BURGER SCOOT

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime” – “Year of the Cat”

I was listening to this song in Barrio, a bakery and coffee shop I walk to every morning now that I am retired. The owner is around my age, so I assume he’s the one that selects the tunes and not the staff of 20- and 30-year-olds. I like most of the songs enough to stop my political podcast and listen, but not all the songs are good, the old music snob and blogger feels compelled to express. 

Most of the music is from the mid-60’s through the late 70s. One of the songs that received way too much airtime when it came out was Al Stewart’s “The Year of the Cat.” I didn’t like it much when I first heard it in high school, but by the time I was in college and was rapidly becoming an insufferable music snob it had been played to death on the Sacramento FM radio stations. Like so many mediocre songs of the 70s that were overplayed by uninspired disc jockeys I found myself making up my own lyrics to songs that were drummed into my head back then. 

I remember doing that with the Al Stewart 1976 hit but forgot what I sang whenever KZAP or KROY played the song. The only thing I could remember was changing the title refrain to different things, all stupid and not very clever, but rhymed with “cat.” At a table next to mine a child told his mother he found a thumb tack and properly surrendered it to her mother. When the refrain came around it dawned on me: in my own life when I was in 8th grade there were a bunch of incidents at school where kids were surreptitiously placing tacks on fellow students’ chairs. No one except the perpetrators were safe, me included. I recalled training myself to sit in chairs and stools in a similar way a girl in a skirt would except instead of ensuring my skirt was not wrinkled before I sat (I didn’t wear skirts in Junior High) I did a last-second sweep of the chair before planting my ass in it. And it worked, more than one time I swept away a tack someone and left for me. Soon, these “tack punks” would resort to quickly tossing the thumb tack on the seat in hopes it would land business side up. It’s funny how little I learned in the classes where “tack punks” were launching assaults.  

I recall in an art class and in Mr. Ridgeway’s class. (I have long forgotten what subject he taught, but I’m guessing he was my home room.) He also looked like an R&B singer Lou Rawls, but with a lot of rings on his fingers, and often used the idiom, “the basic thing…” before continuing with his point. We all had our antennae up in those days—who was going to get it next.  

Of course, it seemed that only the bullies wanted to puncher asses, but if one of whom we all perceived to be a “losers” sat on a tack delivered by a bully and the loser jumped up howling all of us enjoyed the show–even the losers like me that had to actively dodge tack attacks. The art class featured Gary and Mitch–two bullies. While Mitch spent much of his time in at least what looked like sniffing glue Gary was on the prowl–“like Peter Lorre contemplating a crime” as the old over-played song goes. Gary was looking for losers to entertain him. Poor Doug, he got it the worst of it. I was attacked a few times, but as told above, I figured out a method to mitigate getting my ass speared. I’m not certain, but I believe Gary ultimately attended a prestigious four-year college and became a professional. Mitch became a published writer. Funny how junior high created monsters that high school and later college would mellow out. 

I do remember one guy going too far. Since I can’t remember any “atTackers” in my home room, I was shocked one day when Mr. Ridgeway sat down, then at once jumped up and looked at the chair while one of his hands rubbed his ass. The room got so quiet you could hear the offending tack hit the floor. Mr. Ridgeway picked up the tack and I could see a vein in his forehead bulge while he examined it. Then he looked at his class and said, “Who did this?” The class was quiet. Mr. Ridgeway gave us a lecture on the dangers of getting punctured by a thumb tack. I wasn’t buying it, but still, I was amazed someone was stupid/dangerous enough to do it to a teacher. In the Great Tack Attack War circa 1972, someone upped the game. Now teachers were targets as well. 

The bell sounded, but Mr. Ridgeway would not dismiss us until someone confessed or someone else ratted on the perpetrator. After the bell sounded again (meaning we would all be late for our next class or late for our buses home, he finally let us go. As we were shuffling out the door, I heard someone mutter the N word. As it turned out Mr. Ridgeway heard it too and yelled “Blair, come back here!” A split-second later I see a black adult hand with two or three shiny rings on it jet over my shoulder and grab Blair by the collar and yank him violently back behind me. The last image I saw of Blair was his face sweeping by mine, his mouth wide open as if we were about to French kiss me (the way we all thought that’s how one French kisses a girl), but his eyes wide open like a deer before it kissed the grill of an eighteen-wheeler. 

The next time I saw Blair he was back from suspension with very short hair (a punishment from his parents, perhaps) and still pleading his innocence. Ironically, he freely dropped the N-word on Mr. Ridgeway, just outside the earshot of any educators. I didn’t get the irony and humor in Blair’s post-suspension rant, nor did I think Blair did either. Irony is something I would get some years later. 

As I continue to age and my body breaks down like a train wreck in ultra-slow motion, I remember Doug, Mr. Ridgeway, and my own quick reactions to getting poked in the ass with a thumb tack and I wish I could move that fast. If someone were to pull that gag on my now, I probably would just accept the pain and pull out the offending tack the next time I had to get up–like to go to the bathroom. We oldsters need to prioritize and combine our movements in our autumn years.