Take Me To The Fair

When I was 14, Diane Henley was the prettiest girl in the class, or the church, or anywhere else. I'll never forget this night:

Take Me To The Fair

I really wanted to go to the Southeastern Fair with Diane Henley. To my way of thinking, I had about as much a chance of doing that as I did learning to swim.
Diane Henley was pretty, funny, flirty, always surrounded by boys, and I was a toadstool. Diane and I went to church together, so we knew each other, were friends, and had even sat besides each other in one of those Methodist Youth Fellowship meetings that were so boring the drapes kept falling asleep.
I even knew her telephone number.
But a date to the fair was clearly impossible. So I moped. Sighed a lot. Kicked sand. Ignored my dog. My father, raking leaves, asked what was wrong.
“Diane Henley won’t go to the Southeastern Fair with me.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she say when you asked her?”
“I haven’t.”
“You haven’t what?
“Asked her.”
“But you know she won’t go.”
“You know Diane, right?”
“Sure.”
“And you really think that she would even consider going to the fair with me?”
“I don’t know. You haven’t asked her. Why don’t you call her now?”
”She’ll laugh, probably call me some stupid name, and then hang up.”
I kicked some more sand. The dog saw his chance and escaped.
I’ve always been afraid to call the Diane Henley’s of the world. The sales trainers call it “call reluctance.” The psychiatrists call it “paranoia.” Writers call it a fact of life.
Just as I was about to start looking for the dog, my dad said he’d make a deal with me. “You go call Diane and ask her to go to the Fair with you tonight.”
“Tonight?!?”
“You are not to say ‘You don’t want to go to the fair with me, do you?’ or the deal is off. If she says yes, tell her we will pick her up in 30 minutes.”
“What’s the deal?”
“ I’ll give you five dollars for the Fair if she says yes.”
Five dollars was a lot of money in 1958. Heck, it had only cost me a dollar to get an Eagle Scout in Troop 272 to let me pass my swimming test so I could be a First Class Scout.
So I went inside the house and stood by the black, dial phone on the kitchen counter. I stared at it. I read all of the notes on the bulletin board, and was headed for the cookbooks when I thought about Diane Henley and then the five dollars. I turned around and dialed the phone.
It rang. I was dripping sweat. It rang again. I started feeling faint. It rang the third time.
“Hello?” Diane. It was Friday night in the fall. She was home. There was something seriously wrong with this picture. She must have broken her hip, and I hadn’t heard about it.
“Hi. It’s …”
“Oh! Hi!.” She sounded cheerful. Maybe it was the drugs for the broken hip.
“Uh … “ (and then at the speed of sound) “DoyouwanttogototheSoutheasternFairtonight?”
“What?”
“The Fair. Wanna go?”
“Sure. When?”
“Uh … “ Come on, you can do it, she’s already said yes, “tonight.”
“Wow! Really?”
Now I was convinced I had the wrong number.
Then she asked, “Who else is going?” (Dating in 1958 was normally in packs of at least 6.)
“Just us.”
“Great!”
“Diane?” I had to make sure it was her. “We’ll pick you up in 30 minutes.”
“I’ll be ready. And thanks for inviting me.”
The lesson, naturally, was stupidly simple. And I had learned it that night. It didn’t last, of course. Like all writers I have perfected paranoia to an art form. But whenever I’m afraid to pick up the phone, I think about the night with pretty, popular, flirty, outgoing Diane Henley at the Southeastern Fair.
She liked me. I liked her. We held hands the entire night.
And I didn’t even have to tell her about the five dollars.

From "Jim The Wonder Dog and Other Things Worth Knowing." (c) 2005 Mark E. Johnson, Jr.

Alligators, Airboats, and the Greatest Goat on Earth.

This part of one of the speeches I'll be giving to civic clubs, banquets, sales meetuings and conventions. If you'd like to know more about fees and availability, please contact me at mark@mark-e-johnson.net



