PINE NUTS: That Seventh Grader
When I was a seventh grader, I was sure about one thing, that in college I would be
quarterbacking UCLA. As it happened, I would be diving at Oregon, but that seventh grader had the conference right. So what can an aspiring seventh grader be certain about today? Could it be what Mark Twain alluded to? “Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”
Had you told me when I was in seventh grade, that I would become a performance artist, portraying Mark Twain for a living, I would have asked, “What’s a performance artist?”
I suppose the first indication I had that art could change people’s lives for the better came on the Island of Maui, where I had taken a position as morning announcer at KTOH radio. (K for west of the Mississippi, TOH for Territory of Hawaii.) Along with playing music and interviewing guests, I delivered a five-minute newscast at the top of the hour from 6-10am. It was a dream job come true.
One beautiful Maui morning, something was pressing at home, and I had to leave the station early, so I recorded my ten o’clock newscast and stuck my thumb out for Spreckelsville, as my motorcycle was in the shop.
A young surfer picked me up, and I had to smile at the fact that he was smoking a big fat Waikapu Whacko, and listening to KTOH on his Jeep radio. We shared some small talk, and then my prerecorded newscast started playing on his radio. I noticed that my young surfer friend was looking at his doobie, and maybe wondering if he might have purchased a bad batch, as my voice was coming at him from two different directions.
Somewhat amused at what I could see was happening, I thought I’d have some fun, and double down on this abnormality. I knew the last line of my newscast would be, “And the score of last night’s football game was Baldwin 21, Maui High 17.” So I started talking to my now attentive friend about last night’s football game, then chimed in with the same words on the radio, “And the score of last night’s football game was Baldwin 21, Maui High 17.”
My surfer friend took a long last look at his Waikapu Whacko, tucked it between his thumb and forefinger, and flicked it unceremoniously onto the road. I doubt that he ever smoked again, so I like to take credit for reforming a young Maui surfer in my first act as a performance artist. I wonder sometimes what that young surfer might be doing today.
I was afforded fifteen enjoyable years of radio before getting a tap on the shoulder from Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who gifted me a 37-year career as an impressionist of Mark Twain. What luck, and what a blessing. That seventh grader is smiling…
Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO
