddox or that he ever even witnessed so much as one of his
performances. Worse yet, Green was 27 when he wrote the book, and yet
he seems to know nothing whatsoever beyond clichés about the hippie
movement, the radical beliefs of the era, the various religious and
cultural practices of younger people, or even the excruciatingly
vicious politics of the era.

Junkie Mage: The Authorized Biography of Baby Boy Maddox. By Mike
German and Marigold Marsh. (1986).
To read his current scrawlings, posted to various semi-prestigious
political blogs supposedly geared to the cognoscenti, Mike German is a
top-flight ace reporter—another Bob Woodward, if you will, with
the good looks, intelligence, and inside connections to take him far.
But the ponderous prose of this preposterous self-obsessed clown has
also made him well known during his long career sideline in the gimcrack
confessional genre. He is a kind of self-styled Voice (and presumably
conscience,
although he has none) of His Generation who self-celebrates his own
milestones as though they were engraved upon stone tablets sent down
to us from on high. I blame the blonde hash, personally. I know that
when he went away to grad school he started out as notoriously
abstemious, but once he started hitting the old hookah he let his hair
out by about half an inch and would sometimes even show up to class
without a tie.

Anyway, I think it’s high time that someone blew the whistle in this
Byzantine solipsist, whose bedtime reading was once alleged to consist
of a page of the Oxford English Dictionary. He was, and presumably still is, is
a narcissistic logothete without so much as one idea, original or
otherwise, rattling about in his thick, square, and smoothly repulsive
cranium. The book he wrote—no doubt with the indispensable assistance
of his overworked and impoverished graduate assistants—is a veritable
olla podrida of dead serious whimsy, seemingly thoughtful speculation,
and outright balderdash. Why such people even bother to write such
allegedly erudite but utterly uninteresting books? Surely not to
advance learning. I suggest it was a blatant career move, and at that
I’m being charitable. To have such a book on your C.V. must be as
comforting as a sugar tit to a querulous discombobulated toddler
recently jarred from his dazed nap-time torpor. I know of not one
person less qualified to write such a book. Mike German (nee Landsman)
would be better off sticking to books in which he writes about his
prostate problems and winsomely reminiscences about the good old days,
back when he used to ostensibly date (but never fuck) members of the
Swedish Bikini Team. Having him write about BBM is akin to asking
Rasputin to write about Tolstoy, or (more to the point) Charlie
McCarthy discuss Joe McCarthy..

I’ll provide you with an example of German’s truly atrocious prose, so
you can judge for yourself:

The song “America” by Baby Boy Maddox is profoundly dissonant and
disorienting—what the Russians refer to as Ostranie. I came to his
music as a great admirer of his previous efforts in the folk music
mold —but as a frank critic of certain of his later self-righteously
un-American works. “America” shares more qualities with Maddox’s later
work than with his earlier more pure and less puerile creations.
Furthermore, the history of pop music is rife with superior examples
of agitprop, notably: "The Sugar Cube Ride" (1965), "Conspiracy
Dogs" (1968), "Our Religion Is Love" (1970), and -"Money for Rope"
(1971). In his earlier songwriting, Maddox had been inventive, witty, and
entertaining. His later work is self-serving sanctimony.
Atrocious songs such as "1-2-3 F*ck," "Everybody Smoke Pot,"
"Long Live Stalin," "Too Much Heroin," "What, Me Riot," and
"Sunday Morning (Is a Good Day to Wake Up Dead)" are too vulgar to
discuss in a journal of learned opinion.

Fresh out of Grad School with an newly minted PhD, this asshole, Mike
German, with his fancy credentials delights in flaunting his influential
contacts in the publishing world—I am naming no names, but you
would recognize the woman in an instant; she is world famous and
not merely for her fashionable clothing or her government connections
or for her second husband’s whale-skin penis covers which adorn the
barstools on his yacht.

Predictably enough, his book is written in a deracinated , parchment-dry,
scholarly fashion with footnotes galore, all of which tell me exactly
nothing about the man. As for this tome constituting any sort of
“authorized” biography, one might as well claim that one has written
an authorized biography of Jesus Christ, or of God Himself. (Actually,
not a bad idea, come to think of it.) I actually think this fiend,
German—his family, I hear, had changed their name from Landsman to
German the instant they had fled from their vile shtetl and set foot
on the free soil of America—has got a major problem with paranoia. He
seems to think that I’m following him everywhere, or so I have been
told by one of his long-time girlfriends. Unwarranted paranoia is
about the only thing he has in common with the working-class likes of
Baby Boy Maddox. German has lived the cosseted life of a pampered
upper-middle class prince, and his high government connections
indubitably gave him some semi-authorized access to some pretty
confidential police reports, but, as we all know, the reports about
individuals in the entertainment field which are put together by
clandestine agencies tend to be notoriously unreliable. They skew the
facts in a way that ultimately distorts them beyond all recognition.
It reminds one very much of the story about the four blind men and the elephant.

The entire book reads very much like a propaganda pamphlet put out by
a public health agency regarding some particularly pernicious disease.
Although this description of BBM us, in certain aspects, not far from
the truth, every potentially interesting fact regarding the man’s
depredations is hammered flat, related as it is in a pedantic style
awash with omissions—and often, outright fabrications.

So They Fall: Baby Boy Maddox in His Time by Cad Cadwell. 1989.
More so than even Mike German, Cad Cadwell is an insincere journalistic
opportunist who has no understanding whatsoever--absolutely none--
of any but the most anodyne of musical expressions.

Cadwell would seem, on the surface, to have been an odd choice to
stake to a publisher's advance. But owing to his connections to some
of the creepiest right-wing moguls around--people who, like most
reactionaries, have a vested interest in neutering radical
voices--Cadwell was a natural choice to write a hatchet job--a sort of
anti-hagiography of Baby Boy Maddox that makes Kitty Kelley and Albert
Goldman and Lawrence Leamer look like babes in the wood by comparison.

I have known and followed the career of Cadwell since the early 1980s,
when he--rather incongruously--wrote media and other cultural
criticism for an arts and entertainment weekly called The
Thunderstone. His singularly didactic and graceless prose gradually
morphed over time--and, to be sure, under astute editorial
guidance--into a barbed and condescending dismissal of all phenomena
which did not fit comfortably into his previous piggy realm of
existence. He was the son of a prominent inventor-entrepreneur who
grew wealthy under the patronage of an enormous industrial concern.
One time I played for him the song "Fortunate Son," as if to tweak him
for his privileged background. His oafish response? "I ain't no
fortunate son either."

Because he always and at all times had his beady eye fixed
unwaveringly upon the main chance, never once in all of his
contumacious writings for the Thunderstone did he ever express a
word-view that a fat-assed businessman would find in even the
slightest degree controversial. One must, in retrospect at least, view
with awe such admirable singlemindedness, I suppose, although his
article in which he questioned the necessity to tip "lazy, ungrateful"
service workers did result in a great many disgusted letters
questioning whether he himself had ever done so much as a lick of hard
work in his entire life. Furthermore, his attempts at queer-bashing
the performing artist Prince did bring down upon his head some rather
heated correspondence from gay rights advocacy groups. Which is
ironic, since I believe--though I cannot confirm--that he is secretly
Jewish, and therefore should presumably know better than to
mock persecuted minorities. Later in his print career he toned down
his obvious bigotry, although people long familiar with his odious
rhetoric could undoubtedly read between the lines of his sanctimonious
cant. Furthermore, his arrogant privileged point of view regarding honest
working people has still remained as hateful as ever.

What can one say about a book which purports to tell the true details
of the life of a musician, but which at the same time is meretricious,
false, and distorted in every particular? He discusses Baby Boy
Maddox's musical output barely at all, instead using Maddox's
philosophy as a soapbox from which to mount a heated attack upon his,
Cadwell's, class enemies. This book otherwise offers few, if any,
biographical details about Maddox which could not have been gleaned
from newspaper accounts, magazine articles and other biographies.
Instead, Cadwell is merely jumping upon an anti-punk bandwagon--a good
dozen years after the fact, incidentally--and seeks instead to merely
write an ideologically biased revanchist history of the entire era
during which, in certain crucial respects, BBM stood center stage. It
is an interesting idea in theory, but Cadwell is no historian--as far
as I'm concerned, he is barely even fit to call himself a
journalist--for not only does he have no credentials in that line, but
he doesn't even attempt to hew to the standards of objectivity.
Although he was thirty years old when he wrote this book, he sounds
more like an aggrieved octogenarian shouting at the hippies to get off
his lawn--a good thirty years after the so-called counterculture had
allegedly first essayed to violate his verdant sanctum sanctorum.

The Hate That Loves to Hate: The Unauthorized Biography of Baby Boy
Maddox. By Doree Lang. 1999.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should divulge that the author
of THE HATE THAT LOVES TO HATE is not unknown to me. I had Doree Lang
over to my house on at least one occasion-this was just before, or just after,
she rather uncharitably accused me of attempted rape, back in 1985.
The charges, of course, were a complete fabrication. She was nutty as
a loon. When I took her into my modest meditation chamber and closed
the door, she psychotically clutched my arm and insisted that the
patterned sworlings on my stout oaken door resembled twin skulls. One,
she insisted, was in full frontal view and one was in left-facing
profile and they were shouting at one another and both had “patterns”
emanating from the tops of their heads which indicated—at least to her
addled mind—that both resided in Hell.

It was this eminent journalist, scholar, and psychotic, incidentally, who,
by the luck of the draw, just happened to be the person selected in 1999,
by a reputable academic press, to write a definitive account of the
life of Baby Boy Maddox.

To say the resulting book is more fiction than fact would not be a gross
exaggeration. Lang's deluded imagination was able to dredge up every
conspiracy theory then extant, as well as a few that apparently
existed nowhere else but in her addled mind. To say that Baby Boy
Maddox was a “police spy” who “wore a wire” is quite one thing—many
people have told me that they suspected as much, although persistent
FOIA requests have turned up nada. But it is quite another thing
altogether to maintain that, from a very early age, he was also the
mind-controlled slave of various government-controlled agencies.
That’s what I would refer to, in the understatement of the year, as a
“bit of a stretch.” What is it, I wonder, about mental illness in
particular, that serves to foster such preposterously nonsensical
delusions? I suppose that next, she’ll be claiming that Baby Boy
Maddox, age twelve, was at the Texas Book Depository and pulled the
trigger on the Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle, serial number C2766,
and that Oswald was onl there to help him aim. Could be that Baby Boy
Maddox also set off the controlled explosions at the World Trade Center
and was also responsible for hypnotizing James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan?
About the only group she failed to implicate in the Rise and Fall of
Baby Boy Maddox was the Masons (although she does mention
them in passing in her discussion of the picture sleeve of the
single “The Girl Is Mine.”)

In any event, Lang’s book purports to be a startling expose of “The
Baby Boy Maddox Cult,” but I seriously doubt that she ever so much as even
talked to the man. I draw this conclusion from some of her many
impressionistic and wholly inaccurate representations and
interpretations of her subject. For instance, “His eyes were
blood-red” (page 222); “He sprang up from his chair like a shot.”
(page 14); “He was rather casual in his manner of dress but he always
wore clean undergarments” (page 124).

First of all, if anything, the whites of his eyes always had a
slightly yellowish cast, like that of certain dogs; he was never prone
to having a bloodshot look. Secondly, if Baby Boy Maddox ever did
anything or went anywhere in an unduly excited manner, I myself have yet to
see it. Finally,quite frankly, BBM often reeked to high heaven.
Sometimes the stench reminded you of nothing so much as the corpse
of a dog that had rolled around on top of a dead rat for half an hour.
I am told that cops who had to haul him in would often light a cheap
cigar in self-defense, to counter his murky aroma.

It is quite one thing top write a sensationalistic tell-all about a
man with whom you had once kept close company. But to cobble together
a patchwork crazy-quilt of a book from secondary sources, magazine
articles, newspaper accounts, and court depositions, and then attempt
to palm off the ensuing mess as an intimate memoir or even a
definitive account, is strictly from hunger. Not cricket. Decidedly
unkosher. It is a poor book indeed that forces the reader to question
the motivations of the author. Was it a quick-buck attempt to exploit
the man’s sudden, unwelcome notoriety, or did she write the book many
years previous, after perhaps a single casual encounter, quite
possibly in the insane asylum to which she was committed-- and then,
somehow, did she manage to interest (or seduce?) a publisher into
publishing her garbled recollections at the precisely opportune moment?
I don’t know and I don’t care, and frankly? Neither should you.

Fury: The Life and Times of Baby Boy Maddox. By Alanna Volac, with
Rufus Toxotoma. 2008. 233pp.
Ms. Volac, a near contemporary of mine whom I happen to know
personally, is, as the older generation is wont to put it, “a real
piece of work.” I’m not sure what mold she came out of, but if the
Maker were wise, He would surely have broken it tout suite once SHE
emerged. A conniving slut—this is by no means too strong a term, nor
is it a slander—and a commonplace debutramp, Ms. Volac must have slept
with so many men, and sometimes women, that there are probably fewer
than five degrees of separation between her and the subjects she
chooses to write about. She was at one time a notorious faux-radical
who piqued the interest of every Red Squad in sight during her heyday in the
later 1970s, and well into the 1980s.

After 20 more years of tub-thumping for some of the most unsavory
right-wing causes
imaginable, by the time she got around to writing her book in 2008,
she had presumably sniffed a coming change in the weather and flip-flopped
into once again espousing the strained, stale, and curiously
unconvincing radicalism of an earlier age. Hence, virtually everything
she has written lately seems to be part of a confused and rambling
political tract. I do not necessarily disagree with her politics, but
I find her opportunism in leaping aboard the PC, Rad-Lib bandwagon to
be not merely a bit suspect but actually downright disgusting.
Furthermore, I am certain that her transparency in embracing
convenient pieties and fashionable platitudes will win her no new
converts to the cause among any save the most undiscerning.
With her biography, self-styled, she has botched a great opportunity
to write a truly insightful book, one which would have shed light on
the enigmatic and formerly reclusive pop star. Instead, she has
larded her narrative with stale rhetoric and obsolescent facts,
and her patented brand of illogical reasoning has
produced a confused and virtually worthless tome.

FURY is a very disappointing book, in too many ways to count.
Obviously, Toxotoma, who apparently provides the bulk of the factual
data, is an ardent fan who never has an unkind word for Baby Boy
Maddox nor a kind word to say about any of his managers or
collaborators. According to his way of thinking, anybody who ever
teamed up with Maddox was merely “using” him to boost their own
reputations. Toxatoma also drops names all over the
place—inappropriately, I might add. I know for a fact that Frank
Zagan and Tiny Sinestro Jr. actually had very little to do with
promoting BBM’s career, and, as far as I know, BBM never even met
Malcolm X, let alone collaborated with him, and, although the local
police were apparently well aware of his illicit activities during the
early 1970s, there is absolutely no substantial evidence that BBM was
a police spy. Anybody who knew him at all well could tell you that he
had a long-standing aversion to “pigs” and “fuzz”. (Note, too,
that he also called them “The Rollers.”) One time BBM even joked that the
Bay City Rollers “must all be cops, with a name like that.” BBM
wouldn’t even listen to the band known as The Police because he didn’t
“like that word at all.” To try to paint BBM as some sort of snitch
is, therefore, ludicrous—unless he were the greatest actor in the
world. Which he was not, if surviving film footage of BBM is any
indication.

I think that what we have here is a younger guy trying to build his
reputation by teaming up with an older, well-known reporter, and
trying to write a “definitive” albeit unauthorized biography of a man
he has never met, but merely only read about. Nor does the co-author seem
to go out of his way to interview anyone who actually knew the man. He
only seems to have talked to parasites and hangers-on like Alanna
Volac and her ilk, which is probably why he has such a callow and
jaundiced view of the very people who, tragically, have the lest to
say about the man. I would not recommend this book.

The Murdering Minstrel. A film produced by Hillel Galya-Labolas and
directed by Sol Amon. Starring "Vinegar Jack". 1999. 71 minutes.

Lastly, we consider this film. It is a pointless, cheaply made, black
and white "independent" production which is supposedly “loosely based”
on the life of Baby Boy Maddox. The plot--that which exists--is mostly
related in voice-over because the director apparently didn't have the
equipment to reliably shoot the outdoor scenes with sound. The film
follows the career of an absurdly buffed, bearded "Grizzly Adams" type
(Vinegar Jack in a fat suit and a blatantly fake cheopo wig and beard)
who is shown strumming an out of tune guitar in front of a group of
laughably jaded-looking teen-aged girls.

Next, we see the teenagers drifting away as the sun is beginning to
set. Baby Boy Maddox then creeps up behind one of the girls and drags
her off into the woods. Next, we see him hopping a freight train,
presumably to parts unknown. This time, he ends up on a street
corner, clean-shaven and, again, strumming his guitar for coins tossed
by passing pedestrians. Again, a teen-aged girl stops to listen to him
for awhile, and when she leaves is followed, waylaid, and dragged into
an alley.

The following day, Baby Boy Maddox hitchhikes to yet another
city (though it looks to be the exact same city as the other two.) He
is shown playing his guitar in the subway station. A train stops.
People get in--all except one teenage girl, who stands and watches
him. After the train leaves and the platform is deserted, he jumps up
and grabs the girl, pulling her into the subway tunnel. Then we see
him on a bus which takes him to yet another city. It must have been
pretty far away, because upon arrival, he once again has a beard and long
hair. This time, however, the police are waiting for him at the bus
station. He spots them from the bus and leaps out of the emergency
door in the back of the bus, leaving his guitar behind. A long chase
through a shopping mall ensues. He gives the cops the slip. Ends up in
a swank hotel. Steals clothing from a hotel room. Shaves and cuts his
hair in the lobby bathroom. Time passes. Another city. A bearded man
on a street corner, playing a guitar. A man grabs him from behind,
drags him off. The hand belongs to Baby Boy Maddox. He picks up the
guitar and walks off, flashing a wicked grin at the camera. Blackout.
Followed by 16 minutes of credits to bring the film to a running time
that approximates what is known as “feature length.”

END OF BOOK ONE

[dimenno]

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE: THE BABY BOY MADDOX STORY

BOOK TWO: THE RAINBOW SIGN

The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.—Flaubert

1.BABY BOY MADDOX: HEAD FOREMOST INTO THE BOUNDLESS
In those decades prior to his sudden notoriety, Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo sage, during his stage concerts, would often begin playing the chords to a popular favorite, only to contemptuously dismiss the song with a few cutting words:

“’Love the one you’re with….’ Hmm. Great advice. Especially when you’re in prison.”

“’If I Had a Hammer….’ Hah! Listen! I HAVE a hammer. I bought it at the hardware store… you Commie!”

“’Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow…’. Right. ‘Yesterday’s Gone…’. OK. So I suppose all is forgiven--those movie stars they say I killed are all just a…just a thing of the past!”

I noticed, however, that once he started drawing crowds, he cut nearly all of the playful banter out of his act and began waxing plenty serious.

In the Spring of 1985, at the height of his new-found fame, Baby Boy Maddox began holding court whenever the mood struck him, usually in his old haunt of Holly Park, where he would be surrounded by fat-faced teenagers; here and there, on the fringes of the crowd, could also be found some truly lovely college-aged girls. On these occasions he would give forth with messianic statements of an editorial nature, generally in between performances of his original songs. In my role as unpaid amanuensis, I managed to copy down a great many of these rants, as he preached the psychological and religious “truths” of his home-made creed of Ixiology to the unconverted.

Witness this address he gave to a mixed crowd of homeless bums, assorted street people, half-interested pedestrians, and early evening strollers through Holly Park, in late March of 1985:

“You cannot understand the state of enlightenment, because you assume that it is inferior to materialism.”

This—from a sixth grade dropout! But wait, there’s more:

“But when you have nothing else left, enlightenment will still be there with you.”

He turned to address a well-dressed man: “A suit is not a substitute for the absolute.”

The man, initially curious, walked rapidly away. He wasn’t in Maddox’s target audience anyway. He turned once more to face the crowd.

“You need people, but you also need power. Don’t follow the sun—SWALLOW the sun!”

Some of the bums cheered at that comment.

“Only a truly strong animal can live alone.”

A louder cheer, led by one of the more decrepit bums.

“Live life by your romantic fictions if you must, but always work to turn them into natural facts. Figure out your own story. God is like a gang leader—he likes his boys to think BIG. So DO IT!”

Even some of the better-dressed people on the fringes of the crowd gave him a big hand in response to that comment.

“Does the universe lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight? NO! Because the universe is full of absurd stories. Some of them may be true, but your time is better spent in dreaming. than in letting absurd stories rule your thinking and your actions. Listen to your dreams! Figure out what the universe wants you to do—and DO IT!”

There was another big round of applause, this time from some of the more attractive young women from the local college, who had gathered round more closely to hear what he had to say.

“DO IT! Do what comes naturally to you, and you will find your own place! Do not look for your place; you’ll never find it by looking. Let the place find you! And you will beCOME the thought you THOUGHT you had. DO IT! NOW!”

The crowd grew silent, and, after a long and significant pause, Baby Boy Maddox concluded his remarks as follows:

“Why gamble? Life is a gamble. Bet on yourself! You can win, and you KNOW it, because you know yourself better than anybody else! Was it not a very wise man indeed who said, “Whatever you do, put a little gravy on it! So DO IT! DO IT NOW!”

