It's Friday night. Kristen's out. David's parked in his chair in front of Swamp People or Pawn Stars or Duck Dynasty or some other reality show of which he like to be a cast member. Meghann has put her and Frazier to bed, against all Frazier's three-year-old tantrum blowout.
I'm listening to Pandora (I think John Legend is playing now), and I'm thinking about how much of my past I've been trying to recapture. No, I don't want to be young or go back in time. It's just that I find myself gravitating towards old movies and black and white TV shows. Most times, phone is playing some easy listening station, like Jackie Gleason or Burt Bacharach, the rhythms and lyrics of the 50's and 60's transporting me back to endless summer nights. The soft timeless nights would find me begging my parents to let me stay outside and play till way past any child my age should be up. Or could I sleep over a friend's house, so we could watch The Beatle's "A Hard Day's Night" and bake Betty Crocker cupcakes with chocolate frosting, definitely licking the beaters, the knife, or anything that came in contact with batter or frosting.
Sometimes I like to watch the Twilight Zone or The Alfred Hitchcock show. When my mom was alive, I would ask her if she watched these shows, and, of course, she did. I mostly remember my dad always flipping them on. As a kid, I never really paid much attention, but the trance-inducing theme song always flew into my ears and spent the next few hours spinning around, usually scaring me to the point that my second-story bedroom window had to be closed, lest some nine-foot-tall Martian wrench me from my bed. What an imagination I had . . . I convinced my mom that one time a "man with a white cowboy hat" walked by window, my second-story window. It took me a few light-on nights to get over that horrifying, well-at-least-in-my-mind, ordeal.
The eaves, otherwise known as an attic, also could be accessed through a door at the back of my closet. It wasn't really a door . . . it was more a slab made of knotty pine somehow you could wedge into the opening at the back of my closet. Often, I'd be sleeping and hear a loud hollow thud. Immediately I knew the sound. The door/slab somehow had gotten loose and fell, usually in the dark middle of the night. Most nights I would grab my chenille comforter and yank it over my head, hoping this act would keep me safe from the creatures that inhabited my eaves. Sometimes I would be feeling plucky, and leaping out of bed, ever so surreptitiously, I would creep into the closet, grab the door/slab and shove it back into place, temporarily locking the dark things back into their lair.
Then there's the story of Bad Ronald. Bad Ronald. Yeah, that was a movie from 1974. Google it. Starring Scott Jacoby, a quirky character actor, it was the story of Ronald, a geeky misfit and who is constantly bullied, accidentally kills a popular neighborhood girl by throwing a rock at her when she says something mean to him. As fate would have it, the rock hits her in the exact spot that causes her to die. Afraid and immature, he runs home to his neurotic mom, who thinks she will best help him escape the electric chair by building a secret room in her house. Here Ronald will hide from the questioning authorities. However, things soon turn a wrong corner for Ronald as his mother, who has gone into the hospital for "routine surgery," unexpectedly dies. Hidden away in the room without anyone's knowledge, Ronald must fend from himself. Unbeknownst to everyone, the house is soon sold to a family with "pretty teenaged daughter." Ronald begins watching her through cracks and crevices. Drawing elaborate pictures of her in his secret den, he imagines her to be a princess who must be rescued. He devises an elaborate plan to kidnap her and carry her away forever. The peeping goes on for quite some time and then, driven to a warped reality of some faraway enchanted land, Ronald breaks through the wall to grab her and he is found out.
Okay, now you know the story of Bad Ronald. I have my own tale to relate, one that captures a sense of my nervousness and anxiety about all things in the dark and behind door/slabs. Lying on my bed one afternoon listening to David Cassidy or some other flavor-of-the moment pretty-boy singer, I heard some rumbling noises behind me, coming from the eaves! I tried to ignore them because I was pretty sure they came from my mind and I knew the door/slab was wedged tightly. I continued my secret 13-year-old relationship with David Cassidy who continuously reminded me that he thought he loved me. Wham! Through the wall, by my head, a fist came emerged from the plaster. Bad Ronald! He was after me!! Thirteen-year-old girl lungs can shriek pretty shrill! I careened out of bed, bolted down the stairs, and into the yard! I had to get away from Bad Ronald! I turned to look behind me, and there was no Bad Ronald - only my brother Laurance trying to tell me, "It's only me, Laurie!" I know that heart attacks aren't a common occurrence for 13-year-olds, but I within a hair that afternoon.
So back to "the Hitchcocks." I have become absorbed in many old movies and TV shows. Mostly they provide a connection to my parents and my past, something that has disappeared more definitively with the passing of my mom. Alfred Hitchcock, quirky and deadpan, can always be counted on for a solid "I-didn't-know-that-was-coming" moment! "Funeral March of a Marionette" by Charles Gounod, otherwise known to most of us as the Alfred Hitchcock theme now delightfully frightens my grandson Frazier. He sometimes announces that "the Hitchcocks" are hiding in the bushes or they are in the trees. The Hitchocks are always hiding outside somewhere ready to get you in their grip and whisk you away forever!
Yes, the Bad Ronald and Hitchcocks will continue to be as much as part of childhood fabric as things that go bump in the night. So connecting with my parents and my past through old movies and black and white long-forgotten TV series now cycles around to begin again with my present and my future through Frazier. Life is as much about experiences and the passing of the torch as it is about living in the moment. We will always, however, be on the lookout for the Hitchcocks, no matter how old we become.
now now dight tf ufully no
