The Bogus Buzz

By Glen Keough

Flashback to the 1960s and 1970s and faster than you can say In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, accompany Glen Keough as he is drilled by Dominican nuns, enlightened by a hippie father and loved by a grandmother who easily forgave his sins.

In this coming of age memoir, Keough reminisces on a youth spent in Southern California with a band of boys who when freed from the constraints of Catholicism, partook in the forbidden fruits of the era. A time to trade marbles for marijuana and Johnny Western for Led Zeppelin. Such transactions come with a price as his best friend went on an acid trip he never returned from mentally. The author broods on a lost of innocence and how a gracious God could take away a sister so young with cancer.

The Bogus Buzz shares a sensitive maturation process similar to the 1986 movie Stand By Me. It reflects on the coping mechanisms constructed to weather divorce, insecurity and the come hither look of the fish netted blonde two desks down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abbott Press
• Release date: Jan 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781458213273

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Copyright © 2014 Glen Keough.

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ISBN: 978-1-4582-1329-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-1328-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-1327-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922549

Abbott Press rev. date: 1/20/2014

CONTENTS

PREFACE

DEDICATIONS

SECTION ONE

SECTION TWO

SECTION THREE

SECTION FOUR

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This is a memoir. While inspired by mostly true events and my recollections, they may not coincide with what others depicted in the story experienced or remembered. Therefore, in consideration of that fact and in the interest of protecting their privacy, in many instances I have changed names, locations, time frames and situations. Dialogue and events have been recreated by memory and a tad of fiction.

PREFACE

IT NEARLY SNATCHED my soul.

That is, The Bogus Buzz, my book.

A recollection of a life growing up schooled by the nuns in Redlands, California during the trailblazing days of the 1960’s and 70’s. Peering thru the keyhole of the past can be perilous to the state of one’s mind; especially if that observor indulged in some of the products of ill repute offered up throughout the era. Some of my buddies never had a chance at hindsight, casualties of breaking such bread.

I bled on the keyboards for the twenty some years I have carried this effort on my back.

It was during one three month period, deeply delved in the book, that it nearly swallowed my soul. I lost 30 lbs. and spiraled into a bottomless depression. If not for some pharmaceuticals recommended by my ex-wife, (who I married for free counseling) and the unwavering love of my daughter who helped lower the ladder, I might not have climbed out.

But it was perhaps the most celebrated author that ever picked up a pen that helped answer my distress call.

I was reading what many consider the autobiography of the youth of Charles Dickens in his opus, David Copperfield.

It was when the Dickens character was lamenting of the loss of his dear Dora that I realized I had been walking with the shadows in my book. Long since dead, I was reunited with many of my friends and family in the pages I poured out. But when I attempted to shut the laptop, they clutched at my coattails as I tried to return to the present.

When one recollects the springtime of his life, winter is not far behind.

Lastly, this story, like Dickens’ Christmas ghosts, would never completely go away. A song lyric here, a bit of overheard conversation there, would remind me that I had to tell the tales of those that will never speak again. How I miss the banter of my dear Irish aunts and uncles around grandma’s table and the pestering of my pig tailed sister. I have carried the book like a child who couldn’t be coaxed out of the womb. Thank God I have finally given birth.

DEDICATIONS

THIS BOOK IS dedicated to my daughter. She is the reason I was pulled through the haze and I have certainly been blessed for little did I know she would be waiting there for me at the end of the careless trek of my youth.

She has humored me by listening to most of these stories that you are about to visit.

To my mom whom without her sacrifices I certainly wouldn’t have been able to rehash. She fended off many a suitor that came calling at her bank teller window and ferried me to countless football practices and boy scout meetings in that lime green Datsun 510.

I raise my hand and ask the Nuns that I get away with but a rap of the ruler when I try to join them by entering the Pearly Gates. I give them thanks for instilling in me a habit I still perform before I lay myself down to sleep. That is getting on my knees and thanking God for my many fortunes.

To my former wife who always believed in my writing and anything I said, unless your eye is twitching.

My sister, Roberta, who had the rare gift of always looking at the sunny side.

And finally to my next door neighbor Chris, who combed the canyons with me as a youth and now soars above ‘The Oaks,’ after learning firsthand that the Buzz is truly Bogus.