An enormous cheer rose up from the crowd, and I remember thinking, “He’s really onto something here.”

I mentioned earlier that in the past I had served Baby Boy Maddox as his unpaid chronicler. But that had changed. I was particularly attentive and careful to take accurate notes on this occasion, and others to come, because it was at about this time that I actually began getting paid to report upon the career of Baby Boy Maddox.

For at that point in my own career I was then a somewhat newly-minted staff member of an ostensibly “underground” newspaper, published weekly, which went by the name of The Thunderstone. It was founded in the late 1960s as a cross between Rolling Stone and Pravda, toeing as it did the far left party-line and covering the local “arts” scene, such as it was, during those halcyon days of “tie-dyed bell-bottomed nitwit free-love Lotharios who were so befuddled on Lebanese hash that they couldn’t even ride their bicycles straight”—or so my Uncle Albert called them, on more than one occasion.

But by the early-to-mid-1980s, The Thunderstone management had discovered that in the wake of Reagan, and the AIDS scare, and Just Say No to Drugs, that the peace-love-dove racket just wasn’t flying anymore, and so they started pulling down their Freak Flag. They had previously been bought out by a mysterious press baron named Yeddidiyah Gaap, who thought that what the paper really needed to give it a veneer of ‘respectability” was more “political coverage” and more “investigative reporting”—supposedly “fair and impartial,” but usually baldly directed in favor of the paper’s questionably hip advertisers and slanted against those powerless souls whom the paper couldn’t quite ignore and who, therefore, the paper saw fit to flay with impunity. “Anything for a chuckle, that should be our motto,” said Gaap, at one of his few staff meetings (or so I was told). “As it is, we’re giving away more copies of the paper than we’re actually selling on the newsstands, so we might as well have a larf, eh, boys?” (At that point, staffing at the paper was almost exclusively male.)

And so it was that I followed the career of Baby Boy Maddox with both a personal, as well as a (negligibly lucrative) professional interest.

I soon noticed that Baby Boy Maddox would often accompany his off-beat maxims and queer gnomic utterances with elaborate gestures and tomes of voice which later led me to suspect that he was practicing a rudimentary form of neuro-linguistic programming on his (mostly female) acolytes—though of course, I have no proof of this (admittedly) far-fetched assertion.

Except that, in the months to come, more and more people were to heed his siren call, and gather together to receive his benisons.

And then I remember thinking again, “He’s really onto something here.” And wondering, “But just how far is he planning to take this?”

The world was soon to find out.

[dimenno]

2. BABY BOY MADDOX: A VERY COMMERCIAL FORM OF MENTAL ILLNESS
I have previously mentioned that Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage, began, in the Spring of 1985 to exploit his new-found media notoriety by holding court in a corner of Holly Park. By April of that year, he had removed himself from the grassy knoll where, for many long years, he had previously performed, and took up more ambitious real estate on a street corner in front of the Park entrance. During his previous speeches--or rants, as some might be tempted to call them--the local Police, who for many years thought of him (mistakenly) as a harmless drunk, left him mostly alone.

Not this time. Even before a sizable crowd had gathered to listen, a uniformed officer sauntered over to the Park entrance and stood at attention near the iron gate which surrounded it.

This was Baby Boy Maddox's opening salvo on April 15th, at about 7PM:

"'Whither goeth thou America, in thy shiny car in the night?' I'll tell ya where! Plumb straight to hell, you filthy beatnik!"

The crowd laughed. I noticed that the sun was half an hour away from setting and the sky was aglow with green-gray nimbo-stratus clouds back-lighted with a sickly orange hue.

Baby Boy Maddox allowed the laughter to die down, until there was complete silence, and then resumed.

"Because who needs another shirker, and whiner? Who needs another thunder boy? Listen, let me tell you...they say I have major issues. And I DO! I have major issues with criminals! And with pink plastic flamingos. And people who gamble away their rent money on lottery tickets! And I hate! I hate lawn darts! And William Frawley. And those nodding dogs on the back shelf of cars. I'm an equal opportunity hater! I hate leopard-skin pill-box hats...AND the blue whale! I think that fire is bad, and crooked politicians are even worse! I live in fear of penny loafers, sundials, Danny and the Juniors, and singing nuns! And I have no use at all for Raymond Burr! He's an ugly fatso--"

A loud laugh ensued at this. I remember thing that he had certainly gotten the attention of the thirty or so people gathered to hear him speak, though I also wondered to myself exactly where he was going with this fiery litany of nonsensical obsessions.

I soon found out.

"He's an ugly fatso--and they WORSHIP him!"

Here his voice began to grow both insinuating and querulous, as though he were an imbecilic gas station attendant trying, in vain, to explain how and why he had just fucked up your car.

"Now, all this is just crazy talk, you're saying. But it's all a part of my plan. To get you to pay attention! Get wise to what's going on around you! The crooks and the lawyers have split this town between 'em, and the hard-working cops are too damn busy arresting jaywalkers to even care! As long as they get their paychecks every two weeks, Mum's the word!"

By now the crowd had swollen to about forty people. The policeman was had been there since the beginning was standing by with his hands down by his side, and I could swear his fingers were inching toward his nightstick, but it was hard to tell, because night was falling fast and a chilling wind was beginning to blow.

"Not that I blame 'em. There's no future for a troublemaker anywhere--in a world that's about to catch on fire! Listen! Lay low! keep your head down! Don't make waves! Better you should stay at home and sit in your rocking chair, as happy as a moron singing 'Old and In the Way.'"

He paused. I suppose this was to give his listeners the time to allow this image to sink in.


"Listen," he said softly. "I have no use for violent revolution. The system can't be beat. Too many people like things just the way they are, baby. That's why nobody complains about the check-cashing joints. And the liquor stores. And the drug houses. Hang down you head, Tom Dooley! Hang your head and cry! If you don't like it, get the hell out. Move to Dynamo or Knob Hill, or head north to Westridge, or Arcadia, or Eden Prairie, if you can afford it. Plenty of drunks there, too, but they're sophisticated. Never cause a ruckus. Mum's the word."

Ten more people--mostly folks walking to the subway--had paused in their progress to listen to his spiel.

"Hear me out! Nobody's going to feel sorry for you if you get robbed and beaten down in Noxtown. That there's just business as usual."

I noticed that the policeman--an average-looking, leather-faced guy with a sour look on his mouth and a world-weary expression in his eyes--was peering at Baby Boy Maddox with that highly skeptical look that cops tend to give to any civilian who they can't figure out on first glance. I was wondering if there was going to be trouble.

I need not have worried overmuch. Over the years, Baby Boy Maddox had become a masterful street orator. He could look at a crowd and gauge their interest in what he had to say with a split-second precision, and could alter his course accordingly.

"But you already know all this. So let me put you wise to something that you never thought of. Has anybody ever told you how much you're needed?"

I watched for a reaction in the mixed crowd of men, women, high school students and college kids. The younger boys and girls looked at each other with puzzled expressions.

"You HAVE to be needed to be at your best. But never forget that your OWN BODY needs you more than others need you. You YOURSELF are the world. To save the world you must first save yourself."

On hearing this, the cop relaxed. He leaned up against the spiked iron fence which enclosed the entrance to the park and folded his arms. But he still kept his eyes open, as if waiting for trouble to start.

"Be grateful for every blessing..."

A couple of the teenagers in the crowd were growing restive. One of them muttered, "Boring."

"Be grateful--but most of all, thank YOURSELF for grabbing at every chance with both hands! Because your enlightened SELFishness will brighten everything around you. The darkest places will yield the greatest insights. Because the dark is where you see the LIGHT most clearly! Look, the sun is setting! Look, tomorrow is almost here! Try to remember! WAKE when you are sleeping; DREAM when you are awake!"

At this point, a young girl of about twenty, with long, jet-black hair, who was wearing what looked, in the dimming light, to be a worn buckskin jerkin, began passing through the crowd with a tambourine, collecting small change from the audience. Two of the people assembled dropped in a dollar as Baby Boy Maddox brought his peroration to its finale.

"WAKE when YOU are sleeping. DREAM when you are AWAKE! And let me tell you one more thing! One more thing and then I'm done! One more thing, the most important thing, the thing you need to know! Flex your muscles--ALL of them! Can-do is your middle name! The word 'Can't' should...not...be...in...your VO-CAB-U-LARY!"

A swell of applause greeted this inane advice, which I recalled had once been uttered by none other than President Lyndon B. Johnson.

"WAKE when YOU are sleeping. DREAM when you are AWAKE!"

He backed away from well-lit Park entrance, into the enveloping darkness of the Park.

"WAKE when YOU are sleeping. DREAM when you are AWAKE! That's all! Good night!"

And he vanished, as though he were on a concert stage, and the lights had been abruptly killed.

The applause lasted for over three minutes.

The policeman walked over to his partner who was waiting in an unmarked car parked in front of--nice touch, this--a church.

Later that week, I handed in my account of this gathering, but the City Editor of the weekly paper I worked for, The Thunderstone, told me to sit on it for awhile.

"It's not a story...yet," he said. "Let's wait and see."

I was disappointed. I cursed myself for my own lack of confidence, in failing to press the issue. I also thought, at the time, that it was a failure of imagination on the editor's part.

But I was at least partly at fault.

For I did not anticipate what was still to come,

I did not think, but I should have, of the three fates. Clotho. Lachesis. And Atropos.

I did not think of the part I myself was destined to play. In the madness to come. Which was still slowly, but inexorably...unspooling.

[dimenno]

3, BABY BOY MADDOX: A RATIONAL FEVER

Part of Baby Boy Maddox's charismatic presence must surely have been due to his having grown up with colorful stories told to him by his hobo mentor, Cadger Tandy, the boy burglar and beggar. The old grifter spun many a wild tale of characters such as Red Mary the prostitute and madam, who won him in a Poker game; Little Jane the prostitute, his first true love; Isaiah Lydon aka Dr. Peter Ketman the medicine show spieler and would-be pimp; Tipsy Smith, the sawed-off loudmouthed bartender at the Seven Stars Tavern who later became a backwoods bootlegger, and Iyham the Great, the mysterious, seemingly ageless carny fortune-teller.


The stories which Maddox was later to tell me nearly all further revolved around the machinations of people such as his nemesis Smash Conklin, the drunken former pug and circus strongman; Jim Whitey, the psychopathic clown; Mad Tom Stocking the short-con artist; carny hand Jerry the Rigger "a drunken thieving bummer of the lowest kind"; and hallucinating Judge Rance Sniffle, an alcoholic Jurist perpetually in the throes of the d.ts.


Behind all of these characters were a further crew of criminal shot-callers: Joe Rumbuster the brawling bully and enforcer; Cool Slopp the fence; Conrad Tench, the dirty cop; and Titus Peep, the Lawyer--plus the higher-ups they answered to: Adam Tyler the Alderman; hideously scarred Police Captain Tom Aston; Beauregard Nash aka Beau Nasty, the dapper, white-suited vice lord; Coach Crump, the waxen-faced, feral real estate man; and, standing behind them all, the city of Noxtown's drug-addled mastermind: nefarious and terrifying "Cokey" Stolas, aka The Big Man.

In any event, Baby Boy Maddox was well-acquainted with municipal corruption in all its varied guises, but these were matters which were quite often discussed among men of the world, and his discussion of them, even in the most public of forums, would not have excited much controversy--except for the fact that he combined politics with music and religion, and sought to convert young people to follow his standard. Furthermore, in the Spring of 1985, the United States was undergoing one of its inexplicable fits of ultra-patriotism, and such matters were supposedly only to be discussed among "the lower orders" and their quasi-traitorous liberal chums.


It was on the evening of Wednesday, May 22, 1985, that Baby Boy Maddox made a radio broadcast based around his appearance at a local record store, The Top Ten Record Shop. It was commonplace in those days for college radio stations to record studio performances; much less common for such stations to conduct a live feed from a remote location. Apparently, Baby Boy Maddox was paying out of his own pocket for the related expenses, for reasons which at that time were known only to himself, but which were soon to become apparent.

The record store, which mostly dealt in used merchandise, with a smattering of new releases, was a spaciously glass-fronted store-front located in the basement of an urban shopping plaza on the main street of Nob Hill, the city's well-known college neighborhood. The interior of the place was stocked from one end to the other with wooden boxes on stands, designed to accommodate phonograph records. On the wall, in improvised picture frames, were mounted "rarities" such as The Metal Pil Box, as well as albums by groups such as The Seeds, The Gants, The Merry Go Round, and The Peanut Butter Conspiracy,

Before Baby Boy Maddox began to play his guitar, he softly declaimed the following message to the roughly forty people who had gathered in the hopes of hearing him perform, as well as to the several thousand listeners who had tuned in to find out what all the fuss was about.


"This next one goes out to all the fat-cats who run the show. I'm talking about the guys who grease the wheels and lube the skids; the high-priced fixers who're as slick as snot and butter wouldn't melt in their mouths--oh NO! If any of you happen to be tuned in, then listen:


I say that you cannot make men feel fat by making them hungry.

You cannot make the weak stronger by allowing them to be bullied by the strong.

You cannot make small men big by taunting them with the deeds of bullies.

You cannot make the poor feel better by tormenting them with the affluence of the rich.

You cannot make the wage-slave prosperous by refusing to give him any stake in his work.

You cannot make people happy by encouraging them to squander their patrimony.

You cannot lull the populace into a stupor by claiming that all their petitions for justice are rabble-rousing.

You cannot encourage people to live within their means while denying them a living wage.

You cannot create a myth of character-building by denying people the opportunity to prosper.

And you cannot promote the myth of the self-reliance in a society rife with corruption and greed and special favors."

Baby Boy Maddox then began to tune his guitar, but then stopped, as though a sudden thought had struck him. He then resumed.

"Step by step, you become a PERSON. That's the only reason you are here on earth today. You are just a ghost who happens to be solid. But although you should strive to be transparent, know too that PEOPLE will hate you for it. So you must also make yourself as invisible as possible at the same time you become fully realized. Freedom for yourself will lead you away from the burden of having to BE yourself. This sounds baffling, but the only way you can become your own PERSON is to RENOUNCE your personality, which is only a MASK designed to make you pleasing in the eyes of others. Personality is a TRAP which you must try to escape, even if you have to leave a part of YOURSELF behind. Only your so-called "personality" can hold back the fullest expression of your SOUL FORCE. So forget the appetizer and dessert--devote your appetite to the main course--your SOUL."

He began tuning his guitar again; again he stopped. "So push on! Conquer today and tomorrow will follow! And then you'll be the envy of all the girls--not envious of them!"

He appears to have gleaned this last bit of advice from a then-ubiquitous radio commercial for a local diamond store.

He then proceeded to perform several of his most popular songs, including "America" and "What's New, Lucifer?"

As I recall, bootlegged cassette tapes of his comments and the ensuing concert circulated among area musicians for quite some time. The recorded concert was quite a coveted item; bootlegged copies sold for five and even ten dollars, at a time when the hourly wage was $3.35 an hour.

More significantly, during that concert, waiting in the wings--literally--of the Top Ten Record Store was a local "pastor" and cult leader named Maundy Skortersdag, who was presumably very impressed by the charismatic performance of Baby Boy Maddox. Accordingly, after the concert, he invited the Hobo Sage to address members of his church in the following month.

Baby Boy Maddox, showing not one iota of self-consciousness, readily agreed.

The wheels were beginning to turn.

[dimenno]

4. BABY BOY MADDOX: COMPOSITE MASTER OF INFINITE SPACE AND TIME
Like many professional entertainers, Baby Boy Maddox lived a childhood
straight out of Oliver Twist—absent father, insane mother, handed off
from one negligent foster home to the next. The songs he generated out
of these travails were very far from the usual lyrics of love and
hedonism—they were instead, filled with loathsome imagery, ferocious
anger, and an ever-shifting moral stance.

I am convinced that artists take on the attributes of their mediums.

Just like most painters and cooks are drunks, due to the solvents and
steam they inhale daily, I am convinced that many of the greatest
songwriters are mildly insane. Owing, perhaps, to the great power of
pulse-disturbing music combined with mind-confusing words.

I was to see evidence of, as well as an example of such insanity at first hand.

It took place in Arcadia, way out in the boondocks to the north of
Noxtown. It was not for nothing that Arcadia was also known as The
Burned Over District. Religious fanaticism was A thriving enterprise
in Arcadia. It was a place that most people seem to want to get away
from. It did have its charms, particularly if you were Polish and were
content to live on beer, potato salad, and superstition. The whole
area had a death wish. Still does. They built with bricks because they
no doubt used up all the wood. Burned it, long ago. Used it to burn
witches, I have no doubt.

Arcadia was a corrupt town full of fat, unapologetic malefactors and
miserably beaten poor people. Most of the mills had closed down in the
early 1970s. There was a lot of speed and other enormously toxic drugs
floating around there--more than in any community of comparable size.
You would got to the taverns and coffee shops and see lots of
dipsomaniacal truck drivers and unemployed mill workers with missing
fingers just sitting around, watching the world pass them by.

However, Arcadia was also scenic and had a certain haunted beauty, and
its surrounding forests partook full-bore in the absolutely ominous
and pagan. If the Old Gods had a headquarters, it would doubtless be
somewhere up Arcadia way.

It was on the evening of Friday, June 21, 1985, twelve hours after the
beginning of the Summer Solstice, and Baby Boy Maddox stood at a
lectern in the sweltering basement of a whitewashed adobe storefront
grandly labeled The Church of Christ the King, which was packed well
beyond its official capacity of eighty people. The basement, which had
been thoroughly cleaned and painted with Perma-White Mildew Proof
Eggshell Paint, was, nonetheless, still faintly filled with the
soprano tang of mold and the gray smell of dust.

Maundy Skortersdag was the “pastor” and 'select master' of this
church, and many dark stories of this sketchy character and his
so-called “ministry” have been told. Rumors persisted that in the
early 1970s he had kidnapped and brainwashed impressionable teenage
girls and pressed them into service as flirty fundraisers and
recruiters for his bogus cult religion enterprise, the Abundant Life
Temple. By the end of the 1970s it has been said that he was also
recruiting homeless people to serve as his exclusive army of
door-to-door beggars, and that he also employed them as basket weavers
and piece workers in a drafty warehouse where he also maintained bunk
beds for them to sleep, and paid them what amounted to pennies per
hour. Still darker rumors circulated—that the “pastor” fed them drugs
and worked them from up to twelve to fifteen hours per day, and
rewarded his alcoholic employees with cheap rotgut when they exceeded
production quotas. That he dosed them with powerful hallucinogens.
That he sold their blood and hair. That he buried their bodies in
shallow graves in remote locations. Far from arresting him for these
illegal activities, the Arcadia police department treated him as
though he were doing the city a public service—it was possible that
fat pay-offs and other forms of political bribery were involved.

Some even went so far as to say that Skortersdag, with drugs and
alcohol as his tools, had turned those homeless men into mindless
robots who helplessly catered to his every depraved whim.

Skortersdag, never one to overlook a main chance, on this one occasion
allied himself with Baby Boy Maddox and allowed him to use his church
basement for a meeting of his own bogus “Church of Ixiology”. He was
hoping, perhaps, to cream off some of Maddox’s followers to join his
own Church of Christ the King as door-to-door canvassers. Maddox, as
if sensing his intention, gave the following speech to the cult
acolytes and curiousity-seekers who were patiently sweltering in that
damp packed basement, with moisture dripping off the ceiling and down
the walls:

"There is no such thing as honor. Clowns and ringmasters, ringmasters
and clowns. that's all there is. The ringmasters are lion tamers and
the clowns are the frightened buffoons who cringe in the corner when
the ringmaster cracks his whip. But infinity is not a two-fold spiral.
I have seen infinity, and infinity is nodal. The man of free will
escapes the eternal spiral.

Flee false stories. Do not run away from yourself--and curl up...with bona fide lies! Run instead toward the light--THE LIGHT which rests within your SOUL FORCE. THE LIGHT is brighter than a thousand suns, and it will brighten everyone who dares to remove themselves from the shade. Remember! There is no 'somewhere else'. There is only the here and now! Do not lock yourself away in fear. Crawl, and then walk. Walk, and then run. Run! Run toward the light! That is the ONLY PLACE you will find God. Money and reputation mean nothing to God. HE only cares about the light. The light of forever!

“Be your own authority. You are the creator of your own universe. The
sun which lights your world is always one. Be directed; be curious,
and never be at war with yourself. Preserve yourself at all costs.
There is no past; it is gone. You are nothing but potential; you are
constantly becoming yourself , and when that stops, you are dead even
though you continue to draw breath. Don’t make choices; follow the
path your self has already laid out for you, for you will end up in
that place no matter what choice you have made. Now is the only time.
Here is the only place.”

Skortersdag was silently fuming off in the corner when he noticed than
more than a few of his own followers were listening with rapt
attention to Baby Boy Maddox’s sermon.

Maddox wound up his exhortation with the following advice:

"Go to it! Put your game face on! You can do it and you know you can
do it! BREAK FREE! Put your game face on! Let me see you put your soul
into everything you do. Break the pattern of the past! Use the SOUL
FORCE! Put a little love in your heart and BREAK ON THROUGH!"

I recognized these last statements as coming from hippie-era pop songs.

What happened next was truly frightening. Baby Boy Maddox walked out
the door, and several of the male and over a dozen of the female
members of Skortersdag's congregation followed him.

"Skortersdag is a clown. This man," I said to myself, "is truly dangerous."

