Christmas Carroll

By James Potter

WHAT IF three young teens - Codge, Stump, and Chick - and their Salt Lake City rock and roll band Beat The Needles got the harebrained scheme to write an offbeat yuletide tune for Miss December then secretly invite her to their churches school sponsored Catholic Youth Organization Christmas fund raiser with the intention of performing the song live in front of the priests, nuns, family, parishioners, and classmates simply to impress her? Would the priests get hot under the collar? Or the nun ́s resort to punitive bad habits? What would the parishioners say? And will the youthful band survive to play another day or succumb to Old Lang Syne?

“Santa please remember, pretty Miss December. Bring me Christmas Carroll for a Merry Christmas!” - Beat The Needles

Christmas Carroll is an uproarious coming of age story pitting innocence and naïveté against the unbending ironclad will of the religious and social right...as in I ́m right, you ́re wrong!

“Well, look at your nose!” - Stump Baker

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Potter
• Release date: Sep 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370802371

James Potter

WHAT IF three young teens - Codge, Stump, and Chick - and their Salt Lake City rock and roll band Beat The Needles got the harebrained scheme to write an offbeat yuletide tune for Miss December then secretly invite her to their churches school sponsored Catholic Youth Organization Christmas fund raiser with the intention of performing the song live in front of the priests, nuns, family, parishioners, and classmates simply to impress her? Would the priests get hot under the collar? Or the nun ́s resort to punitive bad habits? What would the parishioners say? And will the youthful band survive to play another day or succumb to Old Lang Syne? “Santa please remember, pretty Miss December. Bring me Christmas Carroll for a Merry Christmas!” - Beat The Needles Christmas Carroll is an uproarious coming of age story pitting innocence and naïveté against the unbending ironclad will of the religious and social right...as in I ́m right, you ́re wrong! “Well, look at your nose!” - Stump Baker

Book preview

Christmas Carroll

James Christopher Potter

Copyright © 2016 by James Christopher Potter

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in book review

Printer in the United States of America

First Printing, 2016

James Christopher Potter Publishing

3041 Winterberry Drive

Roanoke, Virginia 24018

WWW.NB3ROCKS.COM

[e-mail]

This book is fractured memoir. I have tried to recreate events, locales and conversations from my memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity in some instances I have changed the names of individuals and places, I may have changed some identifying characteristics and details such as physical properties, occupations and places of residence.

Drum set photo on book cover is reprinted with the kind permission of its owner Gary Astridge of ringosbeatlekits.com. Thanks Gary!

Climb Ev’ry Mountain

Copyright (c) 1959 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein

Copyright Renewed

Williamson Music (ASCAP), an Imagem Company owner of publication and allied rights throughout the world.

International Copyright Secured All rights Reserved Used by permission

You’ll Never Walk Alone

Copyright (c) 1945 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein

Copyright Renewed

Williamson Music (ASCAP), an Imagem Company owner of publication and allied rights throughout the world.

International Copyright Secured All rights Reserved Used by permission

For Codge, Stump, and Chick. It was the best of times!

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE - OLD LANG SYNE

CHAPTER ONE - THE RUSE

CHAPTER TWO - GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER?