SECTION ONE

KOOL-AID CANTEENS AND BROKEN DREAMS

"LONG AGO I WANDERED THROUGH MY LIFE

IN A LAND OF FAIRY TALES AND STORIES

LOST IN HAPPINESS I HAD NO FEARS

INNOCENCE AND LOVE WAS ALL I KNEW"

BLACK SABBATH

‘WHEELS OF CONFUSION’

‘VOL. 4’

1972

SANTA’S SLEIGH

I WAS SURE I saw it.

Where? Where? Roberta cried as she searched the sky.

Dad had pulled over the van. Brian Jones’ flute on the Stones ‘Ruby Tuesday’ serenaded the Southern California canyon from the eight-track player. Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone, Jagger cooed.

Fingering his ponytail, Dad tossed it over his back. Over there, ‘Berta, he instructed, gently spinning my little sister by the shoulders then pointing her like one of those Hasbro barnyard games that provided farm animal sounds when the arrow landed on the creature.

Roberta searched, looking up Dad’s pointed arm as if it was a periscope. Already it was to the left of the Big Dipper, blinking through a sea of stars. I never knew reindeers could be so quick.

If we don’t hurry, Santa will beat us home! And then you won’t get any presents! Dad warned.

Roberta’s eyes pleaded beneath her bangs. My heart froze, though I already had two healthy sacks in back of the van. I had scored earlier in the evening at the Sun City retirement community where Grandpa as usual had been good to me.

On this magical Christmas Eve night, he had given me a miniature reproduction of Fort Apache. Complete with calvary that looked like they rode right out of the Custer’s Last Stand picture that hung on the wall of my next door neighbor Chris’ fort. I got a bazooka too. Unfortunately, I had already succeeded in blasting a plastic salvo off of the side of Roberta’s head. My marksmanship proceeded to charge an argument between the Colonel (Grandpa) and Dad. How dad’s hair length had anything to do with it, I wasn’t sure but Grandpa let him have it and Dad left pissed off.

Dammit! You should be over in Nam, blasting Gooks! Grandpa had boomed through the screen door.

Roberta took one last look for the sleigh before Dad piled us back into the van. It felt secure from the nippy night as we bundled up on the bed he built behind the cab. Naturally nervous of the results of the race with Santa, sleep was out of the question. I panicked after we pulled into the dirt driveway. Nothing was moving in the sky. Only stationary stars blinked back. I don’t see Rudolph’s blinking nose! I fretted aloud.

That’s because Santa’s getting ready to land. Rudolph turns off his nose when he’s under the stars. Santa doesn’t want to crash into any airplanes, answered Dad.

Roberta and I broke the Keough kid record for changing into pajamas. Mom gave us a kiss after placing little Renee in her pullout from under the bunk bed.

I don’t know how Santa is going to get my horse down the chimney, Roberta told me after the lights went out. How did he get it in the sleigh anyway?

I didn’t answer. I was listening hard for the sleigh. But instead of jingle bells I heard a sound that had become way too familiar of late. I heard my dad’s van pull out.

‘HOLY SHIT’

I WAS GOING to hell for sure now. If I would have confessed, I could have prevented the biggest calamity that had occurred at St. Anthony’s School since Ricky Damario returned barefooted after the nun told him to go home and change out of his Beatle Boots.

But I was in third grade. What would my buddies say if they knew I pooped my pants? Wanda Garnett had found it on the floor stinking to the high heavens. And she raised her hand faster than an imperfect soul plummets to purgatory.

Sister sent the boys and girls in pairs to inspect each other’s underwear in the bathrooms. No one had copped to the mishap but surely she was determined to get to the bottom of who shit on the floor.

I’ll bet it was Hobson, murmured James Geary. Hobson was the biggest girl in class. Geary swore he had seen her devour four hot dogs on hot dog day.

I felt like Jimmy Cagney going to the chair but by a stroke of luck, my best buddy accompanied me for the inspection. We followed Geary and Willie Gabinski to the bathrooms as we marched by the seventh and eight grade classrooms.

Heads turned, curious as to such an unscheduled outing.

Milt Bartholomew and Simon Barksdale entered the first stall and Geary and Gabinski shuffled off to the second. Paul Damario and I crowded into the third and stared at each other in the stall like a couple gunfighters facing off in the street.

I trembled. Not only because of the pile of poop in my briefs but because I was so self conscious. I barely peeked at myself down there let alone look at what was beneath another boys’ belt. There were no brothers getting dressed with me in the morning.

