My Tennessee Williams Moment

…so it’s 1969 and I’m working between staggered Air Force shifts as a dishwasher for a buck an hour in the Sands Restaurant in Key West to supplement my extravagant military salary and to feed my wife and baby daughter. One July night, around 6, Lennie, the alcoholic owner (who would eventually drink away the restaurant’s profits – with help from his wife Alice, whose inherited money bought the restaurant -- and have to sell it) comes to me and points to the open back door of the kitchen where I see a short man, around fifty or so, in a white Mark Twain suit, standing with a tanned guy in his twenties who looks like a tennis instructor, who has a large white dog, maybe a huskie or a Samoyed, on a leash.

“See that man in the white suit?” Lennie asks.  I nod. “Well, that’s Tennessee Williams.  Tell him he can’t bring a dog into a restaurant in Key West because it’s against the health laws, but tell him nicely, Eddie!  Tell him you will tie the dog up by the back door and feed it some of the meat that comes back from people who don’t finish their whole dinners.” (Which will cut into my ability to save some of the huge prime ribs and steaks that customers are constantly returning because they get pretty wasted, waiting at the bar for their tables to be ready…this second job was the only time we really ate well.  I would trim off the meat and wrap it in foil and take it back to our ratty two-bedroom trailer on nearby Stock Island.  I was also able to take home conch chowder and lobster thermador on some nights.  Anyway…)

So I go to the door in my shorts and sweaty white T-shirt (washing dishes was hot work and the kitchen wasn’t air-conditioned against the wonderful Florida Keys’ humidity) and say, “Good evening, Mr. Williams, it is really an honor to meet you.  I hope someday to write a novel or a play and have been inspired by your work.” 

He stares at me as if I am invisible.  The tennis-type sighs in a non-masculine way, as if I’m wasting their time, which I suppose I am.  Anyway…I continue, holding out my hand toward the dog’s leash.

“I’ve been asked to inform you that the health department in Key West does not allow animals to be brought into restaurants, but I will personally take your dog and keep an eye on him, as well as offer him some delicious meat from the Sands’ kitchen.”

He stares at me as if I am invisible.  The tennis-type sighs another non-masculine sigh, as if I’m wasting their time, which I suppose I am. Finally, Tennessee (may I call him Tennessee?) speaks.

“We came here for dinner and my dog will certainly be coming in with us!” he snaps.

“But sir, the restaurant can be closed down and fined if we allow pets to enter the restaurant,” I explain somewhat lamely, maybe.

“I don’t know why I was told by that hostess to come back here.  I shall enter through the front door, and the dog comes in with me!” he asserts. “He will certainly not be tied back here and be fed by you, and if you do not understand that, I will tell him to bite your goddam nuts off!” which causes the tennis-pet to break out a big, white-toothed smile.  Then Williams turns away and as I watch, turns the corner of the building and heads toward the parking lot with his two pets.

Minutes later, as I’m feeding more dishes into the washing machine (which will run out of hot water by seven o’clock because Lennie is too cheap to buy a large-enough water heater), I feel Lennie’s hand on my arm.

“What the hell did you say to Tennessee Williams?!  He never came in!” Lennie shouts, sending billows of Scotch- and cigarette-scented breath past both sides of my face.

“Nothing! Just what you told me to.  I told him, politely and nicely, that the health laws don’t allow pets in the restaurants.  He said he’d have his dog bite my nuts off…and he didn’t say it politely or nicely, either, Lennie!” I shout back.

Lennie storms back out of the kitchen…and that’s my one and only encounter with a famous writer…and to show my objectivity, I still taught THE GLASS MENAGERIE to my students for 35 years.  I don’t think Tennessee Williams ever bought any of my novels, which makes me the better man…of course, he died in 1983, before I was published…which also makes me still alive.  Serves him right.

The Quake of 2011

I'm tired of the August quake referred to as "The D.C. Quake" and the CNN coverage, making all the fuss about D.C. and NYC! The epicenter was six miles from us, has totalled over 40 houses in this rural county where poor people have no insurance, let alone earthquake insurance (which the insurance companies are now scurrying around, offering...but which won't go into effect until ALL aftershocks have ended...and they're still rumbling in the county!) Two schools have been severely damaged and may have to be demolished, one of which, the high school, where I devoted 24 years of my teaching. Students in the high school and middle school now have to go to school from 8 till 5, every other day, at least until the Christmas holiday break. It was THE LOUISA QUAKE, okay?!