CHAPTER THREE - THIS MUST BE THE PLACE

CHAPTER FOUR - BREAKING AND ENTERING

CHAPTER FIVE - CARROLL NOEL HOLLY

CHAPTER SIX - THE MOTOROLA MOMENT

CHAPTER SEVEN - AD LIBS

CHAPTER EIGHT - IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

CHAPTER NINE - NIGHTMARE THEATER

CHAPTER TEN - GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY

CHAPTER ELEVEN - GRAND THEFT AUTO

CHAPTER TWELVE - RUMOR MILL

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - CHRISTMAS CARROLL

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - KONG

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - FALL OUT

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - HELL FIRE

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - INTERCESSORY GRACES

PROLOGUE - OLD LANG SYNE

I live a very simple life. I’m lazy, insecure, laugh like a hyena, unquestionably innocent, and disturbingly naive (just the other day I learned what doo-doo wop is). All I ever think about is playing in the band with my older brother Codge and our best friend Nic while fantasizing about the Betty and Veronica of my 8th grade class, or Linda-Lynda who have absolutely no knowledge of my existence. To them I’m just a blob. Perhaps this explains why a classmate once described me looking like yesterdays leftover oatmeal. So I live in my own shadow, obsess over sin, love The Beatles, and hate fruitcake and peas. I suppose I’m humdrum. Maybe a little wishy washy. Certainly not a risk taker. Until that one Friday afternoon during the first day of Christmas break, when Codge, Nic, and I recklessly played with fire and got burned. Suddenly, our practice pad became ground zero and mushroomed into a nuclear holocaust generating a fireball and shockwave overwhelming our unsophisticated senses. This was way beyond a Motorola moment! Issac Newton once premised that a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted by an outside force. Based on Newton’s universal law, it would require a mountain the size of Vesuvius to arrest the ensuing fallout. Our indiscretion morphed into a full blown panic! How you ask? We wrote a Christmas Carol. Yep, a harmless Christmas Carol. It begins like this.

I can hardly wait for Christmas

Santa grant my barest wishes

Bring me Christmas Carroll

For a Merry Christmas

Admittedly, it’s not Irving Berlin, but a goodhearted bit of lyric intended to impress someone we just met over the Christmas break. Like drinking egg nog, eating Christmas cookies, trimming the tree, wrapping presents, or hanging stockings, we were celebrating this particular Christmas with a song in honor of this someone we eagerly revered as some body. So how does a simple innocent and naive verse backfire so badly as to incite probable expulsion from school, excommunication from the Catholic Church, and certain parental disownment? The good book says for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Maybe all those mortal and venial sins I harbored over the course of my elementary school years, being racked with excess guilt and ultimately ratting on myself within those dark confessional interrogation cells - where the brain goes manic and blurts out anything - must have finally came home to roost. All I know is that the week before Christmas of 1965, our band was reaping to beat the band! No, we weren’t performing at the Baker’s Townhouse Athletic Dinner Club Christmas Eve Gala, or upgrading to those elusive Beatles dream instruments: the Gretsch’s, Rickenbacker’s, and Ludwig’s, and most definitely not inheriting a world-without-end surplus of Dunford Bakery bear claws. On the contrary, for 14 and 16 year old kids, our innocuous lives were suddenly spiraling so quickly out of control, we were in dire need of some serious intercessory graces on a biblical scale. My father succinctly summed up our Yuletide stunt with his patented of all the unmitigated gall! remark. But all gall aside, I think I should start at the beginning so you can clearly empathize with my side of this story.

If you haven’t already guessed, I love music. I have always loved music. I just didn’t know how much I loved music until a few years past my first age of reason that begot my second age of reason. Until then my life had always been an aimless cartoon-like adventure laced with its unique frenetic, though somewhat disjointed, soundtracks. For as long as I can remember, I was humming or whistling themes from Looney Tunes, like Bugs Bunny as the Barber of Seville, TV cop shows or westerns such as 77 Sunset Strip and The Rifleman, or Dad’s car radio that seemed to love Perry Como’s Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom). But my application of music seemed somewhat impulsive and foolish if not a little dramatic. For instance...

My parents took me to church for the first time when I was two and it turned out to be a memorable, yet somewhat controversial, experience. While sitting on that fossil-like pew humming the Star Spangled Banner...

Phrrrrffff!

The jarring offensive breach caught the immediate parishioners off guard. I must have learned the art of deflection early in my young life because the first words from my mouth were, Oooh! Who cut the cheese?

Directly ahead of us an elderly lady poked her husband in the ribs.

George, did you do that?

Behind me a voice whispered in my ear, the bombs bursting in air! I giggled.

When I was four, about the time I wanted to become the garbage man, I learned to hum the Dragnet T.V. theme while sitting on the potty chair.

Dum-t-dummm, dum-t-dum-t-dummm...