[dimenno]

5. BABY BOY MADDOX: MIND BOMBS
Late July of 1985 there was a heat wave in Noxtown. the very air
seemed sticky, hot; the humid evenings bled trickling sweat, even from
those people who ran their fans all night long to find some blessed
relief. (Those who had air conditioning kept it running full blast, but
brown-outs were not uncommon owing to the overloaded antiquated power
grid of that region.)

A local trust-fund impresario nicknamed Willie Rosso had rented an old
mill in the Cannery District to store his belongings, and he had
recently converted an auditorium portion of the neglected and partially ruined
building into a viable assembly hall, with a minimal soundboard and
microphone set-up; this self-styled "nightclub" was called "The
Cavern," perhaps in honor of the early Beatles venue, but also quite
likely a sideways reference to Plato's famous parable of the cave.

It was there, at The Cavern, on the evening of Saturday, July 27th,
that Baby Boy Maddox mounted the dusty stage of that largely disused
auditorium to appear before a crowd of about 250 men and women, most
of them in their teens and twenties, each of whom had paid two dollars
for the privilege of attending this widely advertised "concert".

Whoever was in charge of publicity--likely Willie Rosso himself--
had done a thorough job. Disc jockeys had broadcast that the event was to occur
at 9pm on Mechanic Street, in the heart of the Cannery
District; black and white fliers advertising the venue had been
stapled onto telephone poles, wheat-pasted onto the sides of buildings,
and taped or tacked up onto the bulletin boards of used record stores,
junk shops, vintage clothing emporiums, coffee shops, and other spots
frequented by young people. Attractive young women had also handed out
fliers to people leaving competing nightclubs at 2am on the previous evening.

At precisely 9pm, the house lights--such as they were; merely a series of
incandescent bulbs shaded by glass lamps and bordering the ceiling
--were dimmed.

From out of the shadows and onto the lighted stage emerged one long black back lit shadow.

Then Baby Boy Maddox himself appeared. He appeared dressed in a black suit of fine cloth, with a white-ruffled shirt and wearing a black hat with a peculiarly angled flat top.

He removed the hat, and his long black locks cascaded out onto his shoulders.

As he desultorily strummed an acoustic guitar, Baby Boy Maddox spoke the following words:

"Do you see where MODERN LIFE has brought us?

Look around you.

Ruined lives, ruined buildings.

Unnatural lights,unnatural sights, unnatural crimes, unnatural times.

See your old man snoozing on his recliner? You can see his aching bones beneath the tired flesh.

See that horned devil skeleton? A smaller skeleton rides his tail.

See the dead man playing the piano, whose keys are made of bones?

See that train coming down the track, the engine a ghastly skull? His grinning teeth--a cow-catcher?

An angel wrestles with a corpse; the skull comes off in his hand and the angel flies away.

A skeleton waits on top of a dark wall to reach down and steal away our time.

Shrouded ghouls caper in graveyards and impatiently wait for our arrival.

A gigantic skeleton stalks the black skyline over churning satanic mills.

And everywhere you go you see countless ghouls with grinning skull faces,
anxious to drain the last drop of our blood.

And teachers hawk slow poison for dull children.

And pushers peddle tasty dope for working slaves.

And screaming warlords call for more bombs. More and more!"

He paused to catch his breath.

"This is what the engines have been good for. People out of work,
struggling to get by, and those who even have jobs are turned into machines.
To keep up with the machines. never mind humanity. Machines are the
master. They dominate our art. Machine songs, machine movies,
machine art, and machine shadow shows. But it doesn't have to be this
way!

"Master the machine! Master your will to live, and live free, and your focused
attention will see patterns forming everywhere! Even on a soft sofa in
a nice house! Accept it ALL, and you will become better than that
hollow man who bears a name and a reputation! Always ACCEPT your
thoughts for what they are! Wallow in your negative thoughts until you
break through ALL of them and see for the first time how ridiculous they are, and then they can no longer harm you, for they will always be a source of laughter! Your thoughts alone are powerful enough to create a universe. So set aside a time to do nothing but think! But you have to stop! Stop at nothing. Stop at nothing but to have!"

These last words had been shouted to the rafters and the man behind
the soundboard had been cued to add some delay and echo to that final
sentence, so that the phrase "Stop at nothing but to have!" had
reverberated to eerie effect thoughout the sweltering auditorium.

Baby Boy Maddox resumed, and his voice took on a rising pitch and
inflection as he orated:

"Kill your dreams! Embrace the void! Never think enlightenment is
impossible until you have gone mad in the finding of it! Because
THEN you will be enlightened! Kill your dreams! Embrace the void! You
can see the soul through a telescope! You can see the atom in a
crystal ball! Kill your dreams! Embrace the void! Explore the
alternatives! Do the opposite of what you're told, think the opposite
of what is expected! Your last idea might be your best one, but by
then it will be far to late to act! So I'll say it one more time...."

He paused. As one, the audience recited:

"Kill your dreams! Embrace the void!"

He turned his full glare upon the gathered listeners. "Again!"

"Kill your dreams! Embrace the void!"

He whispered, "Louder!"

They answered in unison:

"KILL YOUR DREAMS! EMBRACE THE VOID!"

The women were shouting louder than the men. I saw a look in their
eyes which was midway between orgasmic inevitability and satiety.

"How is he going to follow this?" I thought.

I need not have worried.

He brought his audience back down, slowly, with an amalgam of
anodyne remarks which sounded obviously prepared.

"Seize the day!

There is nothing you can do that can't be done!

You may not know it, but you are strong in all the broken places!"

He then retreated backwards into the wings of the stage and the lights immediately went up.

People sat, with dazed expressions on the bewildered faces. Some of
them looked as if they could scarcely believe they were back on the
planet Earth, seated in a sweat-damp auditorium. Some of them sat there,
stock still, for nearly a minute. Others, as if by reflex, began to
applaud.

The applause went on for about eight minutes. Every time it seemed
about to diminish, another group seemed to shake themselves from out
of their stupor and resume the clapping and the tumult.

Soon, a cry arose:

"More! More! MORE!"

The word was repeated so often that it blended into meaninglessness.
It sounded like the barking of dogs, and soon assumed the dimensions
of a mindless animal cry.

This went on for about five minutes, until Willie Rosso nimbly
jumped up on the stage and said, sardonically, "Baby Boy Maddox has
left the building."

The cries persisted.

"More! More! MORE!"

"That's all there is!" he bawled."There ain't no more! Come back next week! We'll
have him back next week!"

But the crowd was not satisfied with this form of temporizing, and
impatiently began to rush to the front of the stage. A horde of men
and women rushed onto the bare stage itself and very soon had torn down the
curtains. Some of them even went so far as to pull up the ornamental
pediments from the area near the footlights. And then the auditorium's wooden
chairs, most of which had been screwed into the floor, were wrenched
from their moorings and thrown about to land in a tangled heap. Judging from
the expression on his dark face, the diminutive but dapper Willie Rosso
was disgusted and almost nauseated by the violence.

For my part, I somehow knew that, waiting in the wings, Baby Boy
Maddox was not appalled. For perhaps the first time in his life, he
was not only contented, but gratified--and delighted beyond measure.

In his dark eyes the shone the cold elation of a master of men.

[dimenno]

6. BABY BOY MADDOX: BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE
On the evening of the last full moon of the summer I attended a talk
which Baby Boy Maddox gave at a private residence of a man
named Colonel Stolas, with the intention of writing it up for the
local arts and entertainment weekly, The Thunderstone. The
article as printed was the usual perfunctory glad-handing promotional
puff piece designed solely to promote Maddox's Labor Day weekend
performance at a venue which advertised heavily with the paper. The
talk itself, however, was advertised only through word of mouth—a
simple printed flier was passed from hand to hand, alerting select
people as to the time—7:30 pm—and the date--August 30th of 1985.
During the course of this talk (or lecture, or speech)—at which
only about forty of his closest acolytes were in attendance--he told a
story which gave us all a better idea of what animated his
heaven-defying and hell-raising performances.

The talk was given in the Nob Hill neighborhood, as the sun was
setting, in a large house upon the top of a high, almost ludicrously
ever-steepening hill. The proudly-fashioned wood-frame house
overlooked the splendid lights of the city twinkling below. In a
spacious hall of this very fine house, a mansion, as a matter of fact,
owned by a mysterious man named Colonel Stolas, who professed
to be “a merchant,” sat Baby Boy Maddox. I do not know much about
who this merchant was, other than the retired father of a town big-wig,
but rumor had it he had made his fortune in Central America during
the 1930s, and this story seemed plausible, for in his home he had many
ancient Mayan artifacts on display, some of which looked quite valuable.

During the course of that evening Baby Boy Maddox told the story of
how he had grown up in a foster home which was not exactly a model of
domestic tranquility. What follows is the article which I wrote based
on the talk which he gave that night. It was rejected for publication
at that time, for reasons unknown to me but easy to guess, and appears
for the first time here.

"I can still picture the farmhouse of Auntie Carp and Uncle Pike. It
was in Gibsonia. Back when it was mostly farmland there, and what
streets they had were smeared with horse plop, and there was everywhere
a sharp smell of cow shit in the back lots. Once you smell that aroma
you don’t soon forget it. It’s a sharp, nagging smell that gets in
your nose and makes you want to sneeze. Like ammonia, with a side of
musk. Sure, you get used to it, but it’s a furry smell—almost
tactile—deep purple—pulsing with life. And it was everywhere.

“Early on summer mornings the hay bales would shimmer in the dazing
heat and you’d be lying on your bare mattress on the back porch
all covered with sweat, and if you had your druthers you would stay
there all day like a big brown dog afraid to climb down long back
porch stairs and having to be coaxed. But there’s always a million
things to do on a farm, and I done every one of them. Only once
the sun goes down do you get to rest and then it’s off to bed to
sleep and dream of weeds and wake to face the new dawn.

“But once in a while there was a space of time, a gap when I pretty
much didn’t have to do anything. The golden hour, I called it. Once
the sun goes down, the fields seem to come alive with the sound of
peeping and humming creatures that during the day lay hidden from all
but the sharpest eyes. It is during the night that the fox and crow
play their little games and the nightjars sigh from their nests hidden
underneath the trees. You listen to the sounds and after awhile if you
listen hard enough you begin to think that all of nature is calling
out to you, telling you that it’s a hard life but don't weaken because
all you can do about it is to cry out and maybe at least be heard.

“Sometimes when the moon was new and the clouds hid the stars, in
spite of how I was bone tired, something would make me want to go out
and tramp the fields and be looking out for something. What I was
trying to find I couldn’t say. Maybe it was the world behind the
world. The world which we all know is there, say what you will about
what you call 'reality.'

"Up rises Venus. Suddenly, all the shadowy things lurking in
the never-ending gloom will show themselves—those big
monsters are only bales of hay, and evil demons are only fragments of
broke-down stone fences, and that ghost sail flapping in the wind is
only the leaves on the branches of a shuddering tree.

“Gibsonia was a half-assed eggtown if there ever was--time was when
the hicks and chumps and crossroads clowns would pay plugged nickels
to buy wooden nutmegs from the city dubs and traveling salesmen
sharpers, so that from then on they were very tightfisted with all
their cash money--held on to their coin until the eagle
screamed--would only pay you with barter and usually tried to palm off
the most fantastic junk on you in exchange for services rendered.
Many's the time a half-starving Hobo would be plenty pissed off, I
expect, when they'd take a none-too-sharp axe with a handle full of
splinters and chop half a cord of wood for the home folks--only to be
paid off, not with a hot meal, but with a lump of lard specked with
cracklins on a piece of rock-hard biscuit, or a half peck of hard,
stone-sized pears, or a handful of rotten crabapples.

"I can still picture that farmhouse, but you won't see hatchet-faced
Auntie Carp and Uncle Pike always sloppin' over with his bald head and
fat ass and bib overalls; you won't see them standing there no more.
Place is deserted now. Rank growth of weeds and vines. Smell of dead
dog and dead fox. Lots of dried up chicken shit and cow flop. Ghosts,
long gone from there; a place that not even a ghost could be.
The broken-down fence surrounding a wood-frame house
with a slanted roof full of holes that Uncle Pike never got around to
fixing; the red barn with its paint worn down to bare wood with a
broken door creaking in the wind and barely held on by rusting hinges.
The yard with junk dragged from out of the house and left to rot in
the rain. Fields choked with crabgrass that grew in after the burn.
Murky pond choked with algae and bobbing scum. Likely even nowadays
the hungry crows don't circle.

"I can still see scrawny ratchet-jawed Auntie Carp standing under the
warped plywood awning in front of the house, wearing her faded flowered
bonnet and her four star flour sack apron. She has on a worn sky-blue
work dress with garish yellow polka dots that looked like something
the fat lady in the circus might wear to attend the funeral of a
midget. She would likely be toting a pail of cool water in an old
oaken bucket from the well to the kitchen, where she had a
rust-stained porcelain cast iron double farm sink where she did
everything from chopping and cleaning vegetables for our skimpy stews
to washing her clothing, and the old man's, and sometimes mine, though
I was expected to do that for myself, with home-made soap.

"And I can still see fat old Uncle Pike standing there with his
blubbery piss-lips clamped shut, trying in vain to breathe through his
perpetually stuffed-up nose and trying to hide the fact
that he was laughing drunk on his special secret medicine that he hid
on a sealed mason jar deep in the back of the root cellar, though
Auntie Carp always up wrinkled her nose so's you could tell she'd caught
a whiff of the moonshine which anybody at all could smell even in the
sweat that was drying on his muddy, food-stained clothes.

"And I think of the old iron stove, crusted over with soot, and how
the damned thing always seemed to send clouds of choking smoke
throughout the little farmhouse--in reality not much bigger than a
large log cabin--and how the wind would come howling through the chinks on
the coldest winter nights and how the place was never warm enough.

"And I thought of my long hungry early morning walks in the woods,
looking for something, anything to eat.

"I thought of pitching hay with a hay-fork until the blisters rose on my hands.

"I thought of falling flat on my ass on them icy roads when I walked
to school in winter because I had no boots and trying to ignore the pain but
also dreading what was yet to come, the beating I had coming from
Auntie Carp for ripping my pants.

"I remembered trying to do my lessons by firelight--kerosene and even
candles were too dear.

"Smell of baking pies--never a piece to spare for me.

"Fighting the dog for a bone with a scrap of meat still on it.

"Surrounded by squalor and mean-minded people.

“Remember those walks in the fields I was telling you about? If you’re
not accustomed to deep thinking, as a boy you can lie on the ground on
late summer nights and look up into the sky at the endless stars and
feel yourself going mad. You feel as though you are thousands of years
old, and at the same time you feel as though your life is here right now but
then it will be over in a second. This thought is enough to fill your
stomach and then your jaw and then your whole head and your mind’s eye
with an uneasy feeling, like butterflies. It’s a creepy, agitated
feeling, and it fills your head with bad thoughts—why do anything?

“And that is why I’m telling you now that it is wrong to despair, but
it is equally wrong to forge mindlessly ahead and do whatever you want
whenever you want to. If you worry only about getting ahead you become a
headsman, and--Mark my words!--one day, that head on the chopping
block will be yours.No man will escape the final judgment! But do not despair!
And do not forge mindlessly ahead! Strangle that thought in its cradle!
Never defend your thoughts! You should never even be aware of them, on
a conscious level! Every thought should result in a direct action.
March forward! You got it in you! Don’t just TRY harder—DO harder!
Every day and in every way you are getting stronger and stronger and
becoming more and more solid! The only thing you TRULY need to know is
‘I am here and this is now’. Tomorrow you will move from this place to
another. Tsk! Does it even matter? It will simply be a new here and a
new now. Then you will have no worries, for at any given moment you
will have all the time in the world. Live everywhere at once! Peace is
what lies behind what you only THINK you are experiencing! You can’t
forget the past, but you might as well forgive it and let it go!
Everything is water. We all flow and that it what we are. So let it flow. Let
it flow! That red river.”

"That farmhouse I was telling you about is deserted now. I burned it
halfway to the ground and I'm glad I doneit. I only wish that Uncle
Pike and Auntie Carp had been there to see me do it.

"As the place caught fire there came a light rain. Through the smoke I
could see the fire rising to the moonless evening sky like blood,
seeping from a wound. I wiped the drops of water and sweat from my
dirty face and I laughed and then cried in happy rage.

"How I wish they had been inside that burning house."

[dimenno]

7. BABY BOY MADDOX: MISTAKE ISLAND

At the mansion home of Colonel Stolas, on the evening of August 30th, 1985, in the light of the full moon, almost blue, Baby Boy Maddox continued to speak late into the night

During the course of his second speech-- for which about 35 of his followers were present--he revealed an unknown side to himself which served to give his acolytes a very different idea regarding who he really was.

The impressive and impossibly antique Mayan artifacts of Colonel Stolas gleamed in the remorselessly eerie light of the swollen moon as Baby Boy Maddox described his temporary residence, at around age 12, at an orphan home endowed by a wealthy woman of the town. Before he spoke he ordered me to turn off my tape recorder,so the following text is based mostly upon my own notes which I took that evening. Thus, some of the words may not have actually been spoken by Maddox, but I believe that the text which follows fairly represents the gist of what Maddox had to say.

What follows is also based upon correspondence which I wrote up and sent off to a dear friend, who was kind enough to have kept my letter and return it to me nearly 30 years later.

The following exclusive account of the story Maddox's told on that evening appears in print for the first time here.

"Talkin' of my friend Cadger Tandy, I sure saw a lot of dead hobos in my day. Usually it's them lousy railroad bulls and Bo chasers what done 'em in, or else it's hard-boiled yeggmen and lamisters with killer brains, or maybe they fell under a rattler and got crushed. Every time I saw a prushin wearing a spiked felt hat cut from a dead man's fedora, I think that somewhere there's a worn out hobo lying croaked and forgotten somewheres.

"Anyways, at about the age of 14 I got sent to a place called the Convent School. It was an orphan home set up in a barracks a and it set uneasy on a rocky crag of an island south of Madport--Mistake Island--and run by Catholic nuns attached to the Monastic Order of Saint Thomas.

"I had to wonder: What was the deal with those mackerel snappers? That shining clean orphanage always smelled like cheap hotel soap--the kind that comes in a white wrapper with purple lettering--'Cashmere Bouquet"--and they always had a chipped plaster replica of their groovy crucified messiah hanging on the wall of the garret that's been converted into a bedroom. The bedroom in question always had some kind of raggedly blanket-type thing knitted from fat yarn by a fat old nun who's almost blind. Can't throw it away! It would be a sin! Can't even throw shit away! So they kept this dusty piece of garbage on a lumpy mattress resting on and halfway falling off of a creaking wooden bed frame, where it gathered up all kinds of cabbage-smelling dust. It itched in the summer, and as I lay beneath it in winter my balls would shrivel to the size of Jerusalem almonds because I was freezing half to death. Them old biddies didn't believe in turning on the furnace, either, you see. 'Heat rises,' they'd say. The hell it did! Not when you're a fish-gobbling poor mouth! Not when you're a Papist wretch--living in the house of Our Lady of Perpetual Pain! They never turned on the heat AT ALL!

"I mean, really! We might as well have been living in a fucking igloo!

"But they didn't even serve anything as nourishin' as cold blubber.

"No, they counted every fucking pea on the plate, lest you somehow make a pig of yourself. They serve you slop made from a recipe last popular in 1642. Got chunks of stinging nettle and thornapple in there. Waste not, want not!

"N' they used the word "goodness" a lot.

"N' they thought radio is the invention of Satan.

"N' that sarcasm came straight from the scrapbook of the Antichrist.

"N', like the ancient Romans and their household gods, they clutched in their sweaty talons a laminated card with a blurry picture of their personal saint, and they constantly mumbled through their chipped dentures an idiotic shopping list of their simple stupid desires.

"N' they never even prayed for anything useful!

"N' even when they did ask for something, they were always making some kind of laughable deal!

"'Please, St. Michael--while I'm freezing to death next to the window of the annex--if only I can find the box with that nodding dog that Granmaw gave me back in 1937, I'll never put cream in my coffee again!'

"N' even in their sleep, they mumble things like 'Jesu Christu,' and 'Bingo has been called--hold your markers, please!'

"They could just about drive you goofy with their nutty superstitions.

"Plus, when it came time to unclutch some of the good old dough-re-me, all of a sudden they conveniently forgot all about 'Render unto Caesar'. They starved the dogs and growing boys and gave all their spare change to the fat priests of their precious church, and meanwhile, Baby needed a winter coat and a new pair of shoes! I mean, come on! The money they spent on useless crap like sacred candles and mass cards could be invested at 6 per cent and in their old age they could retire in Nova Scotia in an oceanfront resort cabin!

"But no--they'd rather be sitting around a cheap Formica table with the grizzled charity cases from the Council on Aging, gumming potato candy and mumbling novenas. I wanted to say to them, 'Look--this hair shirt jazz went out with middle ages! Get wise to yourself! Wake up and live a little! That cute liitle parish priest is just another chubby, slick-haired moocher, only with a starched collar and holy water! Spend the moolah on yourself!"

"But no. The one thing a person who has made the same mistake their whole life long simply will not do is buck a losing trend.

"The lapsed ones? They're the worst. Mainly because, like I used to do, they're always pointing out and trying to enforce imaginary rules of right and wrong.

"Oh, first chance I got I ran as far away from that place as I could and fell in with the hobos.

