The Brummagem Screwdriver

The Brummagem Screwdriver

Lance Norris

Dutchco Press USA

2018

Copyright © 2018 by Lance Norris

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2018

ISBN 978-1-387-64124-6

Dutchco Press USA

68 Metoxtit Rd

East Falmouth, MA 02536

www.lancenorris.webs.com

Dedication

For The Tami Stracks of The World. I’ve Never Met One, But You Must Be Out There…

Preface

These are all true stories, they just might not have happened exactly as laid out in this book. This is not a History Text Book. It is much more accurate than that…

-Lance Norris

Grumpy’s Pub

Falmouth, MA

Introduction

"Welcome, St. Peter said, handing me a beer. Just a couple of quick questions. Lets us know a little more about you…"

Sure.

That’s cute. I wasn’t asking permission, but yeah. Go ahead, believe that free will stuff. How’d that work out for you on earth?

Is that the first question? I ask.

Rhetorical.  Childhood pet’s name?

Mr. Chips.

And how old were you when he ran away?

He didn’t.

Right.

Your least favorite child?

Desmond Child. I felt Rouge carried him for years.

The name of your favorite canceled TV show?

Deadwood. It would kill HBO to have tied up the loose ends?

I hear they are making a movie.

They made an Entourage movie too. Shoot me now.

Too late! We both laughed.

What about reincarnation or something? Evolving and all that?

I hate to tell you, you’re the best we got. That sunk in. Flattering, but really? You’re not perfect, St. Peter continued. But anything else would be repletion, and there is no need for that.

No, no, there is. I could still learn more. Be better. Kinder, gentler… St. Peter looked at his clip board again. He was sucking/chewing on the end of his pen. It was an old school Bic Cristal Pen with the polypropylene nib at the end of the tube. Discontinued for being a choking hazard.

Nope, you’ve pretty much have gotten all we have to offer, St. Peter took the pen out of his mouth and laughed. I gotta stop doing that. That’s what got me here in the first place. There’s nothing left for you on earth. We’re a work in progress and you’ve progress as far as the Big Guy has gotten with us. Think of yourself as one of those highways to nowhere, you know? Great idea, big plan, everything is cooking with steam heat and then something else comes along and we dead end in the desert.

What came along that was so damn interesting God™ stopped work on humans?

Fish. There’s 228,450 species of fish in the ocean, and he keeps making more. He just loves making fish. A little loopy if you ask me, but he’s the boss. So, come on in, grab a cabana by the pool. There still should be a few open. Spring break hasn’t started yet.

A cabana by the pool? I asked.

Could be worse, St. Peter stepped back to let me in.

Do yourself a favor, try the Striped Bass. It’s excellent.

Chapter 1

If Facebook has taught us anything, it is that people are idiots. At least, that has been my experience. I liked people so much better when I wasn’t privy to every unnerving thought that ran across their minds; but now, thanks to Al Gore and the Internets, the entire world is welcome to come look at the refrigerator door that is your Facebook page. That would be a great name for a band, by the way; Al Gore and The Internets…

They come to revel in your wit and political insight. Marvel at the photos of your dinner. Be easily swayed by the memes and GIFs that hammer your point home by attributing quotes to famous faces that never actually weighed in on such issues.

She interrupted my thoughts. My very, very important thoughts; with, ‘Bunny Bunny.’

What?

‘Bunny Bunny,’ she repeated and then looked like she was waiting for the appropriate response, like a G.I. guarding the line, alarmed, calling out to a returning patrol. Hoping it wasn’t the stinking Jerry’s sneaking over the wire in the dead of night.

I would have been great in WWII. Cheap cigar stuck in the corner of my mouth. Breaking hearts and breaking heads across the European Theatre. My Tommy Gun spitting out hot death to those on the other side dumb enough to break cover to try to grab a look at that crazy American rushing the line…

‘It’s Rabbit Rabbit,’ some Budinski offered.

‘Actually,’ some pompous dick from the back of the room chimed in. ‘It’s three times. Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. That’s the was the way the RAF did it’. RAF? Eerie. Was this kid reading my mind?

‘That’s stupid. What would the third Rabbit be for?’ The Budinski countered and it was on. All corners of the room would be heard on this very pressing issue. Bunny vs. Rabbit. Twice vs. Thrice, a Battle Royal until a young black girl threw the argument a curve ball with the unintendedly ironic, ‘You all stupid.’

