Man walks out on stage as storm rolls in

The Column: 04.08.24

I did my solo stand-up act in Ohio last week and in the midst of a story, the auditorium shook with a blast of thunder. I paused. The audience laughed. Another roll of thunder. And I started singing, “How Great Thou Art,” with the line, “I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,” and the audience joined in en masse, they knew the words, they sang it so beautifully, the chorus drowned out the thunder. I was telling a story about me as a teenager necking with a girl in a car and when thunder struck again, I looked up at the ceiling, addressing the Lord, and said, “It was her idea, it wasn’t mine. She unbuttoned my shirt.”

I loved that audience dearly and gave them a good ninety minutes and afterward a distinguished man stopped by to shake hands. Back when, he’d heard me on the radio. I said, “I detect an air of authority about you. You’re the president of something.” He said he was a retired Army major; he’d commanded a tank battalion. “Where?” I said. “Vietnam,” he said. I said I’d never heard of tanks used in Vietnam. He said, “That’s because they would’ve sunk four feet down in the Delta and so they were useless. When we got there, we became infantry.”

I said, “You’re looking at a draft dodger.” I felt I owed it to him. I said that I was ordered to report for induction and I wrote to the draft board and told them why I wouldn’t go and I didn’t. I waited for the knock on the door and it never came. So I did a radio show for fifty years without using my name. He looked me in the eye and said, “You did the right thing.” It was a profound moment. I felt that an accommodation had been made. I was forgiven by a man who had earned that right. There was no need to say more.

The next morning at the hotel I ran into a couple who’d been to the show and said they liked it. Back when I was more hip, I took the audience for granted and now I don’t. The woman worked for Campbell’s Soup and the man was a painting contractor, they’d been married 43 years, had driven three hours to see the show, and we stood around and talked for a while, and I was not a celebrity to them, I was sort of a relative. They each came from a large family, as do I; their mothers had been canners, so was mine; they had lost a young son to epilepsy, I lost a brother and a grandson. I have no idea if they are Republicans or Democrats; I didn’t think to ask.

I went into radio for which I had no aptitude but I was old enough to remember radio in its prime, the amiable hosts, the comedians, the adventure stories, and I became briefly a big deal back in the Eighties and invented Lake Wobegon and Guy Noir and the cowboys Dusty and Lefty and the American Duct Tape Council and the Federated Organization of Associations and now that I’m off the air, my audience is a fraction of what it once was but it’s so much more fun now. A keen sense of mortality makes each day sort of splendid and I loved meeting the major and the painter and the soup lady. I loved meeting the enema lady.

Years ago, I went to a clinic to have my prostate seen to and I lay on my side in a small dark room where the woman apologized to me and then began the procedure, and when the tube was in and the water was flowing, she said, “I have to tell you that I’m a big fan of your show.” She said, “I think your singing has improved a lot over the years.” “Thank you,” I said. She said, “Lie here until you feel a compelling urge to vacate and then get up and go to the toilet.” And then she said, “Who wrote that song about ‘these are the days’? Did you?”

“No, Van Morrison did,” and I quoted the lines, These are the days now that we must savor; we must enjoy while we can. These are the days that will last forever; you’ve got to hold them in your hand. And I do. Cherish the day, my friend. Each one is illuminated by small miracles.

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