Ed’s E-books: Descriptions

LURAY

A young man from the steel-mill and coal country of western Pennsylvania accepts his first job to teach high-school English in a small northwestern Virginia county, home of the famous Luray Caverns. During his first four months, Tom finds a place to live—a motel cabin—owned by Becky, a widow with two daughters: Ronnie, a high-school senior, and Sandi, the older daughter. He develops friendships with a handful of teachers who become the Lunch Bunch as he is learning and refining his skills as a teacher. Tom slowly becomes enmeshed in a developing mystery surrounding his assigned teacher-mentor. Tom also finds himself falling deeply in love: with teaching and with a troubled young woman. Set among the beautiful mountains of the Blue Ridge, where seemingly endless summer is replaced by spectacular autumn colors, where friendly and easy-going Southerners make great food and sell homey antiques, LURAY is a story that takes the reader into the classroom of a first-year teacher and into his life. In addition, the food is good and the environment is stunningly beautiful.

BLUE RIDGE HIGH

Take a trip into the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to experience a passionate love story. Take the moments that come alive in a high-school classroom and beyond, and then season them heavily with suspense and attempted murder and you have BLUE RIDGE HIGH, which picks up where Ed Buhrer’s LURAY left off, but with a hard right turn into something different. In this novel, as Tom continues to fall deeper and deeper into love with two demanding mistresses—Sandi and teaching—there’s a lot to laugh about, a lot to sigh about…but then, with a jolt, something will happen to make you think, “Hey, this isn’t funny anymore—this is scary!” BLUE RIDGE HIGH is filled with colorful and memorable characters—real people who act and sound real—a sense of place made alive with dazzling description, and a true glimpse into a real high school…and for an added treat, a few good lessons in cooking. It also has the ability to take the reader into the story and make him want to stay there. BLUE RIDGE HIGH has something to offer every reader, from romance to intrigue, to insights into the lives of teachers, to good food, good recipes, and laughter, to the desire to fall in love all over again. You won’t be sorry you read this novel.

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET NIXON AND EISENHOWER: Baby Boomer Tales from the New Jersey Suburbs

Growing up in New Jersey: Land of Toxic Waste Dumps...Home to the Homeless Garbage Barges of the Seven Seas...state that actually wants to fight over who owns Staten Island... maybe the final resting place of Jimmy Hoffa...butt of jokes from stand-up comedians so bad that no one laughs at them (the comedians or the jokes)...Lower Intestinal Tract of America to anyone who has ever had to drive up (or down) the Jersey Turnpike...Usurper of Rhode Island's former right to be "The Most Densely Populated State"...and on and on.  New Jersey wasn’t always like that. 

When I was a boy in America’s adolescence of the Fifties, it was different; when I was a young man, it was still different. New Jersey: The Garden State...Land of Deep Valleys and Pristine Snow-covered Peaks...Home of Rolling Hills and Wildflowers...tiny villages of white church steeples and bounteous orchards...mile on mile of white-sand beaches and underground caverns...quiet and uncrowded two-lane highways...wind-swept forests of snow-covered redwood, birch, and date palm...and...

Okay, it was never totally like that, either, but it was still a pretty good place to grow up.  Today’s young people will be amazed at our generation.  We were innocents: innocent of sex and other adult wonders; and we were adventurers: our thumbs could take us to places our feet couldn’t.  We rode our bikes everywhere – without pads or helmets; we could not only swim in the streams, we could drink from them.  We witnessed one of the greatest inventions of the century: Pez.  Well, some historian might say it was the Sputnik that kicked off the race for space, but I recall that practically every kid in America had a Pez dispenser in his pocket; I don’t remember any of us with a Sputnik!  We ran home, dropped our “school” clothes, and ran back outside to play…our games, not ones manufactured for us with tons of batteries and imbedded computer chips in them.  The seasons all held something special; you could go to the movies all day for fifty cents and still have enough left over for an ice-cream cone on the way home.  And we were all part of a truly remarkable moment: Jonas Salk cured us of the terrifying fear of polio..and Nixon tried, but didn’t quite cure us of the terrifying fear (thanks to McCarthy and weekly air-raid drills) of evil Communists. 