All chatter stopped. This must be important, as the young black girl rarely spoke. ‘That’s all just some Nickelodeon in the 90’s bullshit. You supposed to say Pinch Pinch on the first day of the month…’

The group thought on this for a moment, until an ever pompouser dick from even further back in the room said, ‘You mean, Pinch Punch. It’s from medieval times. You gave a witch a pinch of salt on the first day of the month and then you could punch her, and she’d have to leave you alone for the next 31 days.’

And the pack re-erupted. The Bunny/Rabbit people were violently opposed to the whole idea of the Pinch or the Punch. Of course, therefore we drove the Hun back out of France, so these kids would have the freedom to contemplate such burdensome matters back home.

I just rested my head on the cool surface of my desk at the front of the room and hoped this grim hangover would past on its own accord, but years of experience told me it would have to be drunk into submission at lunch.

Sadly, lunch was another four hours away. I didn’t have any hard and fast rules about drinking before lunch, not even a guideline on the subject, really; but I could wait. Never was much of a fan of morning drinks, anyways. Bloody Mary’s. Mimosas. Not really ‘real’ drinks when you think about it. Anything you wouldn’t order in bar at night, with other people watching, isn’t a real drink. Sex On The Beach, Fuzzy Navel, Harvey Wallbangers (remember them? Although, I’m sure some douche bag movie star has bought the name and will be marketing a line of Harvey Walbergers sooner than later).

Sex Machine, Absolut Sex, Duck Fuck, Blow Job. These are more a wish list than a menu. The Get In The Van (which is a collection of gross candy booze, like Swedish Fish Flavored Vodka, Cotton Candy Vodka, and Cherry Nyquil served with a sugared rim), The Flaming Gorilla, Duracell, Fire Hammer… What happened to a nice, young scotch, neat?

I remember waking up next to a formidable woman once, after a night of nice, young scotch, who kept shot bottles of Blueberry Schnapps in her purse for her emergency morning bracer, just in case she woke up next to some guy that wasn’t as full-blown an alcoholic as she was or was a Walberg. Good times…

No, I could gut this hangover out until noon. At least the Celtics didn’t play last night. Standing rule in the classroom. Pop Quiz the morning after a Celtic’s loss. I could just let the first period kids amuse themselves as I got on top of this headache. Naturally, their Bunny/Punch argument started to get out of hand and I had to clear my throat. The international teacher/student sign for Don’t Make Me Show Hairspray For The Third Time This Semester.

I don’t know how Hairspray became the go-to movie for teachers with hangovers, but somehow it did. Not a bad movie really, but one day I know I’ll mess up and show the John Water’s original film… Although, by today’s standards, I think the Water’s original would be considered tame. I’ll tell you this much, John Travolta is no Divine; although he does look very comfortable in drag. What an actor.

The class settled down. When did the Celtics play next? Tonight maybe. I’ll have to ask my phone to look it up for me later. Go out to some bar with a TV, have a nice dinner, watch the game over a couple of neat scotch adult drinks. Treading water. Good times…

I think I have finally become the perfect Un-encumbered American. I no longer play sports but follow the weekly exploits of professional athletes.  I no longer play music. I listen to professional musicians perform on the radio, internet and CD. I no longer engage in political debates but let practiced politicians and wonks try to assess the blame for me. I am fed by skilled chefs when I go out, and I reheat proficient cooks if I stay in.

I do not brew coffee, there is a barista for that. I do not mix drinks, although I know all the ingredients, but rather go to a bar and let a qualified stranger do that for me, and then another stranger will bring it to me for tips. I build nothing. I can buy what I need at the store. I write nothing. All the really good ideas are already hidden away in books I will never get to. At night I sit on the couch and watch professional actors make the more mundane aspects of life; like raising a family, falling in love, catching a serial killer, running a motorcycle gang, or fighting terrorist, a little less boring. I just am.

Just the other day I was waiting for a career rat catcher to come to my house and kill the mice that have been sneaking into my spice drawer at night. I do not use the spices, as I no longer cook. I just did not want to share the spice with the mice, so a professional came by between 11 and 1 and killed them for me. I am the Un-encumbered American…

The PA cruelly interrupted us, or really just me, with a reminder from Mrs. Junior, the 50’s hairstyle that sat behind the over-long desk in the main office, that tickets were still available for Donkey Basketball. God™, I hate Donkey Basketball.

What is the point? No one enjoys watching it. No one enjoys playing it. Even the donkeys don’t seem to be having much fun, and this is probably the first time they’ve been out of the pens in a week.

When I was a younger, unwary (or unweary) man, I chased that question up the chain of command.

