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Folk Duo! (an unpublished excerpt)
Copyright 2006 by Alfred Dana Arioli
 I,
Dana, had agreed with my Mother and Father that I would become
a doctor, and enrolled in a pre-medical program at Tufts University
in 1960. In keeping with this plan, about a year later I was driving
around the Eastern United States as half of a folksinging duo.
This was Tufts' special curriculum for prospective doctors:
first they flunked them out, then they made them become folksinging
duos, a new initiative to integrate medical care with the arts.
Not
that I was that devoted to the arts, either. I had taken classical
piano lessons from age six to thirteen. I could play "Hungarian
Rhapsody" with the appropriate drama, and
evidently was able to play "Solfegietto" at quite a remarkable
speed for a nine-year old. My heart wasn't in it, though. I stopped
practicing,quit taking piano lessons and broke my Mother's heart.
My tastes shifted to popular music, especially Country and Western.
I could play the guitar and imitate Ferlin Husky singing "A
Falling Star." I
could sound like Conway Twitty for three-and-a-half words. This
could have been a natural resumption of an earlier development,
because I liked Country-Western and Pop music before I took piano
lessons. In the basement, though we had thick 78 rpm records of
Lili Pons and Enrico Caruso which I listened to over and over,
we also had Hank Williams singing "Cold, Cold Heart" and
I learned it. I sang popular songs like Nat King Cole's "Mona
Lisa." My mother thought I sounded
just like Nat King Cole and insisted I sing "Mona Lisa" or "They
Tried To Tell Us We're Too Young" to company. Deep down I
knew I didn't sound like Nat King Cole, though if there had been
a contest for 4-year-old white Nat King Cole sound-alikes in the
greater Boston area, I might have done pretty well.
I was sixteen now, old enough to drive, at a party
where the Mother was a Beatnik and served third-pressing-of-the-grapes
red wine that turned your teeth black and there were a lot of different
kinds of people and the sweet young vibrato of Joan Baez sank into
my soul. I became imprinted on folk music. I learned minor chords
and special folk strums, sang of East Virginia and prison walls
around me. The lyrics really didn't matter; after all, if I could
get through Ferlin Husky's "A Falling Star," I could
get through anything. What was important was the time and the setting.
I was biochemically primed to be thrilled. If things had been a
little different, perhaps I'd have become immersed in Polka, as
so many others have done.
I, Brown, have tightened the last knurled knob on
the last of the improvised universal joints that will enable my
variation of the model crane not only to lift designated objects,
but also to invert them so they may be placed on a simulated assembly
line. For this
I will be awarded an achievement medal from the Gilbert Erector
Set Company, and from there I can easily imagine the short step
to fabrication of my interplanetary atomic glider, astride which
I shall ward off the insectoid invaders that dare to threaten humanity.
I also learn to play the banjo.
I agree with my Mother and Father, in their wisdom
approaching that of Dana's, that I will help to defray the cost
of my Tufts University education by accepting an ROTC scholarship. The
combination of studies and marching in uniform weighs heavily on
my impatient and expansive imagination and ambitions. While
preparing for final exams by perfecting a triple pass combination
on a tabletop hockey game, I find out that the Kingston Trio is
making $20,000 a week in Vegas. Quickly I assemble friends into
a folk group which I name the Nomads Five. At our first performance,
the Master of Ceremonies introduces us as "The Nimrods, five
young men who imitate the Kingston Trio." Then, before we
start to sing, he interviews us one-by-one and asks us how tall
we are and how much we weigh. But I am not discouraged.
I disband the group and raise my standards. My friend
Dana can really sing. I can really play guitar and banjo.
There are plenty of folk trios, quartets, quintets and larger,
but, my friend, how many folk DUOS are there? Eh? Bingo!. I
opted for that same Tufts arts initiative and left college to go
on the road with Dana. The
details of our plan were that we would work out great songs, perform
them all over the country and become rich and famous. And
we would never, until now, disclose our heights.
It is a frigid winter morning there at the trailer
park in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey in 1962. The Folk Duo is sleeping
in the underscale twin beds at the back of their 24 foot house
trailer. Brown, the tall one at 6 feet 6 inches, must cantilever
his legs over the bottom corner of the bed and into the narrow
passage, flanked by bathroom and closet, that leads to the kitchen/dining/living/entry
area at the front. He tosses and turns. Dana, the short one at
6 feet 1 inch, has managed to find a comfortable position and sleeps
soundly. He always sleeps soundly, and for extremely long periods
of time, but now he stirs. The folk duo rises, their breath sharply
visible in the air. They each have slept in two pairs of pants,
two pairs of socks, sweaters, jackets. This is also their dress
for the coming day. Events press upon them. Their 3 dollar per
day hook-up fee is overdue. The owner/manager of the facility is
threatening to turn off their electricity. For three days they
have been out of bottled gas. They can't use the special gas lights
or the gas stove. They can't take showers, because the water is
heated by a special gas furnace which also now does not supply
heat for their living quarters. During the night the toilet and
septic lines have frozen. Snow tracked in the night before is still
on the floor. They have appointments today with two record executives
and a booking agency in the city, and they have between them exactly
fifty cents, just enough to get over the George Washington Bridge.
Their car, a 1955 Packard, has a dead battery, but they have parked
facing down a mild incline, and if they can push it over a particularly
high speed bump, they can jump in, pop the clutch, and get the
engine going. They feel confident about this maneuver, having completed
it several times.
Emerging stiffly, expletives muffled by raised collars,
they slide sideways through the passage and into the kitchen/dining/living/entry
area. Brown occupies the center of the area so his head can protrude
into the raised roof vent, enabling him to stand up almost straight.
He carefully adjusts the position of his head to prevent upright
tufts of hair from being caught in the screen. His eyes are just
below the level of the ceiling. Dana slumps onto the underscale
couch, avoiding the sharp edges. They consider their options. First,
breakfast. The only item in the cupboard is a box of Uncle Sam's
Laxative Cereal bought as a joke for unremembered reasons when
the trailer was new, six months ago. There is very cold milk in
the dead refrigerator. Brown reads the information from the box
of cereal aloud while Dana listens, trying to determine the strength
of the laxative effect. The toilet doesn't work but they're hungry.
Hunger wins, and they crunch through modest portions together at
the desk/counter/dining table...
The car-pushing works perfectly. The interviews with
record executives and booking agency land them a recording contract
and the promise of a string of jobs across the country. The head
of the booking agency, a distinguished character who is greeted
at the private club where he takes the folk duo to lunch with the
phrase "the usual, sir?" puts in their hands as they
part literally dozens of dollars. Sated, rich, confident,
they return across the George Washington Bridge toward the trailer
park, eager to get the gas heater and electricity going again so
they can plan their tour. The
best is yet to come.
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