It seems the tune inspired and motivated me. Later, Dad would kid me about these cathartic moments with his pithy adage start a movement and eat a prune! Because Dad would frequently travel for business, when he left home it seems he left behind his finely tuned, albeit sensitive, gastric network only to return plugged up like a sack of cement that could exclusively be restored with a bottle of Motts and several servings of this brands stewed prunes. It took me a while to catch on to Dad’s morning ritual of excusing himself from the breakfast table uttering It’s Howdy Doody Time! I guess prunes work for Dad. Dragnet worked for me.

During first grade phonics class, I was so bored with the machinations of the English language I would daydream and hum a TV theme song, usually Taras Theme that boomed from the television every evening as the Million Dollar Movie opening soundtrack. James Potter, will you stop that infernal humming! scolded Mrs. Edelin shaking her head at the front of the classroom.

You’re such a nuisance.

Yes ma’am.

Phrrrrffff!

On occasions I would parrot a slightly different (some would say unconventional) national anthem heard around my Ruth Street neighborhood because lots of kids were singing it.

"Whistle while you work. Hitler is a jerk.

Mussolini popped his beany, now it doesn’t work!"

Or...

"My country tis of thee, sweet land of Germany,

Of thee I sing.

My father was a spy, caught by the FBI,

Tomorrow he will die, my name is Schultz!"

And even though my last name is not Schultz, I truly wasn’t advocating any specific political agenda or harboring any ill will towards dear old Deutschland or that nation shaped like a boot.

About the same time, I experienced my first novena at St. Raphael Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut. A novena is a recitation of prayers repeated for nine successive days in belief of obtaining special intercessory graces, like hoping the church would cave in before the next service. But instead of nine successive days, this novena was drawn out over a successive nine week stretch on summer weekday evenings after supper when all my friends were out chasing fireflies at dusk or exploring the alluring woods across the street with all its enticing and flirtatious evening shadows. Worse, I do not recall singing any songs or hymns during this inconvenient religious ritual. But Dad was always humming Perry Como during these treks to and from church. Apparently, Pop was looking forward to this prime time devotional. So Dad drove us in his 48 Oldsmobile to St. Raphael that was older than dirt and smelled like my brothers socks as Perry Como belted out Hot Diggity Dog Ziggity from the dash board. St. Raphael, a red brick monstrosity with an interior ceiling filled with rafters housing rogue pigeons that took potshots at the parishioners, only reinforced the need for women to don hats though men begrudgingly removed theirs. Hence, the reason for baring looks of alarm while gazing heavenward. And the priests thought they were God fearing. With hardwood pews and kneelers compliments of the Inquisition, like my grandmother rising from her Hitchcock rocker, each would creak and moan from the slightest movement. The acoustics inside the church would amplify a cough, sneeze, or other bodily functions, and especially the back of my blond noggin that would wobble to and fro from excessive drowsiness or boredom making contact with the pew detonating like canon fire capturing the attention of every parishioner.

BOOM!

Tchaikovsky would be proud!

Every now and then during the novena I would set off a volley of short bursts earning stares of disapproval and shaking heads. And since there was no music during these monotonous solemn services, I would improvise humming a T.V. theme from Cheyenne or Paladin until I felt my fathers elbow making contact with my ribs. Funny. Mom never poked Dad in the ribs while he was humming Perry Como.

Our typically dependable Motorola black-and-white television tube housed in its dark walnut cabinet mounted on four sturdy wooden legs had a tendency to engage in spontaneous vertical and horizontal roll. During these dire moments that undermined the integrity of Heckle and Jeckle or the Three Stooges, I would burst into song (borrowing the tune from a local pizza commercial) with Mama mi, the T.V.s gone ca-flook-et-ty, Mama mi, come fix the T.V.! repeating the catchy jingle until Mom or Dad appeared taking action just to shut me up. Mom was kinder to the boob tube than Dad. She employed some miracle sleight of hand adjustment at the back of the set in contrast to Dad’s personal prestidigitation, whacking the cabinet with the heel of his fist! Both techniques seem to work as the rolling ceased morphing back to a clear picture. But one afternoon the Motorola was suffering from an acute case of