It’s very simple, Principle Sven tried to explain to me once, when I still actually cared. Donkey Basketball is not the power, it is the light. Consider this lamp on my desk…

The lamp was a heinous knock-off of a Traditional Banker’s Lamp, but the opaque green shade had, like most everything else in his office (including his hair), the unmistakable shine of cheap plastic. Sven pulled the chain that ignited the lamp, its bulb added nothing to the sun lit room, and continued:

"This is just one of literally thousands of lights in this school. This one is a practical, 60 watt-er. Functional, efficient, warm even. A mainstay of the bulb family. Some bulbs are the long, inelegant florescent tubes that get the job done. Others, dimmable soft whites to set the mood. Flood lights that bathe us in security. Those odd little, squiggly 100-watt equivalent bulbs that, by some means, have become the norm, so we accept them, as well as the humble 40-watt… Far, far too many simple 40-watt bulbs in this school. Grim, but what can you do?

I’ll tell you what you can do. You can play Donkey Basketball, the God Damn Halogen Bulb of this school, because a well-lit environment is a learning environment.

Sven paused for effect. If he were waiting for it to sink in, he should have packed a sandwich. You could almost hear the Self-Help Books on CD he must listen to in his car playing back in his brain, ‘Taking pauses when speaking allows you to emphasize key points. If you avoid pauses, the 40-watt bulbs will not be able to follow you and you sound less assertive’… Eventually he continued:

Listen, we can turn on and off any one of these lamps at our convenience. He reached over and pulled the garish Banker’s Lamp’s chain for effect… or was it affect? Screw it, I’m not an English teacher. Let’s say we removed the bulb from this lamp, or, Donkey Basketball from our school, if you will. Does the bulb light up? It can’t. Removed from the socket it is removed from its power source…

Again, a loathsome pause to refresh.

Now, where does that power come from? The alligator strip behind my desk. And that alligator strip is connected to an outlet in the wall, but that’s not where the power comes from. Behind the walls are wires, and those wires lead to a giant fuse box. That fuse box has another, bigger wire that runs out to the poles, which nodes all the way back to a mammoth electrical generator. The nexus!

Here, yet another execrable pause; because Sven was going to be the most assertive sum-bitch you were ever going to meet.

The nexus sends its electrical current to the entire town, not much different than, say, oh, God’s love giving us the sunshine that grows the plants, blows the wind and flows the water. Each element has their own way of functioning, and yet they all draw their power from one source.

He polated this pause with a drink from his coffee cup and a raised eyebrow, as if to signal some sort of understand. I wouldn’t say ‘interpolated’, because that implies inserting something new…

To question the reason for Donkey Basketball is to question God’s love.

I got up and left before he had a chance to say, ‘Thus endeth the lesson’…

Of course, it has been some time since I’ve been to church. Like Rabbit Rabbit, traditions and other re-enforcers of identity and values didn’t really mean much to my family. Bedtime Stories, Evening Walks, Family Game Night, Sunday Breakfast, just didn’t hold much water for us.

One time I had dinner over at my friend John Tosi’s. What a pain in the ass. Six beastly brothers and one pavid sister and each spawn had to tell about their day. Then their mother had to share all the mundane Family News. Their father griped something about ‘Hammerhan down at the main office’. At least they didn’t pray, but they did all have to say something they were grateful for that day, and to top it off, the TV wasn’t on in the living room. How are you supposed to get the latest body count from ‘Nam if the TV isn’t on during dinner?

It is entirely possible that family culture plays a more important role in shaping your later life than anything else your parents do. Tosi’s parents were dreamers. They had optimism about their spawn’s future. A combination of ability and opportunity would see them through.  Pretty common among lower income families. The parents crowd themselves into their children’s lives, hoping to give them every possible advantage and mold their moral fiber to protect them from life’s baleful negative influences.

Of course, Tosi died browbeaten on the business end of a black tar heroin spike, so how’d that work out for them?

Then you’ve got your impersonal parents. Let the kids be kids and the chips will fall where they may. I’d say my family fell into that category… with maybe some progressive shades centering around personal freedom and responsibility. God™ was definitely on the bench, as far as being a moral authority went, probably because my parents seem to value honesty above most everything else.

At least they weren’t the Dutiful. Adhering to some timeless morality, hoping to defend and grown their social mores by creating a charnel ethical order based on a fairy tale in their homes. Seeing most human endeavors as basically sinful, poltroon and adding to the moral decline of society, including public schools and vaccinations; their parental mission was to create more Dutiful children regardless of their future success or happiness. God™ will out, to paraphrase Shakespeare.