"But that's a story for another time.

"Watch out for them all. Watch out. That's all. Watch out."

At this point in his peroration, Baby Boy Maddox directed one of his followers to turn off all the electric lights, draw the curtains, and to light numerous small candles. His darkened face intermittently coruscated in their feeble glow as he intoned.

"Don't get me wrong. Don't think I'm saying that there is no great thing. There is always something bigger. Always has been, always will be. There's a first time for everything and everything that's happening is happening for the first time!"

His eyes began to glow with a light that seemed half savage and half hypnotic and he spoke slowly in a low, bass monotone chant.

"Find out what you have failed to do and you will find what you have succeeded in not being! Be wild and reckless in your lazy acceptance. If you care enough to fail, you will fail to care. Accept suffering; suffer acceptance. Embrace pain; resist embraces. Try at all times to be stupid-smart. Too much intelligence makes you a victim of the smart-stupid. It is easy to be fooled but even easier to deceive the many. Look AS you leap and before you hit bottom you will be bound to think of something."

He then directed that all windows in the spacious room be opened, all the curtains raised, and all the candles but one be blown out, and he spoke his final words in the dim light of the lone candle and the outside glow of the full moon. It was a windless and humid night, and there was a queer leaden moisture in the air which gave his face a peculiar furry glow and his words a peculiar furry intonation, as though his words were being spoken at a slower speed, through a barrier of water.

"There are no such things as miracles. There are no miracles because everything is a miracle.

"What is is all that can be.

"There is no such thing as coincidence. The universe is one and everything is happening at once.

"What is is all that can be.

"What waits below is also what sits above, and once you know that YOU are the universe then you know that you will always be here in one form or another so why do you have to be afraid of everything? Why do you have to be afraid of anything?

"What is is all that can be.

"I was not hungry until I lost my appetite. I was not sleepy until I was wide awake. And I never needed a thing until it fell into my hands and then I realized that I did not want it any more.

"What is is all that can be.

"Energy, energy, all is energy! So put a little pep in your step! Make 'Can Do' your battle cry! Never say die! When you're knocked off your high horse, get back in the game and go get it! When you're turned down, TURN ON!

"What is is all that can be!"

He then gave a barely perceptible signal, at which point the curtains were drawn and the candle blown out. In the pitch black darkness you could hear his voice.

"Now is the only time! Here is the only place!"

There was silence for a full minute.

Suddenly, the lights were turned back on.

Baby Boy Maddox was gone.

Three dozen people filed out of the newly illuminated hall in utter silence.

I left that place feeling enervated and sad, as though I had been drained.

And yet I knew that, two nights later, I would attend the September 1st concert in Holly Park.

The one which had been advertised in The Thunderstone.

Headliner: Baby Boy Maddox.

This post has been edited by dimenno: Aug 9 2012, 05:40 PM

[dimenno]

8. BABY BOY MADDOX: ACID CARNIVAL

HOLLY PARK PRODUCTIONS & THE AKASIC RECORD COMPANY
Present:
DEADSTOCK
THREE NIGHTS OF MUD, SQUALOR AND TERROR
Featuring:

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 1ST
Baby Boy Maddox
Special Guest: Jerry Noman and "Mokey"

It was Thursday, August 29th, 1985, and during the following weekend Baby
Boy Maddox was slated to headline the final evening of a heavily promoted,
home-grown concert event, sardonically billed as "Deadstock." As an arts
and entertainment journalist, and an inveterate music fan, I was familiar with
most of the names on the bill.

The only act I had never even heard of was Jerry Noman and "Mokey"

That name puzzled me: Jerry Noman. It sounded vaguely familiar. I asked
Baby Boy Maddox about him and discovered that Noman was an old
associate of his from nearly twenty years ago, and that it was at Maddox's
insistence that Noman's name was on the bill. Thinking that perhaps I could write
an interesting story about Noman's big comeback, I pumped the Hobo
Sage for details, but the story Maddox told me was so incredible that I
filed it away for many years, and I am only now divulging it for the first
time, even though, to this day, I hardly believe a word of it. (Please
note that Baby Boy Maddox's original, rather pungent narrative has
been recast into standard journalese. Furthermore, some of the facts
were bolstered by my own later research based on leads and
allegations reported to me by Baby Boy Maddox.)

"It was my third season," said Baby Boy Maddox,"with the Red & Black
Carnival and Circus. I started as green help but had made myself useful there as a roustabout and talker, medicine show spieler and fixer, and all around agent and general factotum.

"One hot midsummer day I accidentally drank some punch handed to me by a
sketchy bearded fellow in a psychedelic clown outfit, and my whole existence
turned inside out. The familiar green and brown world was out of true. Not only
was red blue, and blue red, but up was down, in was out, devils were
little angels, and celestial things had gone and done me wrong.

"In my heightened state I stared with dull incredulity at the sudden
exotic glory of the everyday. And I just happened to look at the
ugly wooden dummy belonging to the Carnival ventriloquist.
It freaked me out! A parrot was nested inside it...inside
of the ventriloquist's dummy! A parrot...that could talk!
Brilliant! Its green wings would emerge from flaps in the side
of the wooden hull so the Dummy could also fly! Fly! Like a wooden angel!

"Next day, after I cleared away the cobwebs and the inside voices, I
wanted to, in fact, I HAD to learn more about this wonder-working ventriloquist.
And I did. I learned that his stage name was Jerry Noman, but he was
born with the name of Jerzy Lutosławska, He had a rep--for being a strange duck.
Not just because he was a Pole. It was said that at one time he was a
famous mathematics professor with a perfect memory who knew the value of pi to 2000 places, and that he could instantly compute the cube root of nearly any number.

"Just to give you one example of how crazy his mind worked. One time
we were sitting around the carnival lot talking about a recent space launch--I
think it was the Apollo 1. When someone told him the countdown went
"2...3...1...0...Lift Off," he all of a sudden got very agitated. He was quivering
like a starving mole I seen in a heat wave one time, biting the head off a fat earthworm. I couldn't understand why he was getting so worked up over a simple mistake, so I asked him--I said, Jerry, what's wrong? And he told me that 2310 was the sum of the multiplication of the prime numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, and 11. I
checked his math right there on the spot, and, guess what? He was exactly right. And that right there told me I wasn't dealing with no ordinary carny lusherman, and so I began to watch him even more closely.

"It was said that Noman also had a perfect memory for languages and
that this was a large part of his problem. He remembered everything.
Perfectly. Total recall. He could not only remember conversations from years before, but he could play back all the parts and repeat them flawlessly, and,
worse, he felt compelled to do so at the most inappropriate times. As
a result, he had gone insane and had sought refuge in the carnival,
where no questions would ever be asked about him or his past and
where he could also rest his endlessly teeming brain and settle
securely into an outcast profile. It was said that he personally, was a 'nice guy,'
'kinda shy,' but that Mokey, his Dummy, was "spiteful and mean." It was also said
that he was capable of wonderful, nearly supernatural feats of ventriloquy.

"He was, in fact, highly regarded in show business. For years he had
wandered the world perfecting his act, living on diet pills and tap water and
refusing to eat because he was convinced that someone was trying to
poison his Dummy. He once gave a scholarly speech, 'On the Two Different Aspects of the Modes of Presentation: You Control the Variable Dummy as the
Variable Dummy Controls You.' It was at the Royal Circus &
Carnival Society's Annual Meeting of 19 December 1964, and it
was a big success that made his rep and helped him get the top salaries in the biz.
I think he even appeared on Sullivan, or so rumor had it.

"But in the two and a half years after his big triumph,which was when
I met him, they say that fame and fortune had turned his head and made
him act strangish—babbling like a maniac one day, then down in the dumps the next, and so he gradually took to drink. While he was in his drunken stupors,
he--or actually, his Dummy, or so I'm told--would rant endlessly
about 'Satanic conspiracies' which were being designed with the
specific purpose of 'altering what God hath wrought on the first and
final days of creation.'

"One day," said Baby Boy Maddox, "I was hanging around the cook shack when I heard shouting coming from around the corner."

According to Maddox, he overheard a slurry alcohol ruckus pulsating from the wooden-tongued faded red oaken wagon on platter-sized wooden wheels
which was the paymaster office of the top-hatted ringmaster.

An iron-hearted agent was addressing the dipsomaniacal ventriloquist
with unconcealed but calculated indifference. "I'm sorry, Jerry, but I can't be your agent. Not no more. Ten per cent of a lousy puppet act is splinters."

Maddox says he was then startled to hear the angry voice of the Dummy
reply to this wisecrack.

The Dummy was named Smoczek Zmienna, or "Mokey" for short, and
he--or it--was a charred black wooden mannekin some thirty-six
inches in height, wearing a coal-black suit and sporting a clown-white ape-like
face with a ridged brow and cheeks deformed by wavy lumps which gave
the creature a mumpy appearance, vaguely sinister, but also lovable,
like the staring, quiescently teary face of a sick baby which, if you
had normal human feelings, you were instinctively drawn to both pity
and love.

The voice of the Dummy said, "You're real hep, daddy-o. Ha ha. But your
whole spiel is a boodle of bad jive. Strictly from hunger. You've been a
ba-a-d baby. I'll put the kibosh on your shyster racket if it's the last thing I do."

The calm voice of Jerry Noman intervened. "No Mokey...don’t say that…
I'm sure that the man has been doing the best he can...."

"And that's another thing!" the agent bellowed. "It ain't never YOU
talking to me! It's always that...that Dummy!"

It was at that point the door to the circus wagon was slammed shut,
and Maddox was unable to hear any more.

Rumor had it, said Maddox, that Jerry Noman was on a bad down slide. His mad
colloquies with his Dummy counterpart wreaked havoc on his reputation
for being the finest Dummy Man east of the Alleghenies. Noman's specialty
was performing his act while drinking a glass of water, smoking a
cigarette, and playing "Yankee Doodle" on a tin horn--all at the same
time. But the Dummy told him that this type of stunt was"strictly from L 7" and
at that point the act began to revolve more and more around the rapier insults wielded by the querulous Mokey and the ex-mathematician's increasingly
bewildered replies.

At first, Mokey's sardonic japes were mostly innocuous. Good
old-fashioned fun. But then, allegedly, Noman (or the Dummy)fell in love with a
beautiful Gypsy bareback circus rider, who spurned his advances.
He took to stronger drink, and Mokey's childish prattle
began ominously to grow more and more lascivious--sinister, even--until, finally,
one moonless night, Lush Conklin, the jealous Circus Strongman,
angrily threatened to chop the dummy into kindling
bits and feed them into a roaring fire.

According to people who overheard the argument, the Dummy began to
grow more and more insulting. And then a ghastly shriek filled the
air. The Strongman--was murdered! The dummy--was gone! And the Gypsy
girl--Noman's alibi—was nowhere to be found! The police were called.

And Jerry Noman was a man condemned.

All he would say in his own defense was that it was "A matter of
mathematical logic. Somebody had to die."

The day following Noman's arrest, the Ringmaster told Baby Boy Maddox
to work up a ventriloquism act. He said that BBM was to be "The new
master of the puppets." Maddox told me that he was struck with an
overwhelming panic but that, eventually, he calmed himself by smoking
some opium.

Not too long after that, he told me, he left the Red & Black Carnival.

"And I think," said Baby Boy Maddox, "You know the rest."

The upshot was that Jerry Noman got twenty years. And--what was perhaps
even worse--they took his dummy away. "Mokey" was stored away in a locked
valise until Noman got paroled, with three years off with good behavior.

Rumor had it that from time to time angry voices seemed to emanate
from inside that locked valise, while the baffled storage facility
owner tried in vain to figure out where they were actually coming from.

By the time Noman was freed, Ventriloquist acts were no longer in vogue
and the old-time Circus world was virtually gone, which was why Noman
and "Mokey" were the bottom act on the bill on the final night of a
third rate rock festival.

An interesting story, I said to Maddox. "But who would believe it?"

"Dunno," he said, indifferently. "I'm sure even Noman doesn't believe it.
I'm helping him out because he needs the dough to go back to Poland.
There's nothing for him here, he said. I guess he's been offered a teaching
post at some university there."

"In mathematics?" I asked.

"Hell no," said Maddox. "Theater Arts. And get this," he added with a sly wink.
"Noman says that the post isn't for him. He says it's for the Dummy.
Mokey says he wants to get out...and meet some new people."

[dimenno]

9. BABY BOY MADDOX: THREE NIGHTS OF MUD, SQUALOR AND TERROR

HOLLY PARK PRODUCTIONS & THE AKASIC RECORD COMPANY
Present:
DEADSTOCK
Featuring:

FRIDAY AUGUST 30TH
Thee Quick-Acting Hypnotics
Acid Is Groovy Kill The Pigs
They Eat Their Young
We Belong Dead
The Beatnik Jet Pilots

SATURDAY AUGUST 31ST
Pharmacy Robbers
Smash Ugly
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Vagina Puppets
We Refuse

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 1ST
Baby Boy Maddox
With Special Guest: Jerry Noman and "Mokey"
The Bad Actors
Jealous Daddy
Gorilla Crime Boss
Turn Me On Dead Man

It was Thursday, August 29th, 1985, and during the following weekend Baby
Boy Maddox was slated to headline the final evening of a heavily promoted
home-grown concert event, sardonically billed as "Deadstock." As an arts
and entertainment journalist, and an inveterate music fan, I was familiar with
most of the names on the bill.

It is for the sake of historical context, as well as posterity, that I
feel the need
to briefly summarize the genres of these long-forgotten combos, so
please bear with me.

Friday night's line-up was essentially a sop to die-hard fans of musical
genres which were fashionable in the early 1980s. Friday's headliners, Thee
Quick-Acting Hypnotics, were a post-punk synthesizer outfit, who combined
ice-cold keyboards with affectless but queerly emotional lyrics, ala
Ken Lockie. Acid Is Groovy Kill The Pigs were a similar outfit, only
they were more brazenly in the mode of musique concrete and even more
strident in their lyrical approach--much like the Fall, or Throbbing
Gristle. They Eat Their Young was a thrash combo, combining rapidly
arpeggiated guitar chords with angry, blurted, almost gargled
lyrics in the mode of an anarchic combo like the Crass. We
Belong Dead specialized in a slow, droning, old school heavy metal repertoire,
a bit like Black Sabbath. The Beatnik Jet Pilots were a synth-heavy
agglomeration whose tinny compositions were condemned as
a poor parody of the early work of Orchestral Manoevres in the Dark,
although this was not entirely a fair assessment. The bill was also
padded by obscure local combos such as Toothbreaker, with their
atrocious rant "I Wanna Hold Your Purse"; The Tuff-Guy Hardcore
Sensations, with their retro-metal crowd-pleaser "Thor's Ever-Loving
Hammer," and Satanic Rockets, who had recently gained heavy college
radio airplay with their agit-pop toe-tapper "Napalm Conspiracy."

Saturday was mostly devoted to post-psychedelic acts, a trend which
had already peaked a couple of years previous. Saturday's headliners,
The Pharmacy Robbers, were a loopy new-wave psychedelic band
in the mode of The Three O'Clock. Smash Ugly were an aggressive
throwback to the days of brazen, aggressive garage punk, somewhat
similar to the early Kinks, or a band like the Texas-based Zakary
Thaks. Nat Turner's Rebellion was another psychedelic outfit, with a folk
emphasis--people in the know often likened them to Green on Red.
Vagina Puppets were unknown to me, but people I spoke to said they did
some kind of ambient noise spoken word act. We Refuse were a punk
band, plain and simple, and owed an enormous debt to the Clash, I
suspect that they were a last minute replacement for a far superior
combo--rumor had it that the combo in question was Young Liberace, an
artsy avant-garde ensemble whose popular lead singer who, just a
week before, had inexplicably run off to Las Vegas, to front a lounge act.
That evening also saw performances by the likes of Trippy Dinosaur,
well known for raunchy folk numbers such as "The Fairy and the
Zephyr"; Dagger Stab Legend, an inept avant-garde combo whose best
known song was "Zip-a-Dee-Dada," and This Majestikal Roof, who were
still coasting on the strength of their 1982 indie-radio favorite,
"With An LSD Girlfriend".

Headlining the Sunday line-up was Baby Boy Maddox. His support acts
were the cream of contemporary local talent, carefully recruited by
the promoter. The Bad Actors were a once-acclaimed nouveaux
psychedelic band who had recently changed their name and approach
and had begun to load their set list with songs which some (including myself)
characterized as "Bad Bar Blues"--but they were extremely popular all the same.
Jealous Daddy was a psychedelic folk ensemble that was highly regarded
mostly for having persisted in their folly for nearly 25 years.
Gorilla Crime Boss was a Mod-revival outfit who mostly played reworked
versions of 60s-era British Invasion hits; some likened them to the
Rezillos or the Jam.
Turn Me On Dead Man performed Beatles songs—backwards. Also on the bill were
The Alcoholic Bears, best known for their sludgy heavy metal gospel
numbers such as "Let Unconquerable Gladness Dwell"; Bulletproof Witch,
acclaimed (and derided) for their 20 minute psychedelic free-for-all,
"Acid Dog," and Hieronymus Pop, who in 1975 had a minor disco hit
with "Drunken Ira Hayes (Dance Remix)”.

Maddox's performance was to have been his big breakthrough, but for a
number of reasons it was poorly attended. Firstly, he finally hit the
stage dead last on a Sunday evening, at nearly midnight, at a time
when all the subway trains were about to stop running. Secondly,
although the day was hot, it began to rain just before Maddox's
performance, and then the weather became unexpectedly chilly for a
late summer evening.

Finally, he was preceded by the ventriloquist act of Jerry Noman and
his puppet "Mokey". To say that this act was bad would hardly serve to
do it justice. I've already discussed Jerry Noman in a previous
installment. 17 years in prison did not improve his showmanship. (I
will illustrate what I mean in the next chapter.)

[dimenno]

10. BABY BOY MADDOX: FIGHTS, SEDUCTION, CONTRADICTIONS, NEGOTIATIONS

HOLLY PARK PRODUCTIONS & THE AKASIC RECORD COMPANY

Present:

DEADSTOCK

Featuring:

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 1, 1985

Baby Boy Maddox

With Special Guest: Jerry Noman and "Mokey"

As previously mentioned, headlining the Sunday line-up which was the final evening of a heavily promoted home-grown concert event, sardonically billed as "Deadstock," was Baby Boy Maddox.

As an arts and entertainment journalist, as well as a long-time fan of Maddox, I was looking forward to what was to be his first performance in front of a significantly large crowd.

Headlining this event was to have been Maddox’s big breakthrough, but for some strange reason he saw fit to sabotage his own performance by allowing it to be preceded by the ventriloquist act of Jerry Noman and his puppet "Mokey".

The following dialogue ensued:

Jerry: Well, Mokey, long time no see. Anything new with you?

Mokey: My dog just died.

Jerry: Oh, that’s too bad. How did it happen?

Mokey: He bit a punk rocker. Say, what’s going to happen when punk rockers finally retire?

Jerry: I don’t know—what?

Mokey: I guess they’ll collect anti-social security. Funny thing about dogs, though.

Jerry: What?

Mokey: They say a dog bite is worse than human bite. I say most people don’t lick their own wee-wees.

Jerry: I see.

Mokey: I learned a lot from that dog. How to piss on the floor. How to roll around in my own filth. And, best of all--how to stand around naked and beg for treats.

Jerry: That’s splendid!

Mokey: And now…I’d like to recite a little poem. Make your wife happy—she’ll let you drink beer—remember her birthday but forget the year.
Jerry: That’s very nice.
Mokey: The United Nations wants my gun, but I’ll never give it to them.

Jerry: No?

Mokey: But I will give them the old battleaxe--my mother-in-law. You know something?

Jerry: What?
Mokey: I hate hippies. Judging from what I’ve seen, the Flower Child knows only two things--the birds and the bees.

Jerry: Is that so?

Mokey: Yeah. America used to be a great melting pot—now all the college kids have gone to pot. Kids today are like butter.

Jerry: How so?

Mokey: They’re soft…they’re yellow…and when the heat is on, they run. I’d like to sing another little song.

Jerry: Go ahead.

Mokey: A tisket, a tasket…What the heck is a “tasket”? [Turning to the audience, who have begun booing and walking out.] These are the jokes, kids.

Jerry: Laugh it up!

Mokey: Some people say I have my grandfather’s smile.

Jerry: Why is that?

Mokey: That’s because I borrowed his dentures.
Jerry: By the way, Mokey, I’ve been thinking…

Mokey: Always a mistake…

Jerry: I’ve been thinking about what we’re doing up here, and I’ve come to realize that it’s hopeless. All of it. I mean, what are we doing up here? These people aren’t being entertained. They don’t want to be entertained,. They’re probably all on drugs. All they want is for somebody to soothe them.

Mokey: Careful, Boss…

Jerry: I’m sorry. I often make thoughtless remarks which I later regret--because most people are assholes. Um, present company excepted. I’m sorry--I must sound incredibly angry. If I sound defensive, maybe it’s because I just got out of jail. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Now, when I tell them I was in jail, people ask me, “How are you feeling, now that you’re free?” Well, this is how I feel: I’ve got 17 months of hate stored up inside of me, and trouble is all I know. But I should never have said that to my probation officer.

Mokey: Big mistake, Boss.