It’s not like that anymore…is it?  And it’s not just about New Jersey, after all, it’s about growing up in the new suburbs in the new, post-war America.  All of these times are captured, humorously, in my 80,000-word memoir, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET NIXON AND EISENHOWER: Baby Boomer Tales from the New Jersey Suburbs, a journey that will take baby boomers back to their childhoods and younger readers back to a simpler and more innocent time, starring a recurring cast of juvenile characters roaming the environs of school and neighborhood. I envision an audience of both late adolescents and adults, anyone who understands the importance of tradition and family.  It will be of interest to the huge audience of baby boomers (such as the author himself) who are looking to revisit their own adolescences, now that they have time in their retirements to go back to the enjoyment of reading.

ONLY: Growing Up Alone

Growing up has never been easy, with parents and teachers and bullies and friends who aren't friends two days later. Dark, shadowy monsters that inhabit your bedroom at night can be frightening. Growing up alone, as an only child, with no one to share these fears with, really stinks. ONLY is about a kind of growing up that takes place as much in the inner thoughts of a child as in what he hears from the "others" in his life that are often a great deal fewer than in the lives of those kids who grow up in larger families. ONLY is a story of that only child who had a “brother”--the ideal child that his parents expected when he popped out of the womb and slid, slippery, into the delivering doctor's gloved hands, the child who would, of course, get all A's in school and never lie. For this “only,” life was hard when this ideal son was always there, living in that same house, to constantly remind the parents that their actual "only" wasn't quite what they had hoped for in their only attempt at parenthood. Most of all, ONLY is the story of one such "only," desperately wishing for a brother, while experiencing the sometimes funny, sometimes joyful, often painful, and without doubt, poignant moments of growing up in the middle years prior to the invasion of puberty and the awareness of self in its most pervasively adolescent manifestations.

And finally, a brother appears -- one that only two kids know about -- who gives this lonely only child a real “brother”…for a while, anyway.

SHAG SUMMER: An Adolescent Odyssey

Imagine getting your first job, as a caddy, and heading to Pennsylvania for your sixteenth summer…and coming home taller, naïve no longer, and completely and totally aware of what it means to be intimate with the opposite sex…and in love. SHAG SUMMER is set at a Pocono Mountains resort in the summer of 1962, the summer of sixteen-year-old Freddie Fielding’s sexual awakening, but it is more than just a coming-of-age story; it is a “growing up” epic, filled with a great deal of humor, tasteful sex, detailed description, realistic dialogue, and unforgettable characters, many the golfers that Freddie meets in his two-and-a-half months of caddying. This novel is for an audience of readers who like a happy ending with all loose ends neatly tied up, people who love to laugh, and anyone who has ever fallen in love.

THE DEVIL IN THE PINES – A Handy Boys Adventure

Off on a camping trip and search for buried Revolutionary War gold in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey, the Handy boys, Dan and Stan -- along with some chums, one cousin, and a hound dog -- are soon caught up in two cases that their famous detective father, Fosdick Handy, is working on with a combined task force of local and federal agents. Both sinister and supernatural forces will be at work as the boys try to get through one more exciting and unbelievable adventure after another, all the while trying to make sure they get home in time for dinner!

THE GREAT CHICKEN TERROR – A Handy Boys Adventure

A group of foreign terrorists, led by the incredibly evil Assoma bin Reqtaam, is intent on wreaking havoc on the American economy by destroying all the fried-chicken franchises with the introduction of a foreign species of chicken whose flesh has the consistency of a Goodyear® tire. But this is just the beginning of their evil plan to destroy the American way of life and bring chaos to the country. It will be up to the Handy Boys – Stan and Dan – their handful of faithful chums, and some unexpected allies to foil the diabolical plans of Assoma bin Reqtaam and his fanatical followers as our heroes venture from their home in East South Keansbury, New Jersey, on mad dashes back and forth across the Garden State.