My friend Cali grew up in a family of Dutifuls, and she dutifully OD-ed on cheap smack in her 30’s too, so who really knows. Maybe it isn’t how you’re raised, it’s just the fucking heroin. It’s a crap shoot.

I do remember my mother going through some temporary religious awaking when I was little, and we were living in Iowa. Some sort of awing preacher had set up a direful tent out by the grange, so naturally people were curious to know what was going on, and slowly trickled out to take a listen. Sunday after Sunday, until what you might call a ‘congregation’ grew.

I’m hesitant to use any particular nomenclature, because the celebrant, although dress in your traditional Catholic priest vestments, and holding a bible, certainly didn’t sound like any of the Billy Sunday wannabes my grandmother listened to on her radio. He was even more rabid and unnerving. In fact, my grandmother commented after taking in one of his early sermons, ‘That fella makes old Bill Sunday sound like a Kansas City pussy’.

Grandmother hated Kansas City. It was said, because of a run in she had had with the film maker Robert Altman just before he left town for the Air Force in the early 40’s. But in all honesty, I think it was because the only radio station her little transistor could pick up from Kansas City was a Spanish language station and that might have shaded her impression of the city.

She was my grandmother on my mother’s side.

At any rate, I had to put on a clean shirt and borrow a tie to get dragged out to the monstrous empty field by the grange to listen to this cleric. The grange was a spooky place, not just a functional outbuilding for storing shit, but it was the dank, ominous clubhouse of some sort of sepulchral fraternal order of farmers. Who knows what somber deeds they did out there. I didn’t even know what they called themselves. Grandmother referred to them as ‘them homos out in the barn’, but then she called truck drivers ‘them homos hopped up on goof balls’, politicians ‘them homos up the capital city’ and even the Kansas City Royals ‘them light hitting homos in the American League’. Grandmother was what they called, ‘a pip’.

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. That’s Galatians 6:7… Epistle to the Galatians. The ninth book of the New Testament. Don’t just sit there with your mouths open, catching flies, It was a letter from Paul the Apostle to a bunch of early Christians Celts in what we now call Turkey. The preacher failed to realize that the stereotype of the slack jawed yokel became a stereotype for a reason. Just as I have known many a cheerless woman in my day with a ‘resting bitch face’, most of these despondent farmers sported a resting blank expression of dumbfoundment. It didn’t mean they weren’t hanging on his every word, but he took their blank stares personally.

I accept that none of you ruttish, unchin-snouted, boar-pigs could find Turkey on a map, but surely you at least get the concept of reaping and sowing? You’re farmers, for Christ sake! Although, I’m sure many of you are failing at that as well and will end up in one of those dismal Quonset huts across the way there. There was a collection of maybe 15 30’ x 40’prefabricated, corrugated galvanized steel lodges that were rusting in the field, across the way, since WWII. That was back when America could still build the shit out of shed.

Prior to WWII, they just fashioned huge steel oil drums, cut them in two, laid them on their side and used them for storage in the oil industry. Some genius in Quonset Point on the Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island came up with the idea to mass produce these ‘buildings’ for inexpensive, mobile shelters, and an industry was born.

Apparently, these sorry huts where left behind when the Army moved out, not being clear on the concept of ‘mobile shelters’, or just not caring. In the early 40s, I’ve heard, the US Military was taking prisoners from the Anamosa State Penitentiary out to these huts and having this Dr. Alf Alving inject the recidivists with malaria to study the effects and test experimental treatments on them.

Malaria, as you know, is a mosquito-borne infection that’ll give you the shakes, jaundice, paroxysm and, if left untreated, the coma. It killed Alexander the Great, Alaric, King of Goths, and stopped Attila’s invading army in Rome. If our boys were going to fight the deplorables in the South Pacific, with its high temperatures, quagmires and mud, Malaria would be a major problem, and the Army wanted to see if they could money whip it into submission before the war started.

To give you an idea of what they were looking at; for every three men killed in combat during the Civil War, it is estimated that another five men and a mule died from malaria. And that was in US! Think of how bad it could get in some grievous swamp in Tojo’s back yard.

The Military had been treating malaria with quinine, made from the bark of the cinchona tree, as far back as 1820, but the Jap’s control of Indonesia and the Philippines effectively cut off the US’s supply of quinine, so they turned to Dr. Alf Alving to come up with an alternative and gave him a bunch of live jailbirds to experiment with.