Jerry: I'd like for us all to pause for just a moment to think about the forgotten people....the convicts on death row....I think capital punishment is an ugly word...I think we should change it to something nice. Like "Putting the killers to sleep." Or "Lights out for felons." Or “Harvesting the psychopaths.” Or "Three strikes and you're dead." Or "A date with Old Sparky." "Or "A dose of Edison's Medicine." But hey--there’s one nice thing about being on death row--your parents always know where you are. Anyway, prison is a lot like College. You have a lot of time on your hands to sit there and think.

Mokey: Think about what?

Jerry: Just stuff. Every day stuff. Like, why do garbage men make so much noise?

Mokey: Beats me.

Jerry: Because if they knew how to keep quiet, they wouldn’t be garbage men.
Mokey: That’s pretty deep.

Jerry: Yeah, well, like I said, I had a lot of time to think. Like, what do you do when you leave one situation and you’re forced into another and you’re left to hang out to dry and nothing adds up? What do you do when the world has no use for you, or for anything you have to say?

Mokey: Most people tend to get drunk.

Jerry: Yeah, but then you wake up with a hangover and a sick stomach and a mouth full of fur, and your troubles haven’t gone away—they’ve only gotten worse.

Mokey: Jerry, that’s not very funny.

Jerry: I know. But it’s true! Mokey, I learned a lot about myself during all those years in prison. I learned that I’m in love with the spotlight because I’m afraid of my own shadow. I learned that I was trying all my life to be a big success to impress a bunch of people I didn’t even like, and while I was doing all that, I was ignoring the people I loved. You know, when I first started out in this crazy business, I went looking for a cross between fame and fortune.

Mokey: So what happened?

Jerry: I found it. I found the cross between fame and fortune. It’s called Famine.

Mokey: So why are you in this business, anyway?

Jerry: I got into the business because of my father. He was a ventriloquist, too. He was a semi-literate ventriloquist. He moved other people’s lips when he read.

Mokey: Jerry, sometimes I get so mad at you, I could just hit you!

Jerry: Well, now, Mokey, you wouldn't hit a man with glasses, would you?
Mokey: No, I'd hit him with a two-by-four.

Jerry: Thank you very much, ladies and germs.

As the man and the puppet left the stage, I noticed Baby Boy Maddox, standing in the wings, watching the few people remaining in the audience as they threw rocks and bottles and anything else that happened to be at hand at their departing forms.

Maddox was doing something I had never seen him do, before or since.

He was giggling.

[dimenno]

11. BABY BOY MADDOX: FREEDOM

HOLLY PARK PRODUCTIONS & THE AKASIC RECORD COMPANY
Present:
DEADSTOCK
Featuring:
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 1, 1985
Baby Boy Maddox

As previously mentioned, headlining this event was to have been Maddox’s big breakthrough, but for some strange reason he saw fit to sabotage his own performance by allowing it to be preceded by the ventriloquist act of Jerry Noman and his puppet "Mokey". Even worse, when the time came to perform, Maddox performed a few of his more problematic songs, such as “Freedom”:

Fuck the city fuck the town fuck the squares who put me down
Fuck the country fuck the woods I don’t need your fucking bill of goods
Fuck the Christian fuck the Jew and if you don’t like it fuck you too
In the cold eye of the midnight sun gonna burn my dollars one by one
Freedom!

And then, rather than offering any of his more popular numbers, he ended his appearance by instead launching upon what could only be charitably characterized as an insane diatribe regarding the promoter of the event, a shrimpy, shifty-eyed, soi-disant working class fellow named Joey Heroin.

“Is the promoter here? Joey Heroin. Is Joey Heroin here? Let’s give it up for Joey Heroin. He’s not here? Well, I’d like to do a song in honor of the promoter. A new song. I call it “Cheesecake Barn”:

Another fucking day at the Cheesecake Barn
Selling lard to fatsos it really sucks
I really want to do them all some harm
Hope they get diabetes and lose a leg or arm
I can't afford to stay there and I can't afford to quit
When I get undressed at night my clothing smells like shit
And I can't wake up when I hear the alarm
And I can't stand the place, it's a bunch of fat fucks
But we always have to jump when it sounds like bucks
Cheesecake Barn, Cheesecake Barn, Cheesecake Barn....”

The few crowd members who remained behind for this, the (anti)climactic moment of the entire three day concert event, were stunned. I was there: they were open-mouthed in amazement and, as Baby Boy Maddox vanished into the obscurity of the backstage, they were too bewildered to even demand an encore.

I flatter myself that perhaps Baby Boy Maddox was influenced by my own comments regarding Joey Heroin; comments which, days later, I refined into an open letter to that individual, in which I criticized him in the local press for certain irregularities which had been reported to me regarding the (mis) management of ‘Deadstock’:

OPEN LETTER TO JOEY HEROIN
[Published in the September 5, 1985 edition of THE THUNDERSTONE]

Dear Joey:

I have heard stories.

I have heard from varied sources that you have taken the substantial advances which you were supposed to have paid the musicians appearing at your event ‘Deadstock’ and have instead spent the money on a gambling junket with your cronies in which drugs and alcohol were not only also abundantly present but also consumed in great profusion. All without whispering a word of your whereabouts to your fiancée, who was frantic with worry for three whole days, wondering where you could have “vanished off to.”

What are we to make of such a person as you have revealed yourself to be?

A malignant, wet-brained ignoramus with the sensibility of a half-trained water spaniel and the soul of a counting-house clerk.

A cultural infidel without even the sense to pay heed to the advice of people who have seen trouble and who magnanimously seek to assist you in avoiding the same.

A mental malcontent; an indiscriminate solipsist; a myopic creature of the zeitgeist, a bawling cad; a whinging malcontent, an autochthonous rube micturating in a gutter of your own finding and fouling; a spectacular eidoloclast scarred inside with vile thoughts; a homunculus in a world of vendetta-seeking midgets; a dragonslayer of hacks; an inarticulate crypto-fascist.

You are a veritable pasha of piffle; a baron of despair; a czar of self-loathing; a maharajah of pointless malice. You are the top cat of offal; the big cheese of ephemera; the overlord of disordered and confused pseudo-ratiocination.

Furthermore, judging from your actions, you pride yourself on possessing a level of maturity and sound judgment, in respect to which the screaming infant is your equal and the unborn fetus infinitely your superior.

You apparently follow the same philosophy as a booking agent who decides that following Hendrix playing "The Star Spangled Banner" is best accomplished by fronting a mongoloid essaying "Three Blind Mice" on a broken toy piano.

By now, an intelligent person with a bare modicum of self-respect would have realized just how in over their head they are.

Not you. But never fear. I quite understand your inanition.

Let's face it, small fry. You come from a world where ugly illogic is a way of life. In your vile atelier, the soup du jour is happy horseshit, the main course is inarticulate ad hominem blustering, and for dessert you dish up a heaping helping of inexplicable rodomontade.

Too bad.

Because I just rolled a seven.

Result: You are faded, fucked and forgotten.

Rumor has it that you’ve been going around town saying that I am “bitter”, and not only a “has-been” but a “never-wuzzer.”

You have even sent an open letter to the press decrying my efforts to expose your racket.

I have heard other stories.

Stories of a vindictive soi-disant oracular quasi-literate. A man who reminds me of a spiteful monkey ladling down hot pitch upon hapless passersby from a high tree occupied by a rabble of similarly autocoprophagous baboons of his despicable tribe. Apparently my assessment of his intellectual capabilities (slender) and accomplishments (none) has so addled his already fevered brain that, like a garden-variety sneak who stands at the edge of an unsuspecting crowd, hurls a bottle, then calmly walks away, he continues to defame my name in the public press while at the same time declining to make his name or avocations known to the world at large. And fittingly. This individual, judging by his recent behavior, is as fond of depraved and corrupt practices as the devil himself is fond of snatching away from God's ultimate mercy theoretically repentant sinners.

In fact...he is probably you!

And in response I have this to say:

Ho ho ho, little man, is that the best you can do?

Mock my own resume of your mental qualities, evident to all, with a biased summation of my physical and financial situation, apparent only to you? Rife, furthermore, with spelling errors and a syntactic structure which indicates that you gave up on English prosody after the eighth grade?

I repeat: You are, indeed, an autochthonous rube micturating in a gutter of your own finding and fouling.

When it comes time for them to autopsy your cancer-riddled corpse, I do hope they find some vestige of non-cancerous tissue there, so they can at least bury you in a shoebox.

Perhaps, before you reach your final destination—no doubt seated upon a public toilet with a spike in your sore-ridden arm—you will apologize to your God.

Perhaps you will even apologize for defaming Baby Boy Maddox, a man who has never done you any harm, and who, in fact, has done everything in his admittedly limited ability to be of service; and mine, for even entertaining a second thought regarding your splenetic cavalcade of callousness, low wit, and querulous badinage.

God may forgive you, Sir. I cannot.

Following the publication of this open letter, both Joey Heroin and, to my regret, Baby Boy Maddox disappeared from the scene for several days.

It was not to be too very long before the both of them would return to cause mischief, each in the own inimitable fashion.

[dimenno]

12. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE WHOLE TRUTH

Implausible as it may seem, in the wake of the "Deadstock" scandal, radio talk show hosts and their booking agents once again found Baby Boy Maddox to be an irresistible attraction. Knowing his past mastery of the media shuck and jive, I actually felt sorry for some of the so-called college radio DJs who essayed to get a straight answer out of him during these appearances. Yet, unlike his earlier appearances on college radio shows, in the aftermath of "Deadstock" he was now being interviewed, not by any callow intern, but by experienced talk show professionals.

One such radio show, broadcast in mid-September of 1985, may well have been among his finest media moments. It was at that time that one of these professionals confronted him on the air--admittedly, near the beginning of her career--and came out second-best. Her name was Brandi Sabnock, a self-described "23-year-old platinum blonde knock-out who can do things with her tongue which make grown men cry." Later in her career she also hosted "Brandi In the Morning", a right-wing talk-radio hate-fest during morning drive-time in which she raked local politicos across the coals whenever they happened to deviate from any of her notions of right thinking. In the years to come, she was notoriously unscrupulous when it came to plying her trade of sly innuendo and verbal smash-and-grab, all in service of the game of anything-to-win. Yet, curiously, though she often played very rough with interlopers who presumed to accost her on the air, after her first, uncanny encounter with Baby Boy Maddox, she always scrupulously exempted him from her criticisms, The transcript of that interview follows.

Transcript:
THE BRANDI SABNOCK SHOW
Sunday September 15, 1985
1:40 PM
BS: ...a balmy 63 degrees and you're listening to the The Brandi Sabnock Show, For this segment, we're here today interviewing a rather...unique performer. He calls himself Baby Boy Maddox, and he recently headlined a rather...interesting local event called "Deadstock". Tell me Mr. Maddox...or is it Mr. Baby Boy?
BBM: No need to stand on ceremony, Brandi. You can call me "Sir".
BS: [Ignoring him.] Tell me a little something about your yourself. What was your childhood like?
BBM: Childhood is often a complex sadness. But it always partakes of the light of eternal consciousness.
BS: Sounds like a lot of new age hooey.
BBM: The light of eternal consciousness is hidden from people like you. Because you're stuck, not in the eternal now, but in the drab present.
BS: This is true. No sense in living in the past.
BBM: But your past IS your present. You're totally moored to a persona which your kind has carefully cultivated through thousands of years.
BS: Come, now--I'm not THAT old!
BBM: Pretending to know what you are afraid of knowing. Pretending to be expert in matters you are ignorant of.
BS: Well, now, that's pretty personal.
BBM: I tell the truth. I swear by almighty God to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But there's hope for you yet.
BS: Oh, goodie.
BBM: Be serious! A clown's no good. If you leave it all behind, all of it, and you don't look back, then you will never never grow old. That's how dreams are born. That's where happiness begins.
BS: Groovy, man.
BBM: Is that all you're good for? Mockery? To preen on your perch like a shiny parrot? You spend all of your time looking at the spinning circle. And you're hypnotized. Don't look at the circle. BE the circle. Sin is a mistake. Sin causes guilt, but guilt is the only sin. If the self remains strong, all obstacles are temporary. There is something which is greater than your so-called personality, your temporary self, and that is your true self, your permanent self. Listen it it! Listen it IT, and nothing else!
BS: I agree. I think.
BBM: Don't think. Listen! Listen to the truth. The truth! Listen, Brandi, I can tell you things about yourself that even you don't know! Things that haven't even happened yet!
BS: Hit me.
BBM: The world is a harsh place. Men tell you that you are pretty but you will always think that you are rather plain. You think, in the first blush of your youth, that you are unstoppable, But sooner or later the honeymoon has to end. Animals are more tolerant than we are. They don't care if your fur comes off in patches. But wear the wrong outfit and you will be reviled. In the circus of life and death, sooner or later the show has got to end. The ringmaster calls forth the lions and the cage door slams shut. Listen! Cats have only one life, but they can twist and twirl in the face of danger. Frankfurters are not made from dog meat, but that doesn't mean the dogs don't cry bitter salt tears. A hair in your soup enrages you? Remember what the Dormouse said. Heaven itself cries out at the cruelty of men. Some day you will be swimming in your own tears--and they will laugh at you!
BS: If I'm lucky.
BBM: Listen! Your sparking champagne cocktail always conceals a bitter pill called loneliness. Ten feet tall at night; bitter dregs in the morning. It's a man's world, and they all think that they are Fighting Aces. But men are fools. And women are weak. Your sweetness is our weakness. Makeup is your camouflage. The beauty parlor is the rack. Do you scar yourselves? Do you torture yourselves? You do it to be beautiful. For one moment. It is what it is. We love a parade. And we're fooled. And fooled again. Always mistaking the marching band for the main event. The pink elephants for the palace of wisdom. The Man on the Street for the Voice of God. Listen: We used to burn our witches. Now we just ignore 'em.
BS: But--
BBM: But it's not all about you. Or me. Listen! Hex...sex...what's the difference? We're like simple field mice. Hiding all the time. Everybody's preaching. Nobody's reforming. Everybody's arguing; nobody's saying anything. Everybody's staring. Nobody's seeing.
BS: I must say your surprise me. I thought we were here to discuss your music. But it seems as though you're more interested in discussing your...uh, some kind of philosophy.
BBM: Music? Sure. These things are important. But music is numbers. Numbers. It's all about numbers. You're an entertainer. You live and die by the numbers, do you not? So tell me--what is the smallest number that is not zero? Wise men say there is no answer to that question. But the world is a cold place. Only fools rush in. And so the answer is you. You, and me, and everybody else. We are small numbers. The lost chord. We are the lowest whole number, which is one. The lowest number, and at the mercy of all the uncountable things that make up the universe. Why do people play bingo? I'll tell you why. Religious worship disguised as gambling. Each and every card is a model of the universe.
BS: You're...you're quite the worldly philosopher, aren't you?
BBM: Numbers are important. Numbers are the pegs on which we exist. It's the calculus of chaos. Laughing Sam's Dice. Look into the cards. Ask yourself if you are any exception. Do you matter at all? The cards will never hem and haw. The answer is always "no."
BS: Huh? What?
BBM: You are likely too young to have ever thought of this.
BS: Thank you. I think. I, um, I try not to think of such things.
BBM: Good! Ignorance of your own mortality is the beginning of wisdom. Death is best spoken of only in whispers. And it will not be stopped by speaking of it. The little man will always gets a licking, not because he did anything wrong, but because he might--and anyway, the baby loves to see him cry.
BS: We've got some incoming calls....
BBM: Forget about the calls for a moment.
BS: What? But I can't--
BBM: Don't worry, they'll hang on. Listen! Behind every business man is a man in a hood that covers his face, Behind every advertising jingle is the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Behind every dollar is a dolour. Man's a disease. Money's pain. Credit is compressed ability. Listen: Face facts. The strongman wears an apron; the weakling has a bucket of tar and he ain't afraid to throw it around and make a splash wherever he thinks it'll do the most good.
BS: I don't quite understand what you're trying to say.
BBM: And you don't want to. But wait! There's more!
BS: Well, um, let's try to wrap it up---
BBM: Every time I talk these things there's always somebody who wants to chime in with their own two cents. Let 'em wait. Here is what I've come here to say. Finally. Listen closely. We all have to live with the world as it is, and not as we would like it to be. I know that. You know that. But you'd be surprised at how many people think it's the other way around. There is a fly in your soup. It's called "reality". Fish it out with a fork if you like; nothing will erase the sad memory of failure. We all have to live with the world as it is, and not as we would like it to be. That is a recipe for misery. But say it out loud, and everybody will think you are a person who is worthy of respect.
BS: So--
BBM: So go to the ESSENCE of the experience at all times! This is vital! Act as if the thing you're doing now is the thing you've been doing forever! Know your strength and always act on it! Subtract the thought from too much feeling; add feeling to too much thought!
BS: Too much thought?
BBM: Too much THOUGHT! You deserve to FEEL! Feel GOOD! IGNORE facts! Inconvenient FACTS have NOTHING to do with FEELINGS--ignore them! Feelings can be changed by facts--hang on to those saving facts for dear life! Let me spell it out for you. Don't give up on yourself. You're survived much worse. Never waste a precious minute! Never, never, never, never, never, never!
BS: Isn't that a cliche?
BBM: LIFE is a cliche! Long life, long cliche. And staying alive is mostly a matter of blending in. But I'm saying that you should live a little! Sidestep the social conventions for as long as you can! For as long as you can get away with it. Because they are mostly there to trip you up. And another thing. Don't waste your time on things you shouldn't have. Commonplace things are so much more valuable than things that are hard to get. Yesterday's calculator is tomorrow's doorstop! If things fail to fall into your lap they are hardly worth having and you probably don't need them anyway. And anything that you do not need will only slow you down. Things are your anchor. The salt sea belongs to the solitary captain who travels light.
BS: Well, that's affirmative.. that's an affirmation. But I'm afraid that's about all we have time for...though maybe we can take just one call.
CALLER: Hello, I was listening to Baby Boy Maddox--
BS: Sir, would you speak up?
CALLER: I was listening to Baby Boy Maddox--and I don't understand a single word of what he's saying. What he's even talking about?
BBM: Sir, let me ask you something.
CALLER: Shoot.
BBM: Are you a blind horse?
CALLER: What?
BBM: Well, I don't know about you, but I've been told that even a blind horse can find his way home. They used to have these horses, you know, milk truck horses, brewery horses, they'd feed 'em on curds and barley mash, y'know, and work 'em half to death. And these horses would go a little crazy, and after twenty years they'd tend to go blind, but, you know, even these poor crippled animals knew how to find their way home. Are you calling from home?
CALLER: Of COURSE I'm calling from home. Where else would I be calling from?
BBM: Well, how do I know? Maybe you don't GOT a home. Maybe you're calling from a pay phone. But no, you're calling from home. that's nice. You got a home and you got a phone. So. If you don't understand, you want my advice?
CALLER: Sure.
BBM: Don't worry.
CALLER: Um, thanks...I guess.
BBM: You're welcome. Oh, and one more thing.
CALLER: What's that?
BBM: Stay home.
CALLER: [hangs up.]
BS: {Smoothly...perhaps a bit too smoothly] It's the top of the hour...our guest has been Baby Boy Maddox, and...and we look forward to having him back again? We do. He'll be appearing....
BBM: I'll be around.
BS: Around. Stay tuned, it's the top of the hour; this is Brandi Sabnock for the Brandi Sabnock show; next up it's the Fat Boy Show with your favorite host Bob Tanney.

True to her word, Sabnock was to invite Maddox to speak on her show repeatedly, although once, years later, during an unguarded moment, she confessed to me that she didn't understand "one-third" of what he was saying, and that "although people think I have him on only for the novelty value," she actually personally found him "strangely compelling."

Not for nothing then, that they called him the Hobo Sage!

And over the next several weeks, he was destined to make even more of an impression upon his other, even more impressionable acolytes.

[dimenno]

13. BABY BOY MADDOX: BERESHIT BARA ELOHIM...

And now we are beginning. And now we are beginning to come to the end. The end of the second arc of the story of Baby Boy Maddox.

But first, some thoughts. And a hasty anecdote or two.

Young people--people in their teens and twenties--seem more inclined than adults to take the whole band experience seriously. This could have something to do with their own adolescent wolf pack instincts.

Or maybe the young are just romantics at heart, and enjoy seeing brave people who bruise themselves in bumping up against the indifference of the world.

To be sure, none of this is very practical. And "practical" is the word that old people use to put the young in their place.

Youth is strong and can stand a bruise or two. But age is practical. Practical means protective coloration and laying up stores and preemptive strikes--doing unto them before they can do unto you.

And only the most prematurely senescent youth can comprehend such a world-view.

Because youth is pure will, and knows nothing.

Age progresses from thwarted will to blunted will and, eventually, loss of will, and knows just enough, which, actually, is too much.

Anyway, it was October of 1985 and I was paying a visit to the home folks, when my grandfather drew me aside.

"Why in hell are you skylarking around," said Gramps, "with that chuckle headed musician Baby Boy Maddox and his crazy shenanigans?" (Gramps couldn't help it. that's the way he talked, Regarding his odd expressions, a lot of them seem to have come about from watching too many bad war movies where too many abusive drill sergeants are shown bully-ragging raw recruits in Marine Corps Boot Camp just prior to sending them off to Anzio and the Solomons and Omaha Beach.)