CRITTERSVILLE: A Parable of Good and Not-so-Good

CRITTERSVILLE is a fantasy about a town of various animal species who have learned to co-exist and live together in relative harmony, unlike the humans who had destroyed themselves, along with less desirable tenants of the earth, such as mosquitoes, cockroaches, and politicians.  The “relative harmony” has been maintained by the various creatures establishing “neighborhoods,” thus we see the felines living together, the birds and canines doing the same in their sections of Crittersville.  This harmony, however, becomes threatened, as will the entire town of Crittersville, by the arrival of a terrifying creature -- a griffin -- and an evil wizard who controls it.  It will take the united efforts of all the members of Crittersville and a couple unlikely heroes to rid the town of this terrible threat.

NEW E-BOOK!

I now have a seventh e-book on Amazon, and this one’s a monster at 437 pages…attached is a photo of the cover and below is a brief blurb about the novel….I’d appreciate your spreading the word…as well as reading it…thanks. 

Imagine getting your first job, as a caddy, and heading to Pennsylvania for your sixteenth summer…and coming home taller, naïve no longer, and completely and totally aware of what it means to be intimate with the opposite sex…and in love. SHAG SUMMER is set at a Pocono Mountains resort in the summer of 1962, the summer of sixteen-year-old Freddie Fielding’s sexual awakening, but it is more than just a coming-of-age story; it is a “growing up” epic, filled with a great deal of humor, tasteful sex, detailed description, realistic dialogue, and unforgettable characters, many the golfers that Freddie meets in his two-and-a-half months of caddying.  This novel is for an audience of readers who like a happy ending with all loose ends neatly tied up, people who love to laugh, and anyone who has ever fallen in love.

There's a new e-book!

What’s the ‘Coolest’ Thing You’ve Ever Done?

A former student asked me recently, “B., what’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done?”  It wasn’t something that I’d been considering at the time, but after a few moments, here’s what I came up with:

In the spring of 1963 – my freshman year in college – Count Basie and his band came to Montclair State College.  I was supposed to meet Charley Blakely, a fellow freshman from North Bergen, and I did, but he was about ten minutes late and when we entered the large gym where the basketball games were played, it was about 8:15 and the place was jammed. 

They had the bleachers on both sides down but there didn’t seem to be a space anywhere.  Directly across from us (we were standing inside the lobby doors), against the back wall, Count Basie and the band were already putting the jazz into the New Jersey air.

“It doesn’t look like there’s a seat left. Whaddaya wanna do?” Charley asked me. “Shit, I don’t know,” I probably replied. “How come no one’s sitting on the floor?” he said. “You know they don’t want anyone to walk on that floor with shoes on,” I said. “But we’re both wearin’ tennis shoes,” Charley answered. (This was long before today’s hundred-dollar, glorified sneakers; you either wore black-and-white high-tops or white “tennis” shoes, even if you never picked up a racket.) “You wanna go sit in front of the band?” I suggested, without thinking much about it. “Yeah,” Charley said…and we started walking across the darkened gymnasium floor, knowing that every eye in the stands was probably watching us.

“If The Count looks at us like we’re a couple ‘o dickheads, I’m gonna die,” Charley whispered, voicing my exact thoughts.

Anyway, we got to the out-of-bounds or base line, right under where the basket and backboard had been raised, and we sat down, like in the lotus position.  The band was still blasting away, and off to the right, behind his piano, sat Count Basie, dressed in some kind of nautical outfit with a blue blazer and a white captain’s hat.  As I watched, he looked up from ‘tinkling the ivories,’ did that thing with his hand, like he was shooting a pistol, then gave us a nod and a wink, and went back to playing the piano. 

Within a minute, the entire stands had emptied out and there were about five thousand other MSC students sitting on the floor behind us.  We stayed there the entire concert, unwilling to lose our “seats.” 

