chapter twenty one
and
who said so impudently and irreverently
it couldn't really have been his own Holy Immanence
Fred Waring!
his own very politically savvy self?!
Fred was famous for conducting with his very expressive bare hands
Bill turned the
tape player down a little.
The Pennsylvanians
were full-steam into Battle Hymn by now:
He hath loosed
the fate-ful light-ning
Of His ter-ri-ble
swift sword:...
His truth is
mar-ching on....
"That was way
back?" mj asked.
"When Fred had his
heart attack," Bill said. "And Fred wanted to see me. And oh,
there was a big hullabaloo about him wanting to see me; and I
had to go over and see
Mj grunted sadly,
hating the thought of old age.
Piano bass notes
came into the room tremulo
and very, very softly. The glee club followed, religiously
subdued, without accompaniment and steeped in emotional Waring
rubato:
In the
beauooo-teeey of the lih-lieeees... Christ!—
"And I went to see
him. There was a phone next to him, hah," Bill laughed, "next
to his bed. The phone rang." Bill used a weak hoarse whisper
for a sick, weak Fred: 'Ohh, I told them.. not to.. put any..
calls.. through'."
...Was booohrn
a-cross the seeeeeea...
"That's just about
the way he was talkin'. And it was right after I said, 'How ya
feeling’? I expected to see a dying man, and he looked it."
...With a glo-ry
in his bo-som...
"He said, 'Bill, I
was thinking.. about.. nineteen seventy six’," Bill's voice
was faint and hoarse, ‘Bicenten-nial.. suggestions you would
have.. for.. The World Chorus’. He was afraid he was dying. I
don't know. He said, 'Now listen.. we should get started on
that right away.. listen.. I won't be able to work on it for
quite a while, so I expect you to carry the ball’."
...that...
trans-figures yoooooou and meeeeee...
"My hair rose. I
said to myself, ‘This is no dying man, he's not gonna let
himself die’. It was frightening that the man is laying there
in bed right after he'd only been in the hospital four days,
thinking about nineteen-seventy-six, so I was standing there
startled by it."
Aaaas heeee died
to make men hohh-lyee....
The women swelled
to forte. They
stretched themselves tall and shrieked exquisitely like so
many musical statues of liberty:
Let us liihve to
make mehhn freeeee!...
"I was standing by
the bed and the phone rang. He said, 'Will you get that.. I
told them not to let any calls go through.. and they call..
and they heard me.... It's
stupidity.. stupidity'.
"I said, 'Don't get
shook up! I'll answer the phone'."
While God. Is.
Mar. Ching....
B-b-b-Ba-ba-ba-Ba-ba-ba...
"I picked up the
phone and a loud bass voice said, 'Hello, Fred’?"
The unusual tone of
Bill's voice electrified the living room.
"I thought the
voice sounded familiar," Bill gagged on a laugh.
Gloooh-ry,
gloooh-ry, haa –
Ba-ba-ba-BUM!
Ba-ba-ba-BUM BUM BUM...
"I said, 'No. This
is Bill’."
Bill puffed his
chest and used the electrifying bass voice again: "'This is
President Nixon. Uh, is Mr. Waring awake’?"
Bill turned,
covering the imaginary mouthpiece, and whispered to an
imaginary Fred, "'It's The President'!"
Bill's Fred was
raspy, irascible: "'President of WHAT'?"
Haaa-B-b-b-le-
loooo-B-b-b-BUM
oooou-B-b-b-BUM
YAH! BUM BUM BUM BUM
BUM...
Bill whispered, "I
said, 'President Nixon’!" Bill looked horror-stricken. "You
don't expect to pick the phone up and it's the President of
the
"'N he says, 'Hand
me the phone, I'll take it’, and he says, 'Hello’?" Bill grew
louder, still hoarse: "'Yes, much better, Mr. President. Yes,
Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President... Well, thank you for
calling, Mr. President’, and he handed the phone back to me
and I hung it up!"
Bill sipped his
drink with so much moment that no one spoke.
...-oooooooooooooooo-YAH...
He looked at the
oak table as the Pennsylvanians breathed in, during a Grand
Pause. He seemed to acknowledge the White House Christmas
Concert tape that was still playing on the table, and turned
it up again.
...Hih Ztroooo
thhih zmaaar cheeee ngaaaaaaaaaawn!
BUM-ba-ba-BUM-ba-ba-BUM-ba-ba-BUM-ba-ba-BOOM.
b-b-b-B O O M
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-MEHHHHNNN C R A S H !
The conclusion of
the brass-and-drum version of 'Battle Hymn' assured Fred a
place in American heaven if nothing else did.
On a Secret Service
TV monitor in mj lorenzo’s mind, Fred turned to stand for a
final furious applause, making farewells and whispering
fondly, “Bye, Mamie; Mrs. Agnew, it was a pleasure to meet
you.” Then turning with a quip and a gesture to the audience,
"This is Mr. Richard Nixon, President of the
No one knew what
had prompted that remark either. Fred was returning the mike
to the President, but it seemed more like an inside joke. And
they gave Fred final plaudits as he neared the door. He turned
back and stopped. His Commander in Chief wanted something.
The President said
from the floor mike, "We want to express our... very special
thanks to Fred Waring... and the Pennsylvanians and all those
who have entertained us so... very beautifully tonight. I'm
given sometimes, my very objective critics will say, to
overstatement. So I will follow that error perhaps... in the
statement I will now make.
"The many years
that... I have had the privilege along with many of you of
visiting this House at Christmas season... never have I seen
the House more beautifully decorated.