It's sad but true: We don't always get to choose the degree of sanity of our family. All too often, fathers and grandfathers are incomprehensible to the sons and grandsons, and vice versa. Maybe it has to do with the fact that your grandfather--whose own grandfather grew with in a gas light wood stove buggy whip world--has some slight difficulty trying to wrap his head around the fact that his own grandson is far more interested in lasers, solar panels and rocket sleds.

"Why," said my grandfather, "Aren't you out looking for a high-paying job?"

"Gramps," I said, "Money isn't the be-all and end-all of existence."

"That's what you think," he muttered.

I was beginning to ask myself the same question, though. Baby Boy Maddox was beginning to strike me as somewhat warped and bitter, and for good reason; having gotten thisclose to some kind of wider fame,through bad breaks he kept falling just short. This was nothing new. As a music critic, I had seen the same thing happen over and over again. I knew dozens of bands and performers who could have made it and should have made it but were royally fucked over. By rumors. By bad recording contracts. By broken promises, people going out of business, stolen product, embezzling managers.

I knew for a fact that one local producer had a whole LP by Baby Boy Maddox in the can...literally...I saw the can of reel to reel taped marked BBM over at his apartment when I went there to interview a band there. That music never saw the light of day. Maybe it's still sitting in storage somewhere--or maybe it landed in a dumpster the day after I spotted it. We may never know.

In the music world, for every success there are a thousand failures. People falter--not always because they have no talent but sometimes--more often than you think--they falter because of their own, unexpressed, inexpressible fear of success. Because they love to fail. Or sometimes they stumble because of their growing swell-headedness. They begin to think that their animal cries set the whole world in motion. That is one crazy animal. And nature doesn't care for crazy. In nature, a crazy animal is a dead animal. usually sooner, and not later.

We all know that the lives of insects are ephemeral. But art is more ephemeral still. We hover around art like a moth. But artistic products of any kind are also like moths. Ephemeral. How many times do i have to repeat it? And artists themselves are like moths. Artists in particular are apt to get burned because they hover too damn close to the light.

Another thing I've learned from years of studying the music biz, it is this. We don't always get to choose the degree of sanity of our musical idols.

Don't get me wrong. Musicians aren't crazy, or even stupid. Not especially. Not exactly. Some of them--how to put it--in a way my grandfather could understand? Some of them, well, they're just wired differently.

And if you're wired differently, fame can make you crazy. Hell, anything can make you crazy. But especially fame.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But a little fame is an even more dangerous thing.

And all too often, the worst thing that a little bit of fame actually does is to make you a creepy asshole. Somebody who will screw anybody to get ahead.

And once you go down that road...the exploitation road...I suppose the thought process goes something like "In for a penny, in for a pound." I'm sure there's ad execs who would have happily accepted the Hitler account.

What's sad is that some of the most talented people in the music world are the very same ones who are the most hopeless at promoting themselves...I'm not saying that a refusal to be an incessantly self-promoting narcissistic asshole is the sign of artistic genius but sometimes I'm tempted to think that way.

Then again, the scene in my neck of the woods--Haven, Madport, Big Town, Knob Hill--the scene has always been so clannish and tribal that whenever someone stuck their neck up over the lid of the Mason jar there were always dozens of people willing to pull them back down again--like scorpions in a bottle.

I have been slightly guilty of this. ...I try not to hold a grudge, but I don't need to take guff from people...I'm not a sponge for performer's neuroses... Sometimes people would piss me off, and I would use the power of the press to get some payback. I knew at the time that it was wrong. But, after all, I am only human. And being human is, perforce, a condition that covers a multitude of sins.

I remember one fellow who--it seemed to me--was getting too big for his britches. So I made fun of his new band's demo. Mocking it for its avant-minimalism, I reviewed it by exclusively using words of one syllable. The lead singer was majorly pissed off. (We later grew to appreciate each other, though. Of course, later still, he dropped dead on stage. Tempus fugit.)

And then there was the earnest anarcho-hardcore band I once made fun of. I think the remark I made was that they had big dents in their head from thinking too much.

But it was all in fun. Or so I thought. Musicians tend to have a screwy and sometimes downright profane sense of humor.

None more so than Baby Boy Maddox.

Very soon I am going to tell you his real story. I am going to peel back years and show you where he came from and how he came to be.

But for now I have been following, and soon I am going to finish tracing, the trajectory of his rise to the first flush of his long-delayed fame.

On Tuesday, October 15th, the first day of Midterms at Ivy College, the College radio station devoted a full 24 hours to a retrospective honoring local performers, and at 8pm that evening, Baby Boy Maddox was invited to appear on the show, presumably to spin some records.

But due to a complacent disc jockey (I will not name him here) who fancied himself something of a counter-cultural punk rock "rebel," instead, Maddox was permitted to give forth with the following unsolicited and uncensored comments.

DISC JOCKEY: Here in the studio, top of the hour, and we have local legend Baby Boy Maddox, who--
BABY BOY MADDOX: I'm here to talk about Punk Rock.
DJ: That's great, because I'm sure our listeners who are familiar with your long career would like to hear you discuss how a former folk musician and, uh, pop musician was able to transition so seamlessly to punk. I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean, look at Fear and Debbie Harry and, uh, even Toni Basil, though maybe that's not such a good example, but, uhh, anyway, I guess it's not so big a jump as all that, I mean, I'm not rying to say you're an opportunist because it seems to me, or, uhh, at least, this is my personal opinion, but I think that maybe you had the punk rock attitude all along, even in the late 60's, I mean, that song "America," that's pretty punk rock right there, and a lot of your music, I mean, sure, it's also actually garage rock, and it's also pop, and there's some jazzy scat singing and some proto-hardcore and even some schmaltz, like, you throw a schmaltzy ballad in there, and, I mean, clearly, you're a versatile performer, I guess you'd have to be if you used to sing in bars. And A song like "Freedom," I mean, something like that seems, on a surface level at least, to express a longing for a prelapsarian past unmodulated by the influences of post-industrial civilization--it actually reminds me a lot of Ezra Pound's Canto 81--I mean, the lyrics--"I don't need your effin bill of goods and if you don't like it, eff you too"--I mean, this points to a deeper, more profound disengagement--one that extends to all humanity. Um, wouldn't you agree?
BBM: yes.
DJ: And, um, until such time as robots begin to enjoy and discuss music--this is just my theory--but until such time, this, this anti-humanity stance would almost seem to make you the ultimate outsider. It's almost like you don't really want anybody to even listen to your songs. I mean, punk rock wasn't so much a reaction against arena rock. It's a reaction against folk music, but it''s also in a perverse way itself a kind of folk music--only, with punk rock, you don't have to know how to play, and it's a lot less subtle in other ways too, I mean, folk music can be pretty nihilistic too, i mean, look at the song "In the Pines," which is about a guy who murders his girlfriend, or look at "The Wagoner's Lad," where the guy says "If you don't like me you can leave me alone" and compare and contrast that to your song "freedom," where you say "If you don't like it then eff you too."
BBM: What is nihilism?
DJ: What?
BBM: A song is actually something. So how can a song be about nothing? Forget punk rock. Punk rock is a hoax. There is actually no such thing.
DJ: Well, actually, um, we were hoping to devote this next segment to playing some punk rock songs for our listeners, by request.
BBM: Forget your next "segment." What am I? A worm? No. First of all, these so-called punk "musicians"--I hate their music, but I agree with every word they say, even when they contradict themselves--especially when they contradict themselves--which they do all the time--because of the drugs. In my world, where I come from, a punk is a kid who lets himself get buggered by a mean old hobo. Try calling me a punk and I'll break both your arms and chop them up for kindling wood and use them to set you on fire.
DJ: That's--
BBM: That's nothing--I'm just getting started. I've got a bucket full of tar and I'm just burning to spread it around, so sit down and listen.
DJ: We're--
BBM: OK, you're just an ignorant kid, so I'll go easy on you. Look, this thing you call "punk rock" is nothing new. The will to power replaced by the will to overpower. Seduction replaced by rape. Rust replaced by demolition. They already had it all figured out in the early sixties. You know something?
DJ: What?
BBM: Didn't think so. No, really--you know something?
DJ: Um, what?
BBM: Categories are for dopes. Listen. You want to know how to get ahead? Why am I even asking? Of course you do. Even if you're too principled to use it, you still want to know the secret. Here it is. To get ahead, you've got to be ahead. you don't try to give people what you think they want. First you find out why they want it. Whatever it is. Why do hey want anything? They can't tell you. because they don't even know themselves. They don't know their own selves, and they will never know you. They will never even see you. So make yourself scarce to them. They only want the thing they cannot have. They are only impressed by the thing they cannot fully understand. tell them something new and different every day, and they will be your slaves. So here is the secret: Never give yourself away. Never never give yourself away. But you say to them, to them you say, "You don't need your self--give it to me." And they will give it. They will. Will give it. Because you will be the go-to person, and they will go to you. This is the secret. They cannot stop you. Because you are plugged in to the whole universe. No matter where down is, once you know this truth, you will be always up. When you're turned down, turn on! Dust yourself up and get right back up!
DJ: That's all we--hello? Um, ladies and gentlemen, um, Baby Boy Maddox...has left the building. Um, but he will be appearing at the Big Town Beer Garden during the Thursday Night Rocktoberfest on October 31st....

It was fortunate that the callow DJ was professional enough to announce Baby Boy Maddox's forthcoming appearance.

Well for Baby Boy Maddox.

Not so well for everybody else.

As we shall see.

[dimenno]

14. BABY BOY MADDOX: THE ROCKTOBERFEST DISASTER

Saturday, October 31st, 1985 was a day that still lives in some sort
of timeless infamy. It was billed in all the major media as the
Madport Rocktoberfest, but after all was said and done, this singular
event entered the annals of accounts devoted to civil insurrections as
The Rocktoberfest Disaster. You don't have to believe me--you can look
it up. But first, by all means, read on. Because I just happen to be
privy to some inside facts that you'll never read about in the
newspapers or history books. Here, then, is my reconstruction—based on
inside knowledge—of how it all played out.

As part and parcel of the well-promoted “Rocktoberfest,” late on
Friday night the Red & Black Circus comes to Madport and begins to set
up camp at the rock-strewn and long-deserted fairgrounds overlooking
the Salt River, on the other side of which, mounds of slag and the
still-intact hulks of recently shuttered steel mills stand mute in
eerie sooty isolation.

Now, as everybody knows, there's nothing quite like a circus.
Well...at least...there's nothing nearly as interesting as a circus.
Even a third-rate circus. Especially a third-rate circus. So hurry
hurry hurry! Step right up! There’s a disaster brewing! Hurry hurry
hurry! There’s going to be a STORM!

Yes, it’s a circus all right, but just barely. A circus boasting one
dyspeptic bear, with patchy fur and a punctured eardrum--a red-eyed
barbituate-habituated bear who has completely forgotten how to dance.

A broke-down circus with a long in the tooth bareback equestrienne
who’s pushing fifty, a fear-maddened trained seal, and a crazed,
impotent, and perverted clown named "Toby".

Clowns, I am told, are mostly sexual deviants and madmen. Sadly, this
is not an opinion, but historic fact.

Maybe I should amend my previous rash statement: Clowns have
TRADITIONALLY been drawn from the ranks of sexual deviants and madmen.
Whether this is still the case I am not competent to say. (I sincerely
apologize to any clowns whom I may have inadvertently offended.)

But Toby is a real pipperoo. You look into his milky white Joker eyes
and you see your own death looming. One look from him will put you on
the wheel of life and start you spinning. Don't look at him, Kid.
Don't look. Don't....

Too late.

I'll tell your mother you loved her.

Back to the broken-down circus. A circus which is—literally—on its
last legs. A circus with a lame elephant, an unnaturally
sickly-looking cigar-smoking pig, and a toothless lion. The big cat
isn't really mean, he’s only got a sore paw. But the lion-tamer has
lost his nerve and usually sits hiding in the cook wagon, getting
drunk on cooking sherry and vanilla extract.

The dukkering Swami at the Mitt Camp is an agelessly bitter grump. He claims he
has been through eighteen reincarnations. All of them lousy. And he
remembers every single one of them. And he never smiles. Because he
really does have the second sight, and he well knows that number
nineteen will be no better. He never smiles because in all his
previous lives he has murdered and stolen and cheated. He has even
lied.

Where's Frieda the Fat Lady? There's no Fat Lady. The Fat Girl is gone
away. Late last night, Frieda, the Beautiful Fat Girl, was spurned by
Griff, the duplicitous strongman. You will never again laugh to see
her talk and sing and tell her story and watch her jowls quiver. She
will never stand up and shake it ever again. She is asleep. And she
will never wake up. She has swallowed poison. Lodi, the sinister dwarf
who was her only friend, or so she thought, has stolen her grouch bag
and has run away. He's hopped a fast freight and is whooping it up in
Gibsonia right this very minute with the soiled doves at the House of
the Rising Sun.

Also late last night a neon tube broke off in the stomach of the sword
swallower. He is now dying in the charity ward hospital. Only this
morning the Elephant Skin Boy has run off with the Alligator Girl.
Only this afternoon the Fire Eater was beaten half to death by the
Human Blockhead. The motive was either robbery or a lover's
quarrel--who cares? Both have been taken into custody and are cooling
their heels in the drunk tank.

And now it's the late afternoon matinee, and the manic-depressive
performing chimp has finally gone completely insane and is playing air
hockey with his own feces. The ringmaster doesn't even notice the
shrieking ape--he is all but deaf from drinking contaminated laudanum.
The crowd is growing restless. Walkouts. Booing. The Performer's tempers
are visibly frayed—as frayed as the safety nets in the Big Top. In the
ticket booth sits the widowed wife of the boss canvasman. She's a
brawny frowning red-haired orphan girl who, in 1927, was once the
belle of the ball and the headlining act. But long ago she was
permanently crippled in her daredevil fall from the flying trapeze.
The circus boss admitted to no liability but he still felt sorry for
her. At first he put her to work in the the girl-to-gorilla show. She
now sells tickets to the late-comers and mostly makes her coin by
cynically short-changing the lugens and rubes, and toothlessly
laughing in the face of the cake-eaters if they dare to beef, and
especially if they come to her to say they want their money back.

6 o’clock is struck on the cracked town bell. Hey Rube! There’s a
deadly ruckus on the Midway. Drunken veterans from the local Elks
Lodge have been driven loco on cheap rye whiskey. Rye whiskey? If
only. Actually, it is wood alcohol and lamp oil, colored brown with
iodine and chewing tobacco. The vets from the Lodge have commandeered
the shooting gallery and are now blindly firing off rounds in every
direction. Cops have been called. They said they'd be right there. No
dice. You call agian, and again and again. But the line at the station
house is busy.

Meanwhile, in the Boss Wagon, a secret business deal is being
consummated. That’s why Bosso doesn’t care if he burns the lot. He’s
selling out. For pennies on the dollar. A sneer-faced mobbed-up loan
sharking ex-con has bought out the ringmaster and original owner. And
tomorrow he's planning to sell the whole shebang to the Shriners. Lock
stock and barrel. All the wised up gees on the lot are tipping off
each other: Ceaz-an weaz-e teaz-ake theaz-is sheaz-it? Hell no. Be
Cool. PACK YOUR THINGS AND GET ON OUT. Leave. Leave while you can with
anything you have the strength to carry with you. Because everyone’s
getting fired. And red-lighted. And nobody’s getting paid.

But wait. More.

Stroll down to the end of the midway. See the barnstorming carnival.
There’s the amusement park. A fifth-rate amusement park. Thrown up in
six hours flat for the benefit of the local volunteer firemen. Meaning
that, overnight, the day labor Winos and dusty piss-pants vagrants and
stoned, beanie-head street people and greasy-haired escaped convicts
on the lam have been corralled from every low haunt and vile den for
miles around and have mostly been paid off with units of their
favorite vice to construct the pre-fab kiddie zamps and other
rickety-rack carny rides from rusty bolts, fatigued crossbars, used
nails, baling wire, and spit. The winos get paid with a pack of
generic smokes and a bottle of Virginia Dare; the vagrants, ditto. The
beanie-heads get a fistful of bennies (and a few beanies more), and
only the hard cons are paid in beanies, smokes, and cash on the barrel
head. (They get paid in cold hard coin mostly because they’re got
knives…and guns.)

Spider, the gang boss, doesn’t know any of their names and doesn’t
want to. He’s an old pot-head--he looks like an ancient yellowed
wizard, beard down to here--whose mind was blown in at the acid tests
nearly twenty years ago and he hates himself and he wants to die.

See the Carnival rides. Rotted wood and rusty girders everywhere you
look. A pooped out calliope wheezes off-pitch in the rotten Key of F.

Sputter of hot sausage grease; aroma of last season’s endlessly
reused fry oil, musty cotton candy, and stale popcorn. Plus a bit of
vomit and consequent splash of cover-up ammonia smell.

"Get Ready" is blasting on the sound system while the bumper cars
collide. Smell of ozone and scorched asbestos.

A man who looks very much like a superannuated Hitler is manning the
hotdog stand. He hands out watered lemonade rendered a pretty pink via
plenty of crushed cochineal beetles. At splintery fairground picnic
benches, tired Moms and Dads, impatient Aunts and Uncles, and
bone-weary Grandmas and Granddads sit jadedly, sheltered by rotunda
tents, swatting flies, eating meat and pickle sandwiches in wax paper,
and getting gently drunk on 6 ounce pony bottles of Rolling Rock Beer.

Meanwhile, the kids are off running wild. The kids—well, some of them
are kids, but more than a few of them are actually teenage windbreaker
hoods—the kids are standing by the park bench near the small-gauge
railroad which is run by an ashen, bloodless man who eyes of the
palest milky blue who very much resembles a disgruntled, alcoholic
Walt Disney. The kids are standing there at the model railroad depot
that smells of wood and creosote and rotten eggs and they’re all
laughing and spitting on the seated statue of an Old West cowboy. An
informative plaque reads ‘Swappin Yarns With Cowboy Joe’. This here is
a great game the kids call ‘Swappin Hockers with Cowboy Joe.’ Kiddie
Highlight: Throwing watermelon rinds from the rocket ride down onto
the boaters in the lagoon. And then—as the sun begins sinking
low--spitting from the railcars onto the strobe-lit mirrors in the
haunted house. The end of a perfect day! The teenaged hoods are
rocking and rollicking in the four-person trolley cars, which almost
tip over, and hooting with delinquent laughter.

But No. More. Still more.

The grand finale. The concert. Rocktoberfest.

Mind if I digress?

In September of 1985, a local impresario, and publisher of the
alternative weekly newspaper The Thunderstone, a mysterious man named
Yeddidayah Gaap, talked the town fathers of Madport into a zoning
variance which would allow the Madport fairgrounds to be used as a
concert venue for this grand event. “Rocktoberfest”. Mix two parts
beer, five parts ear-splitting rock and roll, add several thousand or
so rowdy teenagers, and stir. What could possibly go wrong?

Some would assume that a great deal of money was spread around to
ensure that Rocktoberfest would be permitted, but that was apparently
not the case. Instead, the plausible Gaap, who was something of a
counter-cultural mogul, assured the town fathers that the ensuing
revenues from the business which came to town would help fill a
foreseeable budget gap during the coming fiscal year. Some of the
younger blood on the town concert were Baby Boomers. They didn’t heed
the strident warnings of the dissenting old heads—that the town was
asking for trouble. That letting kids run wild was a big mistake.
That the wrong element would be attracted to fair Madport. All they
could see was a paradigm shift. Youth culture must be served.

But older wiser heads well knew that there had been a long history of
rock concerts in storied Madport.

You wouldn’t know it to look at the place because, let’s face it,
nowadays Madport is nothing more than a fast-dying mill town of some
16,000 inhabitants. Perched on a brownfield next to a poisoned
sulfur-reeking river. But in its 1985 heyday this suburb, with a
population of about 30,000, was quite a hotbed of musical talent.

Here, then, is a brief account of some of the historical highlights
leading up to the first and only “Rocktoberfest” held on that fateful
Halloween of 1985.

In April of 1955, a local hotshot disc jockey invited the wrath of
thinking adults everywhere by inviting several Negro musicians to
perform at the Madport Gazebo in Holly Park. These exotic fauna were
ostensibly brought in to entertain jaded area teens weary of the usual
wheezy big band music and slickly insipid, languid crooners with
brilliantined hair. The result: a minor riot. The response: a major
crackdown. By citing newly-enacted noise ordinances, the movers and
shakers of Madport were able thereafter to exclude “any and all”
future musical acts from its function hall, known locally as ‘The
Grange’. The ban was intended to prevent promoters from booking
“controversial" acts—which is to say, rock and roll acts--and remained
in effect until 1962. Just in time for the Twist craze to fill the
Granger’s Hall. Folk musicians with crew cuts were deemed acceptable
as well; rock and roll acts were still notably mighty scarce until the
British invasion of February 1964. By the summer of 1964, former
surf-instrumentalists the Ho-Daddies were seen to don novelty wigs and
play weekly dances at the Madport Grange under the name The Milk Duds.
The Milk Duds played their final gig opening for Freddie and the
Dreamers at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. They then split up and
moved en masse to Nashville and for seven fat years they made their
livings as session musicians.

In 1967, during the ‘Summer of Love,’ the ‘Big Madport Sound' is
boomed in the local music press.Thee Puritanz, a former blues band
newly reformed as a psychedelic band, releases three LP records on a
major labels. Each one is considered more unlistenable than the last.
The LPs receive very little airplay, and the band is soon dropped.
And so they break up. Personnel from this and two other local bands
form ‘super group' The Paisley Shirttail.