When the band had played the last encore, I found a sheet of red poster board that had been stapled to a bulletin board on the back wall and tore a piece off and went over to ask The Count for his autograph.  He took a pen out of his blazer pocket and signed the piece of red cardboard and then, with a smile, kind of whispered, “Pretty gutsy move you boys made tonight.  I was ‘fraid they’d come drag you off the floor. I woulda told them to leave ya alone. You like jazz?”

After I stammered out some kind of “yes,” I shook his hand – he had rings on three fingers – and left. 

That autograph is still in my wife’s hope chest – don’t ask me why.  I guess that was the “coolest” thing I’ve ever done…unless someone reminds me of something “cooler.”

Happy April Fool’s Day

“April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.” ~Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894

Spring in Virginia

SPRING IN VIRGINIA

Spring in Virginia, my favorite season. Down here, it lasts a long while. First, we have crocuses and daffodils peeking through, sometimes with some snow still on the ground in the shady spots. Then we have to wait for one stretch of about two days of warm weather, like in the mid-fifties or above, then a good dose of rain: and then the world explodes! We’ll have a thunderstorm one afternoon and after it, I’ll hear “peepers” (tiny, baby frogs…don’t remember hearing them in semi-urban New Jersey…maybe on my grandparents’ farm) echoing from the woods and creek behind the house. After that rain-warmth cycle, the first color will be the swelling leaf-buds on the trees – maple, oak, beech, sweet gum, birch, sycamore, linden, pin oak, hickory – to add to the green that hangs around all year in the hemlocks, pines, cedars, and spruces. Then the leaves appear, first light green, then darker; then the first color.

There are these slender trees down here called Eastern redbuds…the flowers hang in grape-like clusters and are really more purple than red; about the time they’re fading, the dogwoods—the state tree--explode into white flowers and grow wild all over the landscape, as do the native redbuds. By the time the dogwoods are fading, all the flowering shrubs – lilacs, azaleas, rhododendrons, camellias—pop open. Then all Toni and I have to do is go to a nursery and come home and plant the annuals: marigolds, zinnias, impatiens—and by that time, it’s time for me to take my turn at tilling the 3,000-square-foot garden and get in my beloved tomatoes, eggplants, peppers—twenty kinds of hot ones-- and the stuff I’ll grow for others: squash (which I’ll grow for everyone else but personally refuse to eat; as Russell Baker once wrote, “squash is the only vegetable that tastes like it sounds”), beets, beans and sugar peas (I’ll eat them), and ten or fifteen different herbs--rosemary and oregano grow all year. Toni and I argue sometimes about who plants what and how much to plant, but it’s a fun kind of arguing; after all, it feeds us, plus friends and neighbors.

What I love most, maybe, are the aromas of spring; sometimes, the air smells scented from all the flora, but often, it just carries a crispness that makes me want to suck in cubic yards of it. And the nights! It gets windy a lot through early May, and the stars, unaffected by the ground lights (there aren’t any) are spectacular, like the night skies I remember as a boy…or on dark, moonless, windy nights in summer and winter in New Jersey, when I was a kid, anyway. Some nights, the Milky Way looks as if God took a finger and smeared cream across the darkness. Before the leaves mature, on a full-moon night, the shadows of the trees stretch out forever, and we can walk our quiet country property and the paths up the mountain as if it were broad daylight…or narrow daylight.

On our upstairs deck out back, we can sit out there at night and listen to the night sounds of owls and whippoorwills off in the trees, and the coons and possums and skunks snuffling around in the leaves. That lasts until summer arrives and the ‘skeeters move in…and we have to move back inside. Even the house smells clean, like laundry dried on the line outside, when we can open the windows and let the world blow through. I guess I come back alive with the spring; I’m so dormant, like the plant world, in the winter. The only exercise I can get is splitting some of the wood that’s still too big and carrying it in…and my one- or two-mile walk every other day when my knees are in the mood. The first semi-warm day will find me outside, doing anything, just to be outdoors.

As I’ve said, Virginia’s a good place to be…all year long, but especially in the spring.

Even on April Fool’s Day.

A Little Diddy

Of all the things I'd like to be,
I'd like to be a duck.
Then I could fly over land and sea,
And watch the people...
Fish.

Ed's e-books

I now have six e-books with Amazon. Please check them out. Thanks.