When I was 8 years old, my dad took me to a place called “Magic Hill,” which was just outside Manchester, Georgia.
For a quarter, you could pull your car down the hill to the bottom, put your car in neutral, and the car would roll up the hill.
Magic.
Later I learned all about optical illusions, and I learned there are Magic Hills all over country.
For me, Magic Hill couldn’t be missed. It was worth seeing.
Disney World? A great but expensive family vacation. Gatorland? 500 alligators leaping up to catch frozen chickens strung 6 feet above them on a clothes line. That’s worth seeing.
At the Texas State Fair there’s a sculpture of Elvis made out of 800 pounds of butter. I’m sorry I’m missing that. But I do have plans to go to the Wooly Worm races in Banner Elk, North Carolina.
So I wasn’t about to pass up a ride through the Everglades on an airboat. One of the reasons is that I’m a fan of CSI:Miami. Everybody gets to ride in an airboat, even the lovely Emily Proctor, who never sweats and whose long blond hair is never out of place.
Second, the Everglades are mostly in Southwest Florida, a section of the state where the word “normal” is rarely used in polite company. Lest you forget – and, frankly, how could you – this is where, in 1948, numerous sightings of 15 foot tall penguins were reported, and no, these sightings weren’t all during Bike Week in Daytona.
Another popular sighting is the Skunk Ape. Legends abound about this puppy, and thousands of sightings have been reported. In Weird U.S., Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman tell the story of 5 archeologists who, while camping in the Everglades,were surprised by an 8 foot creature with a man’s face and shaggy white fur who crashed through the brush into their campsite. The archeologists reported that the “stench lingered.”
It was clearly not Emily Proctor looking for an airboat.
It was also not Stan Gober, who has his own star on the Southwest Florida Walk of the Strange.
When Stan retired, he moved to Goodland, Florida, and bought a restaurant and bar. Goodland is just a few miles from Marco Island. (“Marco Island” is South Floridian for “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a condo on the 33rd floor as long as the Wilson’s keep the Yorkies out of the elevator.”)
In and of himself, Stan is not weird. It’s just the combination of things that make up the public Stan that cause ordinary people to squint a little and say things like “honey, what is that man doing?”
Stan’s is the home of the internationally famous (according to Stan) Goodland Mullet Festival and Buzzard Beauty Queen Contest. A whole bunch of people descend on Goodland the week-end before the Super Bowl for this clearly one-of-a-kind event. There is a significant amount of drinking, Stan tells jokes, Stan sings, and people eat a lot of mullet (which tastes a lot like fish.)
But that’s not why you’ll make the trip.
You see, the bird most often associated with Southwest Florida is the buzzard. So, the highpoint of the Festival starts with the crowning of the Buzzard Queen. This year will be #20. Then Stan , dressed in his buzzard costume, attempts to get 5,000 drunks to do the Buzzard Lope.
The Buzzard Lope is a dance of unknown origin and impossible to describe. There is a lot of arm flapping, and high leg steps and the thrusting of the head out as far as possible over the chest. Beer helps.
There’s a song Stan wrote -- "The Buzzard Lope Song' -- which has its own, uh, rhythm, and it moves some people to, uh, “lope” as has been described above.
I have spent more than a few days in Goodland and have been known to lope on certain festive occasions, like my friend Husk Farnsworth’s birthday, or Tuesdays.
I can hear Stan’s grandchildren now:
“What does your grandfather do?”
“He owns a restaurant and dances like a buzzard.”
Goodland, Stan and Skunk Apes notwithstanding, Rebecca and I were still to take our first airboat ride and to keep our eyes open for Skunk Apes and penguins. We had a day off from a convention in Naples, so we drove from Naples to Everglades City.
We were early for the next airboat ride. Looking around for something weird or inexplicable to do for thirty minutes, we saw the following next to the cash register:
(To quote my hero Dave Barry, “I am not making this up.”) The flyer said: “Come see the largest alligator ever caught at the BP station.”
It was too good to believe. We raced across the street to the BP station and could not stop ourselves from asking about the alligator: Tell us about the mayhem that alligator caused before he (or she) was snagged by the brave attendants. How did they catch him? How big is he? How big was the one before this one? Which service bay is he in?
We learned two things: jokes about misplaced modifiers go over the heads of a lot of people in Everglades City, and, two, the Biggest Alligator Ever Caught At The BP Station is across the highway at the Everglades City Alligator Zoo.
Three dollars later we were standing on a catwalk looking at a huge rancid pond and promising that we would send heartfelt thank you notes to the inventors of “Off!”
“Where’s the world’s biggest …”
“He’s in there somewhere,” the attendant said.
“Does he surface?” I asked, while Rebecca checked one of her cameras.
“Sometimes. He’s shy.”
“Oh.” I saw two bubbles come up through the grime.
“That’s him.”
“Think he’ll come to the surface?”
“Never know.”
“How big is he?”
“Pretty big.”
And so it was. We went back through the gift shop, crossed the street to the airboat place, bought some more Off! and took our trip through the Everglades. It was great. Open lakes, mangrove groves, wild boars, and birds. We didn’t see any alligators sneaking toward the BP station, and we didn’t see another airboat. I guess Emily Proctor must have had the day off.
Just my luck.

Why they are called Gandy Dancers

First of all, "Gandy Dancer" is 2 words not one. "Gandy" is because the long crowbars used were manufactured by (drum roll, please) the Gandy Manufacturing Company of Chicago. "Dancer" is because the singing and working in unison looked like dancing.