By the end of 1969, members of The Paisley Shirttail find Jesus and
reform as country-rock group The Young Masters. At the beginning of
1972, the ‘glam' scene hits Madport with the formation of Lucifer's
Gold, featuring former members of The Young Masters. They perform
exclusively at a newly opened “upscale” venue, The Payboy Club.

In 1973, members of The Milk Duds reform as prog-rockers HeroQuest and
play their first gig at the newly opened Bar Sinister, a former biker
hangout.

In 1977, the ‘punk' scene hits Madport and inspires the formation of
My Struggle, featuring former members of Lucifer's Gold.

We now come to 1978. Black leather is obligatory at the new
‘underground' nightclub Deathie; two weeks later, Deathie loses its
liquor license after police find three thousand empty four-ounce cough
syrup bottles in a dumpster behind the club.

In May of 1979, The Degenerates, the Chumps, and No Girls Allowed play
their first gigs at the opening night of the new punk rock club
Charles U. Farley's. The next day, in response to complaints of
excessive noise, police close Charles U. Farley's. It is converted
into a laundromat. During the same month, a Disco called Xanadu is
opened down the street. Sometime in 1981, the glitter ball is removed
and a big screen TV is installed at Xanadu, which then changes its
name to The Sports Haven.

In 1982, we see the rise of yet another much-hyped (and revoltin’)
development known as The Madport Heavy Metal Scene. This scene is
dominated by bands like Lipstikk. And Luxxxxx. Formerly known as My
Struggle, nee Lucifer’s Gold nee The Young Masters nee The Paisley
Shirttail nee Thee Puritanz. The synth-rock scene spawns bands like
Lulu, The Queen of Siam, Property 13, and Mandragon—all owing a great
deal to the former prog-rock veterans in HeroQuest.

All of these bands, as well as others, play at a large roadhouse
located on the county line and known as The Roastateria—a mobbed-up
venue where kids angling for their first gig perform strictly for a
(minuscule) percentage of the door. Early in 1983, Madport's first
Goth band Do As Thou Wilt begin weekly performances at a rival venue
known as The Dance Roost, a former gazebo just off the Lake Shore
Road. Three weeks later, The Dance Roost burns down in a "suspicious"
fire of unknown origin. 3 black priest’s robes and a box of mascara
are destroyed.

In 1984, Bar Sinister celebrates its 11th anniversary by dropping live
rock music, installing ferns, and featuring soft jazz and two-for-one
wine cooler specials. The Payboy Club celebrates its 12th anniversary
by becoming a microbrewery and featuring folk music and stand-up
comedy exclusively. Only The Roastateria remains in place to offer
sporadic ‘pay-to-play' concerts by three-chord garage bands such as
Persecuted Cabbage, Moloch, the Stupid Fools and Peptic Ulcer.

And so it is that we come to 1985. The ‘indie' scene brings new blood
to the area and prompts the opening of the nightclub Yarble's in a
former pet store, which smells (and I quote) "like a litter box."
Notable local bands include The Schmidts, Smithee, and Mr. Smith, as
well as At Your Service, The Screaming Warlords, Lulu, Do As Thou
Wilt, Lipstikk and Luxxxxx.

Yeddidayah Gaap sees opportunity staring him in the face. He runs a
so-called “counter-cultural weekly” –largely in the absence of a
counter-cultural scene. And he sees an opportunity—a potentially
lucrative opportunity--to create one. Out of whole cloth.

Here is the story (revealed here for the first time) of exactly how
Gaap’s people recruited the security personnel for his first and only
‘Rocktoberfest’.

One fine summer day in the gravel-strewn Roastateria parking lot, one
of Gaap’s operatives overhears something interesting. The source: a
fellow with a black eye-patch and three day's growth of stubble on his
neck (which only partially conceals his livid red tattoo of a
life-sized scorpion). He pulls into the parking lot on a boss chopper,
comes to a screeching halt, then drunkenly falls off his hog. No
problem. He turns himself face up in the gravel and says, in a
slurring voice, through freshly chipped teeth, "Anybody gimme a job?
I’ll do anything. I'm a need to get me a nice chunk of cash to pay muh
bail bondsman."

This fine fellow, known as ‘Psycho,’ also knows some other fine
fellows. He is put in charge of parking lot security. And for a price,
he was also willing to hook a fellow up with some additional workers.
To wit:

Psycho was very good friends with Monk--a tall, skeleton thin, but
whipcord strong shake-down artist. He was in charge in paying off
winners in the policy game, but instead he kept the winnings for
himself and screwed the precinct cops out of their rake-off to boot.
He has only recently escaped from the psych ward where the heavy-duty
mob bosses have stashed him, lest he screw up even more and totally
queer their numbers game with the crooked harness bulls. His escape
from the laughing academy was effected by Black Bess, his flat-faced
pug-ugly girlfriend, who just happened to be the very same woman who
had had him committed in the first place. She only did it because her
kid brother, Ant, was in deep with the Mob over gambling debts. But
Ant got badly stomped anyway…by Shark, the Mob enforcer and loan
shark. And, incidentally, as nearly everybody in the life well knew,
the soon-to-be new owner of the Red & Black Circus.

Al-A-Ga-Zam! Monk and Bess have been double-crossed by the syndicate,
and are nearly crazy with vindictive grief, which all too often, makes
the world go round. Both of them long for some sweet, dirt-cheap
payback.

Monk is recruited to oversee the rides on the back end. Meaning that
mostly he gets to stand around smoking cigarettes and looking mean.
Black Bess works the first aid tent. Meaning mostly she gets to sit
around smoking cigarettes and looking even meaner, if that's even
possible.

It also just so happens that they also know a another guy who can help
out. A guy with real carny experience. Because they are very good
friends with Top. (Be advised that “Top” is actually pronounced
“Toaf.”)

What can you say about a guy like Toaf? His real name: Christopher
Stinkhorn. Weird name. Weird kid. Strange, wild kid. Gets handed a
daily ration of kicks and whippings from his always mean always drunk
boilermaker swilling mill worker step-dad. By age 14, he’s had
enough. Steals a car and blows town. Falls in with the Red and Black
traveling Carny as a Forty Miler. As a cake eater and a greenie and a
back yard boy who was neither with it nor for it, the other Carnies
didn’t like him and didn’t trust him, and so in each town he passed
through he was successively sent on a pointless Quest. For a Key to
the Midway. A cordless extension cord. Tack glue. A left-handed
screwdriver. Light bulb grease. Purple fuzzy tape. A glass hammer.
This type of inane initiation ordeal drove him bonkers. But after a
long while the other carnies got so they could at least barely stand
the sight of him.

So he got promoted to man the Dunk Bozo stand.

It was the standard layout—a dunking box over a vat of water. A big
banner read MAKE BOZO SPLASH. MAKE BOZO CRASH. On either side of the
dunking box was a bull’s eye target covered by a drop cloth. Throw
hard enough to activate the trigger and Bozo would get dunked. You
don’t see these sorts of concessions in the 21st century; most of them
have been dismantled, but back in the more savage 1980s they were by
no means a mere bygone remnant, but still very much an active,
money-making proposition. Toaf’s spiel was truly something to behold,
but not for the faint of heart. I had seen it briefly, once before, in
1984. He taunted the Clems, the Marks, and the Rubes and he sounded
like he hated them with every fiber of his being. And it’s pretty
likely that he did, too.

HERE IT IS, HERE IT IS HERE IT IS. ALL LIVE, RIGHT HERE AND STARTING
RIGHT NOW! DUNK BOZO! DUNK BOZO! DUNK BOZO! THROW THE BALLS AND KEEP
YOUR EYES WIDE OPEN, YOU WANNA HIT THE TARGET AND DON’T MISS, AND IT’S
ALL FREE. ANYTHING GOES WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS! DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO
DUNK BOZO! DON'T GET ME WRONG. THIS IS NO GAME FOR PANTYWAISTS. IT'S
NOT SHOWTIME AT THE WHIRLY GIRLY REVUE. CREAMPUFFS NEED NOT APPLY.
DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO!

SEE THE SIGN THAT SAYS 'THREE BALLS A DOLLAR’. FORGET ABOUT IT. (SAM,
PUT THOSE DOLLAR TICKETS AWAY). MISTER SAM, HE'S GOING TO LET YOU TRY
FOR FIFTY CENTS. BUY THE FIFTY CENT TICKETS ON SALE FOR THREE MINUTES
AND THREE MINUTES ONLY, SO THIS IS A MIGHTY GOOD TIME TO SEE IF YOU'RE
MAN ENOUGH TO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO! WIN A BOX OF CIGARS OR A
CARTON OF SMOKES BUT YOU HAVE TO GO RIGHT NOW, RIGHT THIS MINUTE,
DON’T WAIT, THE TICKETS ARE GOING FAST! DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK
BOZO! OK, LADIES! COME ON GIRLS! GROW A PAIR! LAST CALL ON THE FIFTY
CENT DEAL. IT'S SHOWTIME!

And so on.

Do I need to say it? Back in 1984, Toaf got dunked. A lot. His
behavior became erratic. He hits the cheap wine. Goes straight from
bumping coke to skin-popping horse. It looks as though he is going to
end his days as a lowly 'Geek'.

But then he had a stroke of good luck--literally.

Back in September of ’84 The Giant Baby suddenly died of a subdural
hematoma. Toaf was the first wise gee to find the little Googen’s
sweaty corpse. And the Giant Baby’s big-ass diamond ring. Who could
resist? OK, the rock wouldn’t come off the Giant Baby's ring finger.
Wire cutters, snip snip, and away we go. But Toaf was deathly afraid
they were all going to think he croaked the little blubber so he stole
away into the black night undetected and eventually found himself in
Big Town, where he supposed the Carny Boss would never find him.

He was wrong.

Boss finds Toaf missing, but at first he thinks nothing of it. Puts an
ad in the local paper.

Will be leaving town in the nextt two day s need someone ready to go
travel to FLA next month playing carnavls selling balls for dunk the
clown must smile and wave customers in call sam leaving next few days
compensation: Negosable.

But then the Giant Baby is found and the penny drops and Boss thinks
there’s something fishy about the Giant Baby being dead. He follows
his hunch and goes to Big Town and there he does find Toaf and tries
his best to ice him in the cheap flophouse where he had taken refuge.
But Boss only totes a .22 pistol and he’s upset and firing wild. Toaf
narrowly escapes by using the body of one of his flophouse buddies as
a human shield.

Toaf’s all in a lather so next he goes to Guiseppe "Lucky Joe"
Tagliano, a long-ago former lounge singer turned Capo, and “Lucky
Joe,” seeing that Toaf is a big boy and a wised-up gee, he takes him
under his wing, puts him under his protection, and puts him to work as
a policy bagman and general factotum .

However, Toaf’s nerves are shot and once again he starts dipping into
the coke and horse that he shakes down from the local junkies, and
exactly one year later he ends up in the slum town of Westridge...a
quivering wreck ...his filthy trench coat covered with snot and
vomit...propositioning feebs and dolts outside the loony bin, and
looking for...a big score.

Via Psycho and Black Bess and Monk, Gaap’s men finally find him and
ply him with whiskey and offer him a job where he can earn enough to
put together a stake and blow town and maybe turn himself in to Lex
and shake the needle.

It is in that way that Toaf is the guy who is put in charge of the
security at the Rocktoberfest.

But that’s not all. There’s something to make matters worse.

For some reason hard to explain—but let’s chalk it up to junk
withdrawal and a head swimming with cheap rotgut--at the
Rocktoberfest, Toaf feels a strong need to once again take up working
at the Dunk Bozo stand. He’s angleing for a big rake-off of the take
on this particular concession, and maybe he feels that the hapless
wino who is presently assuming the position isn’t clawing down enough
lucre.

As we know, Toaf’s an old hand at Dunk Bozo. And, furthermore, by
October of 1985, he has had enough further life experience to add to
his repertoire a full torrent of pent up bile. (So nice to see a man
who takes pride in his profession and takes the time and effort to
work up new material.)

His chief target (as always): Lot lice. Teenaged boys and young men.
And trouble-making Cowboys. Hotheads all. Trigger-happy and insecure.
And dying to impress their girls.

At roughly 6pm Toaf climbs aboard the ducking stool—lit by wan yellow
lights in the gloom of settling dusk—and takes his stand.

STEP RIGHT UP, SUCKERS! DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO. BUT ONLY IF
YOU’RE MAN ENOUGH!!

A few of you men look like strong men, strong men on the outside, but
do you have what it takes? You can throw the ball, but do you HAVE any
balls? Can you hit the target? No, you’re probably eaten up with some
hideous disease. Maybe yuh got the aids. Strong on the outside,
scarred on the inside with THE HIDEOUS AIDS VIRUS. If so, stay away.
Stay far away. If not, then DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO! MAKE BOZO
SPLASH! MAKE BOZO CRASH!

Come on you faggots, you sissy boys, you queers. What's your major
malfunction, douchebags? What, are you so busy washing pussy off your
fingers that you can't even see straight? Stop kissing a faggot's ass,
you pussywhipped gaylords, and step right up. Quit making eyes at
those little girls and act like a man for once in your diseased
dogdick life. DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO!

I'll give you a free throw for starters, it's a free throw for
starters, it's a free throw for queers and sissies, gwan, step up and
be a man, gwan up here and see if you can dunk Bozo. I double dog dare
yuh. First throw is free, or the next best thing. Fifty cents. Come
on, ya spend more than that for a cup of coffee. What kind of pussy
can't afford a lousy fifty cents? DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO!

That's right folks, it's a free show for alla youse, and the next best
thing to a free show for any fella who's man enough to take a throw
and try to dunk Bozo. Any one who can't stand the gaff must be some
kind of retard. You call yourself a man, but I know your wife and what
she says to her girlfriends while you're out in the garage showing off
your muscles to your gay boy friends. She says you're not a sixty
minute man--you're a sixty second man. She says the last time you
tried to rape her, she had to help. Come on girly boy, it'll cost you
next to nothing to prove you are a man. All you have to do is DUNK
BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO! What are you afraid of? Look at that fat
piece of shit; he's got bigger tits than the fat lady. Look at that
skinny drip, his eyes look like pissholes in the snow. Look at that
bald guy, his head looks like my wife's ass. That's right folks, free
show right here, the first set of balls is only fifty cents, that's
three balls to see if you can dunk Bozo and that's three balls more
than any of you has got. We're got a live one now. That's right
faggot, throw the ball. You throw like a girl; try again. OK chief,
that's good; you almost got it but not quite, or at least that's what
your wife told me when we’re in the sack; that’s what your boyfriends
tell me too. One more try and—ohh, too bad, sucker--you're faded
fucked and forgotten. Betcher not man enough to try again. No? DUNK
BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO! Dunk Bozo. Win a cigar, win a whole box of
cigars, win a carton of smokes, and if ya can't smoke 'em, you can
always shove 'em up your ass. Remember folks, if it don't dance and
you can't eat or fuck it, then you're shit out of luck. I wouldn't
piss on any one of you, even if you was on fire. Step right up. DUNK
BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO!. C'mon, you're all a bunch of queers, the
lot of yuh. Hey what’re yuh lookin at? Three balls for fifty cents.
Come on, Needlenose the pencil dick. C’mon little boys. C’mon little
girls. I get paid more in one day than your whole welfare check. Step
right up skinny. Grab the balls. Gwan and grab hold. You got enough
practice with grabbing balls. You ball-fondling fudgepacker. Come on!
You’re not at the gay bar anymore. Throw like a man! Kid, you suck.
You shoulda put one of them balls in your pants, and then at least
you’d be a half a man! C’mon, fire it in there faggot. You don’t mind
if I call ya faggot, do ya? ‘cause that’s your name. Give it up,
matchstick boy. You’re a loser! Lookie! Lookie there! Be a man! DUNK
BOZO DUNK BOZO DUNK BOZO!

Usually, Bozo gets dunked about once every fifteen minutes. But this
time, the gaff is rigged. The targets have been joinged so that even
if you hot them, they fail to trip the spring and drop the clown into
the briny.

And so, in over four hours, not one of the over 200 takers gets to Dunk Bozo.

And so, right after the Carny is shuttered at 10:30 pm, you got at
least 200 furiously angry troublemakers roaming the concert grounds.
About 190 more than are needed to start a full-fledged riot.

In the meantime, Toaf, the head of security, the shot-caller, the
go-to guy to settle a beef, is nowhere to be found. He has already
pulled a fast fade, slick as snot. He has oached every penny of the
money and has gone south with the entire take.

The opening Goth band, Do As Thou Wilt, had already played. Next up
had been the metal band Lipstikk and metal scene veterans Luxxxxx.
Both of these bands had riled up the crowd. And by ten fifteen pm it
was time for the prog rockers and long-time local heroes of HeroQuest.
They do their forty minute set. Damn, they’re good. One song after
another; bam bam bam bam bam; no breaks; all their hits; no padding;
their fans go wild. The crowd goes wild. Real wild. Kicking and
shoving and fighting wild.

Finally: Baby Boy Maddox. The featured attraction. But how in hell do
you follow that?

Here’s how. Baby Boy Maddox has several major edges. He’s carny wise;
circus wise; road wise.

And, on top of all that, he has the same nearly twenty years of stage
experience as HeroQuest.

Plus, two other things they don’t have.

He is utterly fearless.

And he just don't give a damn.

About the money, about the police, about the kids. And least of all,
about his own good reputation.

Because he’s got nothing. And he knows he has nothing to lose.

First, Maddox performed his set, in which incendiary songs with titles
like “Moloch” and “Lucifer” predominated.

Following his twenty minute set, he then addressed the rowdy crowd.
There were still several thousand of them, I believe.

I could merely report that what he said and what he managed to
accomplish during that short time was to whip them into a violent,
destructive frenzy. But where would be the fun in that? What proof
that it was his words and his words alone which incited a riot, which
resulted in at least three fatalities?

Here—reported for the first time anywhere-- is exactly what he said.

He began his remarks by addressing some wry comments to the audience,
beginning with a playful mock encomium to the previous band,
HeroQuest.

“HeroQuest, let’s give it up for them , how about it? Keeping the spirit alive.”

The fans of HeroQuest dutifully applauded these remarks. Maddox resumed.

“Real hipsters, all four of ‘em.”

More applause.

“Listen, all you Hippies: I know that at one time you all were in a
real Love-Haight relationship. But then Jerry Rubin himself told you
to drop the Nostalgia and slowly walk away.”

He pointed to various young men in the front of the crowd.

“So first you become punks…”

He pointed to a few others.

“And then you become bums…”

And he made a sweeping gesture which was understood to encompass the
entire audience,

“And so what are you now?”

He snapped his fingers.

“Your bosses are businessman.”

He stomped his foot.

“Your best friends are artists of one sort or another.”

He wrinked up his nose, leaned into the microphone, and snorted.

“But you? Who are you? What are you?”

A long pause.

“I’ll TELL you.”

An even longer pause.

“Listen: FIRST-- come the hidden masters.”

He smirked.

“THEN…come the rich and well-to do.”

He laughed.

“THEN come the famous.”

He turned to his left. On his left hand he held out five splayed
fingers, and ticked off his roster one by one.

“THEN there are the professionals. The managers. The ordinary Joes.
The working poor. The pensioned off. “

He paused. He turned to his right. On his right hand he held out five
splayed fingers, and again ticked off his roster one by one.

“THEN there are the mad. The criminals. The criminally insane. The
scum of the earth. The COWARDS.”

He then stood stage center and beat his balled right fist into the
palm of his left hand as he punctuated each item on his list.

“THEN…there is NOTHING.”

“THEN…there is MORE nothing.”

‘THEN there is still more sweet SWEET NOTHING.”

“THEN…there is YOU.”

An angry murmur and hubbub cascaded through the crowd; a buzzing like
a visible ball of angry bees large enough to blot out the moon.

“And THEN…there is NOTHING AT ALL.”

And then a full-throated angry roar emerged from the crowd, and the
sound echoed throughout the fairgrounds and spread like a blast of
heat from a fireball.

It was now just before Midnight. Minutes before the event was scheduled to end.

“But WAIT! You are ANGRY! And that’s my POINT! Be ANGRY! You DESERVE
to be angry! You KNOW, if you look into your heart…if you look into
your heart, I’ll bet that you could kill anyone. Murder. I’m talking
murder. Murder is nothing…”

He was drowned out by the roar of the crowd, but, only momentarily.
Utterly unbowed, he shouted over them.

“Murder is NOTHING…if it ain’t HUMAN. ANIMALS can kill. But only MEN
can murder. Ain’t that right, boys?”

I was surprised to hear, in response, an enormous, nearly
earth-splitting roar emerge from certain members of the (mostly male)
audience.

“Murder is just another game. You’ve all heard about the game of love.
But what about the game of HATE? Some woman cheats on her husband. The
husband is always the last to know. RIGHT? Some woman gets murdered.
The husband is always the first suspect. RIGHT? RIGHT! Why is that?
Because HATE is a form of LOVE. Your feeble smile says I love you….”

He holds the pause for nearly a beat too long. And then he shouts at
the top of his lungs:

“BUT YOUR SICK AND TREMBLING BODY SAYS ‘MURDER ME’”

The crowd was still now. Not rapt. More like…paralyzed.