Paul went first, dropping his drawers and pulling ’em up so quick I barely noticed the cowboys and Indians on them. It was my turn as I fumbled with my buckle and began to whimper. Soft puppy dog tears emerged. I did it! I couldn’t help it! Don’t tell! Please!

Paul winced. His large elfin ears practically twitched. He looked like he would rather be anywhere else in the world but in that commode. Of course, I won’t snitch, Keough. I don’t spy for no nun!

The weight of the world slid off of my back. As we emerged from the bathroom, I let out a loogie like I was leaving a saloon. No one would know I was a pussy.

As our class marched from the inspection I counted bubble gum stains on the cement that had been spit out since my mom wore saddle shoes to the school.

When we went back to the classroom, the nun headed to the blackboard. She gritted her teeth and began pushing the chalk into the board, darkening a large dot in the soul she had drawn at the beginning of the year to show an example of the magnitude of sins. I always thought the soul looked like a stomach the way she drew it, but this was the biggest dot she had ever created. Even bigger than the dot she drew to display how big a sin Ireland Coilean committed when he stole a dill pickle from Ott’s grocery store. Dust was filtering through the rays of sun that snuck through the blinds as she ground the chalk into the board. Sister kept going round and round the circle until I was almost dizzy.

When you don’t confess your sin, when you lie and hide the truth from our Lord, your sin grows and grows! She screamed, while continuing to enlarge the circle like a fireball in Hades.

Now, does that person want to confess? It’s your last chance. It’s still only a venial sin if you tell on yourself. But if your companion tells on you… She looked aloft to the Lord.

Eight- year - old eyes scanned the room, some meeting, some avoiding. But nary an eye finding a hand raised in the air to tell.

Okay you’ve had your chance! Sister shrieked. Now who can tell us about the partner that will not confess!

I closed my eyes and prayed silently. I concentrated hard as brow beaded with sweat. I envisioned the Lord just as Sister taught me to. I tried hard to not think of something bad. I imagined what the Holy Trinity would look like if it appeared to me. I saw the snow white dove that represented the Holy Spirit. And by the birds side was Jesus with palms aloft displaying the holes in his hands from the nails of the cross. God the Father, with a snowy beard stood solidly behind them.

I stole a glance at Paul, who was staring at his desktop.

Sister shook. She removed the granny glasses that framed her gray, pickled face. Her eyes got as big as those of a hoot owl. She squeezed her rosary beads so hard she must have rubbed the black off. And then the nun lurched over to the desk and grabbed a pencil. When you lie! When you sin! You must learn to suffer for Jesus Christ! The nun croaked.

Upward went the pencil and down into the arm it plunged as she began to stab herself. Not with the tenderness of a junkie awaiting the rush; more akin to the rapid fire gouging administered by a wigged Tony Perkins on Janet Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho shower scene.

Wanda Garnett screamed. Father Flanigan came running in from the rectory. It was the only time I had ever seen Father in the classroom except for when the priest handed out report cards. By then Sister was sitting at her desk, babbling. Her sleeve was stained a crimson red. She looked right through Father with vacant eyes and dropped the pencil. He led her out the door.

It was so quiet you could almost hear Jesus groan on the cross.

We never saw her again. Joan Jennings told us her mom said they shipped her to Peru.

GRANDMA’S HOUSE

LUCKILY, I HAD Grandma to confide in. Her house was but a block from St. Anthony’s. Roberta and I would wait there until mom got off work from the bank. I could talk to Grandma about anything. She had a sparkle in her eye despite two bad marriages. She possessed an impish grin that could have been traded for a pot of gold from a leprechaun. Her hair was cut in a pixie that was all the rage in the roaring twenties when surely she was toasted a time or two. She was still a looker. She had been a telephone operator for forty years and now bided her time with her two poodles Martini and Jo Jo and grandchildren.

When I got to the house, Grandma was in bed watching Perry Mason. She spent a lot of time in bed for she had a bad back. When the pain became unbearable, a nip out of the bottle of Thunderbird stashed behind the pancake mix served as a remedy.

C’mon, Twilight Zone is almost on! she said, as she patted the bed. I jumped on it and climbed next to her. Then I remembered my dirty drawers and told her I’d be back. I took a bath after which I left the bathroom through the spare bedroom, thus avoiding her room. I made my way into the kitchen and found a Stater Brothers Market paper bag. I returned the roundabout way to the bathroom and put my nasty underwear in the bag. Creeping like Bela Lugosi in the night I snuck out the back door and behind the garage, I buried my drawers.