"Secondly,…" a
sufficient number clapped: "I have had the opportunity of
being,...not only in this House but in... some of the great
houses of the world at Christmastime and heard... fine musical
programs. Never have I heard a more...," he sought the mot juste, "...SPLENDID…
Christmas musical program than Fred Waring's program tonight."
The audience
rendered up a grave attribution which prolonged itself
aplenty, then died on a dime.
"And, I will only
say in conclusion... in the presence of the Secretary of the
Treasury... that... we only wish you... Fred... that... we
could... pay you w-what –.."
Scattered giggles
could be heard.
"....it's WORTH, but we can't,
because we can't deduct it, so you'll just hafta take care of
it yrSELF."
The audience
coughed a few awkward loud laughs and claps. Fred bowed. He
was glowing ear to rear at the roast. And the psychic viewing
screen in the mirror inside mj’s unusually creative head
showed that Fred Waring had let go, for a moment, of
everything not in his control. For the second time in two
days, deep inside, Fred Waring loved with a full and vibrating
heart every single incarnation of Vishnu that had ever visited
the planet with graceful blessing, especially himself. He rose
from his low bow to the President of the
Now mj saw on his huge,
wall-mirror-sized TV screen, a bald and big-eyed, weary Ike
Eisenhower, saying,
“...We want democracy to survive for
all generations... not to become the insolvent phantom of
tomorrow...”1
Ike was perfectly
sincere and convincing, as always, and as Nixon
seemed to be never.
“...This world of ours... must avoid
becoming a community of... fear and hate and be... a proud
confederation of mutual trust.... Such a confederation must be
one of equals...”2
White House Secret Service File
on
William S. Blackburn
CLASSIFIED: PERSONAL
AND CONFIDENTIAL
Exhibit #7e, also part of the Dec. 15 1972 wire from
the Gatehouse:
P.P.P.P.P.S. Dick, one more word of caution from
Ike. Always remember the part I've underlined here,
BEFORE you ever utter another STUP-ID-ity
on some tape for posterity:
“...I confess that I lay down my
official responsibilities in this field with a definite
sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror
and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that
ANOTHER WAR COULD UTTERLY DESTROY THIS CIVILIZATION which
has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of
years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in
sight.”3
In other words, Dick Nixon, Ike was speaking to
you more than to anyone else that night, in reality, because
he knew you would take his place as President
one sad day soon, just as you did, and he was trying to get
across to you, in
effect, in so many plain words, Dick, that: if you can't
stand the heat, Dick Nixon, then get out of the
damn kitchen NOW. Mankind's greatest civilization is
at stake, mankind’s greatest civilization is burning at
the stake, and the stake, the steak is burning at your
own damn kitchen, Dick. MANKIND'S GREATEST
CIVILIZATION is burning to a crisp in your kitchen at the
steak house, I mean the White House, your
crazy damn White House, Dick, our civilization, yours
and mine, and you are adding fool to the fire. fW
And with that rant
from Fred Waring, once mj lorenzo had combined it with the
last of the interview, as the Legs
pundits claimed in their popular conference presentations for
years, he felt ‘fully satisfied with his Waring trilogy, and
fully satisfied that it was over and done with’; because, mj
had ‘salvaged Fred Waring and himself too’; because he knew, as they said,
that he, mj lorenzo, was like Fred, that he, like Fred, had
been taught the right things. Fred’s mother had educated him
as to what was right. He had just kept forgetting whenever he
got too big for his britches, just like mj lorenzo forgot
sometimes to keep it humble. And so young Dr. Lorenzo ended
his trilogy and let it go at that, and rarely commented in
public on the Waring trilogy after that; even though he had
written all three of his Waring books ‘his very own brilliant
self’, as Legs
pundits forever sang, and ‘should have been very proud of all
three of his Waring books and talked about them a lot more
than he did’.
But, ‘maybe’, as some of mj’s very most astute pundits thought, even those like Sammy Martinez who knew him better than anyone else did: ‘maybe’, as they said, he shied away from the trilogy forever after writing it because ‘every one of his three Waring books always confronted mj lorenzo a little too much with his own self’, the self, the egotistical selfish self which he usually on most days of the week, like all of us, tended to feel more comfortable forgetting existed; even as saintly and superior as he was and seemed to be – to certain admirers and followers and pundits – ‘AS SAINTLY AS HE TRULY WAS IN ALL REALITY, CONSIDERING HE WAS JUST HUMAN LIKE THE REST OF US’, as they put it once in a very serious letter to The Catholic Digest. Mj lorenzo ‘avoided the trilogy to avoid the truth and the pain that the truth caused him’, said his Legs pundits. For after all, as they added, Jesus Christ did not go around talking about his forty days of temptation in the wilderness very often, and it had to be for a simple and good reason, the same reason mj preferred to promote his first book, The Remaking, rather than talk about his subsequent Waring trilogy.4
And ‘such shocking
put-downs of mj lorenzo as these’, said ‘culture hero’ pundits
later, were among the ‘gross underestimations of mj lorenzo’
that brought them back from ten years of silence in 1995, to
their former role as mj lorenzo’s very most ardent defenders
and explicators.
Bill stopped the
machine on the White House Christmas Concert tape, which was
just static and silence by now – Clickkk!
1
Eisenhower, Dwight D., "Farewell Address". Department of State
Bulletin, February 6, 1961. In Annals of
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
4
In other words, mj lorenzo found Fred Waring fascinating, said
some, because mj himself, at times, had egomaniac and temper
problems, similar to Fred’s.