Any more questions?

Jim The Wonder Dog

Those of you who ponder such things (remember the comment about parallel universes?) will be happy to know that you are just weeks away from reading the very first story about Jim The Wonder Dog since the one published in the August 1985 issue of Outdoor Life. Stand ready. The time is near.

Gandydancer

Hundreds of people (all right, two people) have asked me what "gandydancer" means. I am shocked that there are some who might not know. Remember all those movies where a group of prisoners would be working on railroad tracks out in the hot sun while the guard sat on his horse drinking cool water and laughing? And remember that the prisoners all had these long crowbars that the guard drinking the cool water never figured out that the crowbar could be used to beat the ever-lovin' toodle out of him by a thirsty prisoner? And remember that the prisoners worked in unison to straighten the track and that they sang mournful songs about guards drinking cool water while prisoners worked in the hot sun until one of the prisoners decided to beat the toodle out of the guard using one of the crowbars? The people straightening the track are called "gandydancers." I'll get back to you on why they are called that.

The Prudent Man's Shopping Survival Guide

This one of a group of columns written for syndication. I hope you enjoy it.

(My second book -- Jim The Wonder Dog and Other Things Worth Knowing -- will be published in October.

(Also, I'm available for presentations to conventions, sales meetings and other groups. Please contact me for available dates and fees.)

The Prudent Man’s Shopping Survival Guide.
By Mark E. Johnson, Jr.

Thanks to my wife Rebecca I know many things. She is always right, even when she isn’t. When we’re lost, she has an astute sense of direction that brooks no challenge regardless of where we may be or end up. And she can identify any spider from an altitude of from three to five feet depending on the size of the spider.

And I have learned that there is a difference in black shoes for women. Most men I know have black shoes. I have four pair. They seem to cover all the bases.

The first major injury in my marriage to The Goddess (small cut under the left eye, no stitches) came after I observed that I really didn’t see a need for 22 pair of black shoes, especially since they all looked the same. Her subsequent lecture – after the bleeding stopped – covered heel height ( 3” is good by the way; 6” will make your hands sweat), materials (a number of different pigs, cows, and no telling what else paid the price), and toe shape. They still look the same.

Because of my extensive experience, I feel obligated to offer the benefit of my wisdom to those of you who have made erroneous and sometimes painful assumptions about the nature of women and their shopping habits. These observations are made in a positive spirit of goodwill and are by no means a condemnation of women in general and those with credit cards in particular.

Never, ever, for any reason, with no exceptions, ever say: “You don’t need another pair of shoes.” Those simple words can often have more power and long-lasting repercussions than “Honey, I’m having an affair with the new choir director.”

Do not ever say anything about the price of shoes (or any other garments) unless the woman has first clearly indicated that she believes the price is too high, and even then be very cautious.

If the price is astronomical and no comment is made, your response is “hmmmm.”

The woman is not without feelings for the man, and she will make you feel as if she truly values your opinion. She doesn’t. In any shopping situation, you are a toadstool.

There are two rules in a women’s lingerie department: (a) don’t point to items of intimate apparel and say “Wow! Would you look at that!” or (b) look eager and quietly lick your lips.

In a clothing department, you are to walk three steps behind making innocuous comments that mirror the woman’s comments, no matter how vague or completely nonsensical they may be. (Example: “These black pants are … but then I don’t have anything… well, there’s that top we bought when … did you see this … hmmm bet they don’t have it in my size … guess we’ll keep looking.” Your response in its entirety: “Right.”) Don’t ever have a contrary opinion because you then will be asked to explain that opinion, and you can’t and she didn’t want you to anyway. (See “Toadstool,” above.)

At the end of 7 minutes, it is permissible to excuse yourself and sit down. Make sure she always knows where you are. (See #4 above.)

You are not in a hurry. In fact, if the shopping trip takes the same time as a normal NFL game on the Sunday you are shopping (which would be the same NFL game your shopping partner promised you would not miss because she just “needed to pick up a few things,”) you are not in a hurry.

During the shopping process, you will be asked a certain number of questions. Here are a few of the most common ones and my suggested answers.

QUESTION: I’m going to run upstairs and see if I can find a blouse to match this skirt, OK?
ANSWER: OK.

QUESTION: Are you in a hurry?
ANSWER: No.

QUESTION: Wasn’t that a pretty girl?
ANSWER: I didn’t see her.

QUESTION: I thought the game started at 1.
ANSWER: What game?

QUESTION: I’m glad you came with me.
ANSWER: Me too.

QUESTION: Do you like this dress?
ANSWER: What’s important is what you think about it.

QUESTION: Do I look fat in it?
Fake a seizure.









©2005 Mark E. Johnson, Jr.