What’s going on? Why the long face? She asked upon my return. Grandma gave me that Irish grin that reminded me that I could tell her anything. I also knew that she wouldn’t tell mom. Still, I was ashamed. Rod Serling’s husky voice brought me back to earth and I looked to the tube and saw him holding his customary cigarette. He could explain it, I thought. He knew everything.

I pooped my pants, I blurted.

And sister got mad because I didn’t tell and she…….

Grandma gave me a hug and a kiss. You didn’t do anything wrong. It was an accident. She pulled me next to her and I felt secure snuggled safely in the confines of her mew mew.

Please don’t tell mom! I begged. She smiled, said she wouldn’t and had me fetch a pack of Kools at Mr. Ott’s. Take a quarter for yourself.

I grabbed her purse and she gave me a dollar bill to take. Before heading across the street to Ott’s grocery store, I paused to remove the grate from the heater located on the floor of the family room to see if a vagabond quarter had rolled inside the lip. I had once scored a Liberty head dollar that my Uncle Pete said if I kept and got as old as him, I’d be a rich man. But alas, I discovered but an army man whose face had melted off.

Mr. Ott was a gruff, intimidating store keeper, disillusioned and hardened by generations of kids ripping him off. He escaped Deutschland along with his wife Rita before WW II. His store was a cookie cutter of those in the days before Seven Eleven and Circle K exterminated the mom and pop shops. His was a neighborhood mart with a dill pickle jar on the counter and a freezer filled with pop at the end of the aisle. The store was no larger than my grandma’s living room.

Ott watched you like a hawk from beneath those black framed glasses. I never knew him to give me a greeting. His shelves were full of canned goods but it was the candy counter that sent us kids into a tizzy.

He was perhaps 70 then, though everyone seemed a hundred years old if they had but a sliver of gray when you’re a kid. He knew me, because Grandma often had his wife over rehashing the old days.

I ordered the pack of Kools and stood there surveying the candy shelf.

‘Take a picture why don’t ya! snarled Mr. Ott. Whatcha’ waitin’ for, a cab?"

There were ‘Flickas,’ named for a distant uncle my dad once joshed me. And licorice bites, of which I adored but could constantly be found in my grandmother’s candy dish and thus not deserving of my current investment. Individually wrapped jawbreakers of the sort that Eddie Taylor cracked his tooth on were lined up like bowling balls. Milk Duds and tootsie rolls cajoled me as did one of my favorites, Jolly Rancher cherry sticks. A Sugar Daddy said ‘look my way,’ while its offspring, Sugar Babies, surrounded him. Candy Cigarettes whispered to me take a toke. Still if I wanted, a dill pickle would do and I’d have a quarter left over.

C’mon, the sands of time are blowing in my face, gruffly gasped Ott.

I grabbed a Black Cow and hustled across the street and back into the safe confines of my grandma’s bed.

Grandma and her bed provided such a snug solace when we watched scary shows. But on this trying day, the Twilight Zone episode both chilled and comforted me. Little Billy Mumy, a familiar face in the serial, was quite close with his grandmother in this particular episode.

Too close from his parents’ perspective. Mummy’s character whiled away the hours with a toy telephone, talking to his grandmother, who gave him the gift. When she passed away, he continued to chat. His phone had a prefix to the beyond. Grandma selfishly asked the boy to join her and suddenly, he burst out of the house and took a dive in the front yard gold fish pond. His father, who had sneered at the imaginary conversations, grabbed the receiver.

Mom, if you can hear me, give me back my boy! He hasn’t played his first baseball game! Had his first kiss! It’s not his time!

Moments later, Mumy was coughing up water.

I gave my grandma a hug.

TURNTABLE TIME

GRANDMA, TRUE TO her word, didn’t tell mom about my mishap. Mom never even asked me about the incident and I sure as heck didn’t bring it up. We got a lay teacher, Mrs. Curtain. She was cute as a button. Had the bee hive hairdo that was all the rage in the 60’s.

After the harrowing nun episode, I was sure glad it was Saturday. I didn’t even mind doing my chores as I pitched in to the never-ending battle with the hill. The hill was the slope that separated our house from the canyon. The weeds constantly assailed it from the canyon like Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. And it was always me that beat them back down with my hoe. Today was a good day though as I unearthed a long since given up for dead army man. He was a Japanese colonel brandishing a samurai sword. The officer had been buried when his entrenchment caved in during an allied assault backed up with artillery salvos of dirt clods. I placed him back in the box with Nazi Storm Troopers, ‘Injuns’, Calvary troopers, French Foreign Legionnaires, Johnny Rebs’, blue bellies and dinosaurs.

