M
Mister
Flanagan was after me with claw hammer and iron tongs.
He was determined to turn me into an Irish stew.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Where was I?
Oh, I wasn’t.
I’ll start from the very beginning.
Mister
Flanagan was the manager, or custodian or caretaker of the Packard Music Hall in
Warren, Ohio.
Each summer, this deco-style auditorium was occupied by the Kenley
Players, a professional summer theater that featured popular stars in Broadway
shows each week from May to September.
In
the summer of 1957, I was an Equity apprentice with the Kenley Players, destined
to receive my actor’s union card on the eve of my third performance, second
season.
Don’t get excited, I did not receive this apprenticeship because of my
acting prowess, which, at the time, was a cross between the Hulkster and George
“Spanky” McFarland.
My sparkling quality that closed the deal was my ability to balance
parallel circuits and solder Western Union splices.
In fact, I was born with a golden wire nut in my navel, and by age 15, I
could almost bend a perfect offset in one-inch EMT conduit.
In short, I performed with the artistry of an apprentice electrician.
I
won a cash prize at the Northeast Ohio Science Fair the previous year.
My aim was to use that money to construct a radio station in my basement.
To do this, I purchased two turntables with tone arms from Olson
Electronics, two sheets of plywood and an electric hand-held jig saw made by Wen.
It was a bright red saw, it was cheap, and it cut holes in plywood.
I took it to Warren with me to help build scenery.
One
day, I noticed that my little jigsaw was gone.
Mr. Flanagan has it, I was told.
I imagined Mr. Flanagan cruising the scene shop and just taking it.
I looked up into the balcony.
There was Mr. Flanagan, running an extension cord.
I charged up the steps and arrived at the front of the balcony just as
Mr. Flanagan fired up the little red saw.
He pressed it to one of the aluminum balusters supporting the long
railing above the balcony wall.
The wall enclosing the wrap-around balcony was about twenty-four inches
tall.
To make the wall safer, but not to interfere with the view, a railing was
constructed twelve inches above the wall, supported by fifty balusters of solid
two-inch round aluminum at equal intervals.
As
the flimsy saw blade hit the hard aluminum, it screamed like a javelina caught
it a sharp-toothed trap.
The metal clogged the saw teeth, the blade snapped and flew past my face,
spinning with a lethal scream and slashing into a nearby seat.
As Mr. Flanagan’s hand recoiled with the saw, he simply completed the
arc and let it fly.
It crashed and exploded in row 41, seat F.
I was speechless.
Yes, I was angry, but I was also scared of Mr. Flanagan.
I just stared at those knotty, ham-like forearms. He
was easily over six feet tall with a neatly trimmed salt and pepper moustache.
In an age when most everyone had hair slicked back with Brylcreem
or Wildroot, Mr. Flanagan had short cropped hair that stood at attention
on his scalp, frightened and submissive.
My hair style at the time was selected from a barbershop menu: the
“Princeton.”
All around my dome, the hair was trimmed like a goat pasture.
In the front, a hedgerow stood perkily to set off my pimply forehead.
With
his face twisted into a sneer, and his eyes mocking the impotence of my electric
tool, be handed me a hacksaw and pointed at a pencil mark on an aluminum
support.
I looked around, each support was marked.
The idea was to reduce the railing height by six inches by shortening
fifty supports.
I bent toward the railing and looked down the vast abyss to the seats
below.
I lined up the saw and began my stroke.
The metal was hard yet sticky.
It seemed to clamp down on the saw with each stroke.
My arm began to ache and I pulled the saw out.
I had only accomplished a very shallow depth.
After a few seconds of rest and Mr. Flanagan’s obvious impatience, I
went back to work.
But after only a few strokes, my arm became a red hot screaming mass of
pain.
Mr. Flanagan tore the hacksaw from my spasmodic, clawed hand and he
pushed me aside.
Bending on one knee, Flanagan drew back a mighty arm and after eight or
nine powerful strokes, the saw broke through.
He moved to the next baluster.
Back
down on the stage, I could see Mr. Flanagan bent over the rail, sawing away like
a tireless machine.
The grinding sound echoed throughout the 2,000 seat auditorium. In the
backstage shop, I found a wheeled bucket and filled it with water, adding a few
cups of wood treatment from a dusty container.
I slapped the mop from the bucket to the stage floor and began to mop
with spiral strokes.
The
next morning, I saw Mr. Flanagan on hands and knees, nose to the stage floor.
His face was bright red and his teeth were clenched.
His jawbones protruded and his veins pulsed.
I had mopped the stage with lacquer thinner.
All
summer, I avoided Mr. Flanagan.
His size helped, but he really didn’t want much to do with the summer
players.
He preferred to keep to the auditorium and the janitor’s office.
On those occasions when I had to cross enemy territory in order to focus,
re-lamp or re-gel the spotlights in the attic, I waited until Mr. Flanagan was
bent over his black lunchbox.
As I crossed the attic on narrow catwalks, I imagined him behind me,
tongs in hand.
Of course, I had my crescent wrench.
I
must say that every word you have read is absolutely true, peer reviewed and
referenced.
Now I report what I have heard.
I was not there.
The following summer, Mr. Flanagan was no longer working at Packard Music
Hall.
I heard that he was at a picnic and tried to balance a telephone pole on
his forehead.
He got a hernia.
He became impatient and accused his doctors of incompetence and decided
to design his own truss out of chromium alloy, decomposed granite and recycled
golf cart tires.
The device worked, but eventually became magnetized and he was attracted
to a passing bus and was not heard from again. Hey!
I didn’t make this up.
It’s what I heard.
-end-