The light man now aims a single red baby spot on the gaunt and
sinister form of the Hobo Sage.

“Happiness ain’t morality. Happiness is a lure. SURVIVAL is morality.
And what good is SURVIVAL? ASK yourself. What good is survival
without…PERFECTION? Matter is SPIRIT and the SPIRIT is UNSEEN and the
world WILL NOT END if you TURN OFF a single switch. So DO IT!”

His voice, already shattered and raw, then rose to a wild scream.

“TURN…IT…OFF!”

The voices of the people in the crowd also rose to a wild scream. Baby
Boy Maddox somehow shouted over them all.

“TURN…IT…OFF! DYING…DYING is a part of life just as surely as being BORN!”

A pause. Silence. Maddox has all but blown his pipes. He is now in a
frenzy as he hoarsely shouts.

“So GO and DO IT! Get on TOP--and STAY there! Be UNSTOPPABLE!”

The climax. He pointed in succession at all four quadrants of the
crowd and shouted, as though he were reciting an incantation.

KILL YOUR DREAMS!

EMBRACE THE VOID!

KILL YOUR DREAMS!

EMBRACE THE VOID!

The noise the shouting crowd then made in response was indescribable.
I can only approximate what it was like.

It was like the agonized scream of a tortured strongman straining at
the fatal chains which bound him.

It was like the unearthly shriek of a numinous demon horde.

It was the snarl of a thousand angry beasts.

The riot raged for over three hours and spread over a radius of nearly
two miles.

The cost of the ensuing damage that these hundreds of furious young
men visited upon the fairgrounds was later estimated at nearly a
million dollars.

The head of the National Guard once told me--for attribution!--that
“The devastation which was left in their wake…was comparable to that
of a low-yield nuke.”

Small wonder that Baby Boy Maddox felt the strong need to pull a fast fade.

For several months following this incident he fell from public view.

I was one of the few people who spoke to him during this exile.

During which time he told me the true story of his life.

A story which will be the subject of the next part of this biography.

[dimenno]

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE: THE BABY BOY MADDOX STORY

BOOK THREE: SAVAGE NOXTOWN

PREFACE: THE SAVAGE CLUB

Writing is lonely work, and frightening. Locked up for too long inside
of your own words, you can fall prey to grandiose thoughts which can
elevate you, but also to apprehensions, which can incapacitate you.
And so it was that I decided, while working on the first portions of
this biography, to mingle with the world, and seek out the company of
certain of my classmates and fellow alumni of Stropmouth Manor, my
former high school.

Based on past experience I chose not to brave the hurly-burly and
arcane parking regulations of rush hour downtown Bigtown and instead
elected to take the Commuter Rail from Gibsonia to Knob Hill, which I
exited at about 6:40, sweating in the 70 degree dusk, wearing a
funereal black suit befitting my mood--one which any discerning eye
could see was purchased at a cheap Bargain Warehouse two-for-one sale.
From Knob Hill I walked the several blocks north on Monarch Street,
then West on the westbound side of Independence Avenue, which is
divided by a sedate park, a tree-lined strip of land where early
evening strollers were already congregating in the cooling greenery of
its lamp-lit walkways.

It was while walking down Independence Avenue en route to the Savage
Club that I drew up alongside with a couple walking a sheepdog, and
the three of us noted with delight three purebred canines ranging in
size from hound to Dalmatian to Shi-Tzu, all of whom were complacently
lying on the sidewalk, unattended, but tethered to the iron fence of a
stone fronted row house mansion.

Arriving at the Savage Club, a nearly identical Brownstone mansion, I
was cordially directed upstairs to the reading room where a small
crowd had already gathered. I spoke briefly to the parents of Willard
Ridgenose, of the investment banker Ridgenoses, Willard was a high
school classmate who had gone on to greater glory as an investment
banker. Mrs. James Willard Ridgemore, his mother, was a rather
well-dressed and slender matron, with, as you might expect, impeccable
manners; however, she looked at me askance when I nervously offered to
shake her hand a second time upon the conclusion of our interview. Mr.
James Willard Ridgemore, a bluff, well-dressed, besuited gentleman of
an advanced age, directed my attention to the high ornate ceiling with
its elaborate moldings, painted brown to match the overall oaken decor
of the reading room, which soothed the eye with its unforced display
of quiet affluence. Deferential pan-ethnic retainers glided
unostentatiously across the room, offering up everyday delicacies on
silver salvers--from beef carpaccio to bacon-wrapped scallops to
(rather dry) spinach pastries. Stout oaken tables held displays of
cheese and fruit, with the added, presumably Savage touch of walnuts
and dried cranberries.

I took my leave of the Ridgemores (I was sorely tempted to ask the old
man for a job, but he had volunteered the interesting information that
he had recently retired). I then briefly visited the men's restroom,
and noted with mingled amusement and dismay that the disposable towels
offered to the guests were of a finer weave than the coarse bath
towels I used in my own home.

Upon my return, I seated my hulking posterior onto in a stout oaken
chair tastefully upholstered in well-worked black leather hard by a
large high window overlooking the park. I noticed a buzzer in the
wall. I deduced that it was once used to summon the servants. I
pondered this as I ate ravioli stuffed with wild mushrooms in
cream--nothing so plebeian as a mere tomato sauce.

A young African-American woman came by and said "Trash?" and I
thought, for a bemused moment, that she was calling me out, but in
reality, all she wanted was my emptied dish and used napkin. I
indulged in an audible laugh, and, at that moment, a young Asian man
with the sides of his head meticulously shaved, deftly bowed and
offered me a jumbo shrimp. At that moment, I reflected that my
vocation was wisely chosen, and by necessity, for I could easily
observe but never comfortably align with and participate in the myriad
rituals of the clubbable class.

The glittering assemblage felt beyond my reach.

The women with slender calves in pricey dresses towering on spiked
heels as erect as thoroughbreds; the braying laughter of their
well-contented men in fine suits suits of supple cloth which hung
naturally from their hearty frames. These men resembled, in three
dimensions, the oil portraits of the distinguished old club men ranged
about the room. It was an uncanny sight.

After the speeches were concluded honoring the outgoing headmaster,
the school's head fundraiser John Hare observed my seated, silent
demeanor and chatted me up. I told him that I was awaiting an
opportunity to speak to our old English Teacher, a monk of advanced
years known as Father David. He urged me to "dive right in." And I
took his advice.

The old monk was a short man of saturnine appearance; dark hair and
beetle-browed seriousness. The two of us spoke of anodyne
topics—Father David's recent article about a long-ago former
headmaster; the writing strictures of Old Father William, who taught
us both; the advantages of editing one's text; the advanced age and
encroaching infirmities of my former housemaster, Father Richard.
Father David started to speak of the unsatisfactory job-creating
record of the current administration, but I avoided that topic. I
noticed that he kept his arms folded in front of him for much of our
chat. Upon the conclusion of our interview, he told me that I was not
a person whom one easily forgot. I responded that this is precisely
what Father Richard had told me when last we spoke, and Father David
laughed--not a loud, hyena laugh which signified he was well-pleased,
but a condescending chuckle.

I next sought out old, gentle-hearted Brother Charles, who was
standing by the bar. I told him he had ebullient eyes. I also confided
in him—I could hardly help myself-- my jobless state. I told him that
I had been in a compromising situation and implied that I had felt
that it was better to leave it with my reputation intact.

As I was preparing to leave the Club, The Headmaster's wife
intercepted me and was insistent that I met with the guest of honor,
whom she led me to.

We exchanged genial banalities and then I begged their leave, stating
that I had a train to catch.

I said to none of them that I was anxious to get back to my work of
chronicling the early life and influences of Baby Boy Maddox. As
strange a tale as any this side of Dickens.

Boasting is unseemly. Even I know that.

I thought of this when waiting in the misty dusk on the roaring
platform for the outbound train.

And what a train. To bear me cross so wide a town.

[dimenno]

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE: THE BABY BOY MADDOX STORY
BOOK THREE: SAVAGE NOXTOWN
CHAPTER ONE. PART ONE. THE STORY OF CADGER TANDY

After the Rocktoberfest Disaster of 1985, Baby Boy Maddox remained in hiding for several weeks. More than time enough for me to garner significant fragments of his hidden past. Most times we'd meet at his underground shack at Holly Park; every now and again I would interview him in my own squalid den, above a Pizza joint; redolent of yeasty dough and insecticide, as well as the smell of burning meat byproducts vented in through the kitchen window, on days when the wind did not favor us, from a neighboring burger emporium. The story as he told it to me was, as much as possible, transcribed in his own words. Any inaccuracies are, therefore, of course, mine.

To hear him tell it, as a child growing up wrong, on the fly, in the long ago, in the good old days, Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage, served his time to the trade learning all he knew from a man named Tandy.

Only Tandy.

Cadger Tandy, who was a Boss A-1 copper-bottomed Cadger.

Tandy, said Baby Boy Maddox, "Was the smartest man I ever knowed. He could read you like a book. You won't see his name in any obituary pages, but he was a real crook and upright man who taught me everything--most of it after the butchers cut him down and he was on his last legs as a rambler. He was all sorts of man. Tandy was a top sawyer as a bummer; he could cant and patter and tumble to any barrican. No one ever got fat pitching fast balls past that boy. Catch up to him? Never. He could make a gypsy trail by throwing down handfuls of grass. He'd always make you eat his dust. He's be with us yet, if he hadn't gotten old and slow."

Maddox spoke true. Tandy was a wonder. Who else would teach a boy the know-how to beg pretzels from a crossed-up beerslinger or lay Chickee and give the All Gay sign to a second-story man? To lay crow for a crib-cracker and yell cheese it when the crusher came?
And who else knew how to run a thimblerig or a shell game for a gaffer with equal aplomb?

Tandy was a standing legend among the Grifters and Hard Cases. Never backward, he'd plead for ooftish from a roper; steal copper kelter from Old Stumpy, even.

Tandy wasn't proud, neither; he would dig in the muck for a for a piece of cold brass; hustle sob-sisters for rhino; bedoozle a bloat in a doggery for any and all loose shekles.

When it came to having his dukes creased with palm oil or honey, he was rowdy at the ready.

At a poker game Tandy would spot the glass-working mirror man and tip him the office--signal him that he was in a narrow squeak and about to queer his own pitch and afterwards, if he knew what was what, the grateful card cheat would slide him a nibble of the chink. Because that's the way the world works: then, now, and forevermore.

Baby Boy says he learned the racket top flight to rock bottom from Tandy. "Tandy told me that a good Bo on the high fly abominates all laws and delights in all transgressions, which is why he'll never be no man's slave--and yet, at the same time, when he's down and out, he's every man's. But don't never try to guy him--he can't be HAD--that's a game best let alone, like teasing a tired dog, or smokin' opium, or gamblin' the stock market."

"Listen, Kid," said the poetical but practical tramp, "A boss thief don't need to be an ace blodger; he sees a chance and takes it. But take it from me--it never hurts none to also know how to pan the stem. A good beggar can come paddy over nearly any yob and can crack any hard nut with his line of soft gab. If you're on your uppers you might be a hob-jobber and even offer to work. But you better be fly to the traps and be able to smell 'em. As long as you can outrun the blue-coated warriors and dodge the shoulder-clapper you're aces. Listen: you don't never need to join the rank of Square Johns and Slaters as long as you're a good nimmer and your meat hooks can snatch up that Pretty Polly! Never let 'em kid you! Never let 'em enter your heart!"

"Also," said the Cadger, "Be careful who you go hitting up along the Stem. Your old pods and your blubber-bellies and blood and guts aldermen with the watch-chain and a gold trunk are a bad lot. And any kind of jackleg preacher is also a no-go--he'd box your ear and call for Johnny Law if he could but he dasn't--he's pretty much in the same racket as we-'uns, if the truth be told."

"Now, maids and Mammies'll sometimes hand you a nice back-door lump--'specially if they're fatties. All along of the alleyways is the place to cotch 'em. They steal anyway to feed their own Picks. They've been up agin it themselves and always have a soft spot for tramp kids. Don't never be mean to a Zig, because you never know."

"Kid," he said to Maddox, "Here's a tip that'll always stand you in good stead. Whores is deep-down soft--they'll always stand a starving yob to a feed and a bunk. Sisters of mercy and the ladies of abandoned habits. You'll know 'em when you see 'em. they have a way about 'em. Molls and streetwalkers too. They're all of 'em full of superstition and sentiment and they think it's good luck to give to vags. That's about the size of it."

As Tandy well knew. Even as a shaver, as their Fancy Joseph, Tandy used to rush the growler for the Sisters of Charity at the cat house where he cooped. Working horizontal and naughty was thirsty work. The ladies tipped big; he'd never do them dirt.

But I'm getting ahead of the story. The story of Cadger Tandy. Which is also the story of Baby Boy Maddox and who he really is and how he came to be.

[dimenno]

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE: THE BABY BOY MADDOX STORY
BOOK THREE: SAVAGE NOXTOWN
CHAPTER ONE. PART TWO. THE STORY OF CADGER TANDY

Baby Boy Maddox, the Hobo Sage, served his time to the trade learning
all he knew from a man named Tandy. As I already mentioned, the story
of Cadger Tandy is also the story of Baby Boy Maddox and who he really
is and how he came to be. Tandy schooled his young apprentice with
words which were seemingly casual, but every one of them, I believe,
had some life lesson which Maddox was always careful to follow.

“I was sayin’ about whores,” said Tandy. He was partially obscured in
the smoke of a wood fire he had made near the entrance of the tarpaper
and scrap wood shack which sheltered the two of them on the fringes of
the Madport Hobo Jungle, hard by a stream and no more than a half
mile from the railroad tracks and two miles of easy pavement from the
outskirts of town. “I was sayin’ that tarts is always good prospects
for a free hand-out and maybe even a lay if you’re a good-lookin’
yob—they’re naturally sympathetic to a jackgagger or a ponce because
they listen all night to Square Johns who take ‘em on their knee and
tell a lowdown strange woman things they won’t even say to their own
wives. Their ears are full of the guys who pile on the agony, and
they’re starved for woo—lovey-dovey or even a kind word from an
interesting stranger or even a Jack Cove. They sell their bodies, but their
souls ain’t up for rent. Growin’ up, I was quite too nice—I was their
Fancy Joseph, their special pet, and they always told me as much.

“Fact is, you never can tell what a Prosty won’t do for a Compadre she’s
grown fond of, or even a total stranger she takes a certain shine to.
One time I was getting clobbered by a beat cop named Officer
Purson who was a known lushroller. Glory Be, this old Bitch Cat called
One-Eye Betty ups and slugs him with a loaded sap and darkens his
day lights but good. Gave him one hell of a shiner. He was so embarrassed that
some say he requested a transfer to the big stick country and died a
drunken Cooper.

“Sometimes when pickin’s is slim I ain’t above taking advantage of a
lurry to snatch up a pretty or pinch a gingumbnob from some goodwife’s
kitchen or back porch and selling it to a whore or pawning it to Judas
Redbeard in a Slop Shop. But you don’t want to do that too often. I’ll
tell ya something—Jack Tars is always good for two bits; they’re
big-time bottle suckers and like to think they’re hot potatoes. If you
wasn’t such a green yob you could play the beach cadger and come the
old soldier or say you’re an ex-gob scurvied by salt junk as has seen
past glory days on the briny only now you’re well-bested and hard up
and need a stake or a hand out. But any old George Lushington with a
bag on is a good go. A bog trotter with a snoot full of red eye is a
sure bet, and it was many a time that ginger mop of mine was money in
the grouch bag. A beer slinger is usually a right Joe as was once was up
against it himself. Chances are he’ll stake a starving Bo to a glass
of All Sorts and maybe even a lump of beefsteak. But never, ‘cept as a
last resort, ever bother with the Jesus Butchers in the Glory Hole or
the Lump House at the Sally—those Holy Joes will put you in the
anxious seat and talk your ear off, then they’ll either serve up bunny
grub or week old hash or maybe a moldy cheese sandwich and a cup of
Misery. Or maybe not even that. Maybe you’ll end up after two hours of half
freezing in the drafty hall with nothing but two sinkers made of hot
air, and chicory water to wash ‘em down. There’s your reward, with pie
in the sky by and by. Most of them Devil Dodgers are rank blokes, as
empty of fellow-feeling as hell itself . There ain’t no percentage in
hustling a Sky Pilot, Laddie. A man who would agonize to see God
would swear to anything for half a crown. A gingham-toting,
Bible-pounding Evangelist is just plain no good and will call in the
Boys in Blue to cart you to the county hospital, where the croakers
are sure to feed you the Black Bottle slick as a whistle.”

Maddox interrupted to ask Tandy what was in the Black Bottle.

“Sawbones have been known to feed you something that’ll be your last
feed on earth. They do it to Hoboes but also to immigrants and poor
old people who ain’t got a cent. They give you the Black Bottle
because you’re poor. They drop it in your food or drink and you cumber
the earth no more. It ain’t only the docs, neither. Just get on the
wrong side of some hatchet-faced old Nursie and you’ll get what’s
coming to you. They need to free up the beds, see, for payin’
customers. I didn’t believe it at first, didn’t want to believe it, I
guess, but I heard about it on the earie. Heerd too many stories to
think otherwise—where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Folks I know say
they have a black bottle there and I know too many people who went in
just fine but didn't never come out. They also call it ‘The Cure for
the Bellevue Disease.’ Sometimes they’ll size you up as a hopeless
lush and so they’ll drop a little dope in your chow and smother you
with a pillow. But the Black Bottle is easier.

“On a cold night you’d be much better off in a one-eye buckeye cabin
or even beggin’ for a flop from a Fly Copper; some of ‘em are
right Gees, and will get you into a fleabag gratis. But you got to
take care, and size ‘em up beforehand, because a bad ‘un will
send you to the charity hospital and the black bottle, and your next
stop will be the county morgue, especially if you’re a poor old
cripple like me. If you’re a young ‘un, then some of ‘em will
haul you off to the County Farm on a humble. Thirty days of air and
exercise for Vag. If you’re looking for a Fly Copper, allus look for an
Irish harness Bull, especially if you can manage a bit of a brogue.
The Dutchy is a risky proposition—cross as a bear, hates to pound a
beat, misses his home, would rather be settled in with his pipe and
beer. Don’t never cross a Dutchman or a Polack or get his dander up; he’ll hate
you like poison. It’s also nearly always bad luck to cross a Zig;
it’ll come back to bite you on the ass, ‘specially if he’s under the
protection of some big white man. Don’t get me wrong—I got nothin’
against Jamokes on principle—hell, for all I know, maybe I got a lick
of the ol’ tar brush meself—but there’s two things you better remember
before you take up gypsy blood with a shine or ever try to
double-cross him. There’s them as hates ‘em and there’s them as
protects them and you can never tell which is which. Rile up a Coon
with a razor as got a powerful white friend and you’ll live to rue the
day. Best to leave ‘em shines alone, Yob. Dagos and Frenchies I
can take or leave; they ain’t exactly white men, but they’re
good to their families. Try not to cross any of them,
either; you never know how many other Guineas are
in the woodwork waiting to carve you with a pigsticker. That goes
double for the Irish; they’ll fight you for no good reason at all;
that’s just naturally how they’re built. The Guineas will always run
away from a fight if they can do it without losing face, but some of
the Irish would rather fight than fuck; of that I’m sure. I know it
sounds queer but I got the lumps to prove it. I guess what I’m sayin’
is that cadging is a hard game, Laddie Buck—it’s sink or swim. Treat
folks like you’d want them to treat you, but always keep a weather eye
for them as blodges from the blodgers. There’s an awful lot of tramps
that’re too lazy to even beg, but they’ll bleed another tramp dry,
especially a young yob like yourself. Don’t let ‘em. You tell ‘em
right away where to get off. But don’t never mess with a man if you
can’t stand the gaff. Settle scores, but lay up stores. Hard coin is
your meat. You can’t smoke sham kindness—it’s kokum, Laddie, so always
take the cash with a capital K. Even plugged money is better than
mealy mouth. Always look after the coin. Lucre beats luck all hollow.
Woulda coulda shoulda my eye—ixnay on smoke, gammon, and
pickles—yaller boys on the barrelhead or go bugger y’self all plopa
and a thousand curses to ye in the bargain. That’s what Grandpa would
of taught me if he wasn’t dead and buried and he knew how that’ll suit
me right down to the ground. Listen: when the Oof Bird is scarce a
Southern boy out of Princeton can be suckered out of a dollar a mite
smarter’n a Joe College fathead who sweated and farted hand over fist
at State U., who’s like to up and say ‘Whyn’t you get a job?” To which
the only proper response is, ‘Go cut your stick, ye lunk-headed
Mooncalf—I’m a hard case, me—I never keep the Sabbath and I never
refuse a drink, and listen, Yob—I tread down the law and every night I
sleep like a blind pup. Bless you, my lad, bless you—you know what I
mean.

“Finally--and I can’t say this often enough—stay the hell out of
Gammyvilles where the Peelers hate tramps. There’s only one exception
to this, and that’s a town where once a year there’s a carnival—some
good pickin’s there. But now I’m just about all talked out and will
tell you the score another time.”

With that, said Baby Boy Maddox, the old tramp huddled up inside his
tattered blankets and “within two shakes he was out like a light and
sawing logs.”

“The man could sleep anywhere,” said Baby Boy Maddox, “and so can I,”
and with that, he fell fast asleep on the greasy floor of my
none-too-tidy kitchen.