I hung up my hoe and took the hose and washed the sod off the Jap officer. Feeling content, I surveyed my canyon domain like my officer would have done with binoculars atop Iwo Jima. My two little sisters were safe, nestled in the grass island fed by the washing machine suds that emptied out of the pipe. There was no sewer system on Club Dr. in those days, just a brick septic tank. The grass grew at the base of the hill, awash in a sea of brown sage. There my siblings whiled away the hours often accompanied by the guinea pigs or rabbits they raised.

The canyon was virgin then. A thousand rocks hid a thousand treasures. Many a Saturday afternoon I spent unearthing those rocks. Beneath them you could find a skink, a scaly centipede or perhaps a tarantula. Once I even caught a baby cottontail.

Feeling wistful, I headed for the house, passing under the tree whose occupant once caused mom to toss the garbage in the air. Taking the trash out one eve, she was surprised by the snout of a California King snake that was poking around in the tree in search of a meal of bird eggs.

I went inside the house and laid down in front of mom’s Hi Fi that was situated in our sunken living room. It could have been such a beautiful room what with five large bay windows that overlooked the canyon. But times were tight and since dad left we hadn’t viewed the canyon visage. The windows were taped up with tin foil so the sun wouldn’t discolor the carpet. We couldn’t afford blinds or shades. Many of the walls were still drywall. A project put on hold due to lack of love and money.

No matter though, there were no Dominican nuns within 10 miles. It was now time to strap on my six guns and face my fears out on the street. I put Johnny Western on the turntable and in a moment my spurs were a jingling’. Johnny Western’s lone claim to fame would be for warbling ‘Palladin,’ the theme song for the early sixties Richard Boone TV series of the same name.

"Have gun will travel reads the card of a man

A knight without armor in a savage land

His fast gun for hire heeds the calling wind

A soldier of fortune is the man called …. Palladin’’

My favorite song though on the 33 was ‘Nineteen men.’ A ditty chronicling a cowpoke on the run from some hang happy vigilantes. In the background was the clip pity clop of the horse’s hooves as it tried to outrun its master’s pursuers.

"The desert winds are howling and its cold out here at night

But I got a keep a moving or stand and make my fight

Cause there’s nineteen men a chasing me and my ponies getting tired

I killed a man in Laramie for calling me a liar’’

Lying on the carpet, staring at the dust dancing through the sun’s rays that peeked through the foil, I imagined myself pulling the scarf up over my nose, braving the whirling desert sands blowing about me. A comely woman brushed away a tear as I took off on my pinto in a cloud of dust.

Being the only man in the family, it got lonely at times. Mom’s collection of 100 some LPs served as my friends. An album cover of The Coasters smiling and jiving had to have been snapped when dad was courting mom. Certainly they had listened to ‘Along Came Jones,’ in better times, before dad had moved out. Yes, I walked hand in hand with imagination when the records spun around.

When I dropped Johnny Horton’s ‘Comanche the Brave Horse’ on the turntable, I surveyed the battlefield and spotted the horse lying by the general’s feet. Yellow Hair’s troopers were strewn about minus their scalps. Another 33 rpm and I was stuck in a Laos prison with Sgt. Barry Sadler and other Green Berets just thirsting for a slug of ‘Bamiba.’

My barking black lab Lobo snapped me out of my record listening reverie as he heralded the arrival of my next door neighbor, Chris.

Chris was huffing already, having inhaled a Bonanza sized breakfast and hauling a canteen full of Kool-Aid strapped over his Pendleton. Milk crusts still rode his chubby cheeks.

A sub machine gun, a replica of the one that Vic Morrow carried in the 60’s TV series Combat, hung over the other shoulder.

C’mon Keough! We got Krauts to kill!

A funny statement when you think about it. For his last name was Brandt, the same name featured on a label of a snifter of Apfel wine from Deutschland that his parents displayed in the kitchen windows along with a bunch of purple antique bottles they had dug up from old stagecoach stops. A last name as German as a Stuka dive-bomber.

We were all over the map when it came to playing war games. There was no allegiance to any side though I had a special fondness for the Nazi storm trooper uniform. I had already been reprimanded by my grandfather when I gave him a click of my hiking boots and a Heil Hitler salute. Swastikas were penciled all