Now, the 1940’s prison is your perfect place for an experiment like this. The war on drugs hadn’t started yet, so the population was mainly white men of similar age and health to the white men entering the Army. Because they were locked up, the scientist could control most of the extraneous variables surrounding their subjects, and offers of parole reevaluation, or an imbursement as small as $25, yielded a huge crop of willing unfortunates. Plus, Anamosa was a maximum-security prison, so there was very little public concern for the welfare of the shit-bird that were locked up there.

Of course, deep down, everyone knew what they were doing in Anamosa and other prisons and mental institution as part of the war effort, was repugnant and wrong. American wasn’t even in the war yet. So, they put together a bunch of Quonset hut out in field across from the grange, where they could do their dirtiest work in peace. Who knows what weird shit they got into out in those huts considering it had to be moved from the relative safety of prison, but we do know that the Nazi doctors at the Nuremberg trials all pointed to the precedent of these execrable malaria experiments as part of their failed legal defense.

Interesting side note: Alf’s experiments were a failure too and some 60,000 US troops died of Malaria in WWII. They continue to this day to treat malaria with quinine. The wholesale price of the drug is the developing world where it is needed most, is a buck seventy. A course of treatment in the US, the most developed nation in the world, will run you more than $200. But some of the prisoners got their picture in Life Magazine, so I guess that was a win.

No one really cares why the Quonsets huts were built now, but currently they had become a sort of odious shanty-town for failed farmers and their families and the preacher was pointing out of his spent tent flaps at them, reminding the farmers what awaited them if they didn’t get their crops in.

Locals called them ‘The Huts’ and The Huts stood as a silent aide-memoire of failure. Well, they were supposed to be silent, but right then a small child was wailing from inside one of them. The Hut’s steel frame served to amplify the morose sobs.

The priest kept pointing to the rusting reminders of the sin of failure, and the small child kept up the sin of, well, crying, I guess. Is crying a sin? Sure, some crying is our own responsibility, but other times it is completely beyond our rule. Some crying is measured and considered, meant to bring attention to ourselves, or to have a painstaking effect on others. Some crying is nothing we can help, like when something big falls on you. Then there is the crying that is awkward and disobedient. No, not all crying is a sin. I think the same goes for failure too.

To my young and partially formed mind that chilly morning, The Huts were not a submission of collapse, but quite the opposite. Disused government buildings being repurposed to help those citizens that were down on their luck. Isn’t that what leadership is all about? Isn’t that why my parents were paying their taxes? Calamity couldn’t be a sin because God™ wasn’t going to be putting a roof over the heads of the calamitous, the government was.

How could a loving God™ forgive Peter for selling out his son, but then condemn these poor bastards to live in shambles just because the weevils got their crops. OK, I know, weevils eat cotton and they were growing corn, but you get my point.

Naturally, the priest was disagreeing with me from his mingy pulpit, ‘Consider the failure of Peter as you look on those wretched Quonset huts. Peter’s was the worst kind of failure. It was premeditated. Yes! Calculated, intended and cognizant. For the Lord warned him exactly what would happen. The Devil’s going to test you, Peter. Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat. Not just you, but all 12 of ya’ll disciples, and you better not let me down.

We made a bet, the Devil and me. I’m backing you all, and you better come through, because Papa needs a new pair of shoes! The child’s wretched crying rose to punctuate the preacher’s colloquialism. He looked displeased. This was a performance solo, not a duet.

OK, so maybe Peter’s failure was a sin. If Luke is to be believed, Peter knew what was coming, and I think Jesus could read Peter like a book because he didn’t just predicted Peter would deny him three times before the sun rose in the morning; he promised it! Peter was dick, and Jesus still bet on him. But what about the shabby failures you and I might face in real life and not in some poem written by committee?

It’s not that freaking hard to grow corn, but it does take a lot of work. So, yeah, maybe farm failure might be a sin, but you might not be a farmer. Say you work in a bank and you fail to get a promotion because Hammerhan’s brother-in-law just started in the department and Hammerhan gave the promotion to him. Is that a sin on my father’s part? You failed. You had nepotism working against you, but you failed. Whose sin is that?

Say, your wife of 20 years is sick of waking up next to you every morning and runs off with some tawdry 25-year-old Macedonian Syre Syre dancers from a traveling Ziyia band. Unlikely, and oddly specific, but it could happen, and you’re going to have to deal with that overwhelming sense of failure, although you did nothing but wake up in the morning like you always do. Is that a sin?

What about the heartbreaking disappointment of an errant child? It is a failure, but is it a sin? Of course, the kid wailing out in The Huts wasn’t failing to be heard. It wasn’t