Folksinging and its Effects on Quantum Physics -Part VII

By Richard Davidson

“It’s about time you girls got back with my car,” leered Norm Stinakowski, his breath clearing up several of Stanley’s pimples.

“What were you drinking, paint thinner?” Dreadful Albert laughed, having the time of his life, at least for the moment.

“You got the keg, or what?” scolded Eddie, sorry he’d allowed these two pukes to ruin the evening.

“I’d look in the trunk, if I were you,” said Dreadful Albert, “c’mon Stanley, let’s go.”

“Hey don’t leave yet,” said Harold Pedunkis, as the two walked towards the row of trees at the edge of the field, “the music’s about to start.”

“Music?” said Dreadful Albert, “where’s the band? I only see one guy.”

“Good evening everybody,” said the scruffy boy, from the stage, “I’d like to take just a moment to reflect on those out there who are dying for the cause.”

The partygoers grew quiet.

“How about YOU?” he shouted, and without having the first clue what exactly the cause was, the entire place went berserk.

Dreadful Albert liked that, but he didn’t like the scruffy boy. He was dirty, and he was a fake, and he was uncouth, and he used bad language in front of ladies, and he most likely was a communist, and he probably didn’t even use soap at all, and he was mean, and he was rotten, and he was horrible, and worst of all, worse than anything else at all, he had done something Dreadful Albert would never forgive him for, and that was kissing Mary Sue McGinty, and Mary Sue McGinty kissing back only a few days after she had broken up with that stellar jock, Mark Bowens, and Dreadful Albert had seen yet another window of opportunity slam shut like the sliding glass door on the Filbert’s patio after Dreadful Albert had made their son Clarence eat dog poo.

A voice in his head was telling him that no one with the word “Dreadful” in their name had much chance at all of hooking up with a hottie like Mary Sue, but this was many years before the WWF found the commercial success of its later grossness.

In the meantime, our hero had found himself standing transfixed before a hated boy with a guitar, whose only sense of poetic or philosophical purpose appeared to be the wanton destruction of Dreadful Albert’s life dreams, and who was now warbling strange cries on a pleading harmonica, and summing up the general mood of the crowd in an occasional well planted, slightly off key universal truth.

He was winning them over with his easy charm, and strangely ambiguous lyrics, which always seemed to indicate someone needed freedom from something, but you just couldn’t put your finger on who, or where. Many of the party’s patrons had left any such speculation to the rank amateurs and oddsmakers one found under the seventh street bridge on Tuesday mornings, but not Susy Von Daggel, who now understood her mistake in mixing with this unbelievably common element in a common town.

She tried, in a convincing manner, to measure the exact distance in both English and Metric standards how far these people were beneath her, but had simply never been comfortable with numbers that large.

“There’s no drums,” complained Dreadful Albert, “and you can hardly even hear that guitar.”

No one was listening.

“Where are his amps?”

The horrible boy had introduced himself once again as Avery Freeman, which Dreadful Albert strongly believed to be a stage name, and he would have been surprised to know that Freeman’s parents had a strange sense of humor, and had named him Avery Wonsa Freeman and laughed themselves silly, which is why you shouldn’t get drunk on wine right after having a baby.

“I don’t get what these songs are about,” whispered Stanley, in the wavering air, “who exactly is being oppressed?”

“It’s you and me, man,” said Steve Belzner, “it’s about all of us coming together, you know?”

Stanley was afraid; very afraid. He suddenly though of the NuScience 500 reflector telescope, that he had made 983.2 times more powerful, and could easily use to see Uranus that he had been clutching under his arm all this time, and realized just how uncomfortable all these people made him.

“Can we get outta here?” he asked Dreadful Albert, quite sure he was leaving either way.

“Hey guys!” greeted Eddie, “can you get us another keg?”

“Yeah, that’s what we came to do,” said Dreadful Albert, slapping the obviously drunk Eddie so hard on the back he almost fell over.

“What’s wrong with Stinkupthehouseski?” laughed Dreadful Albert, as Norm Stinakowski sat hunched over, puking into a big cowboy hat.

“Hey don’t make funna my friend Norm,” slurred Eddie effortlessly, “hezha good man.”

“I’m sure you’ll be very happy together,” sympathized Dreadful Albert, as he and Stanley got back into Norm’s ‘58 Chevy, and coolly drove away.

“Now where are we gonna get another keg?” asked Stanley, pessimistic as always.

“We’re not,” said Dreadful Albert.

Stanley decided right then and there not to ask any more questions about such things. Instead, he decided to pursue another line of questioning that had been puzzling him.

“What was that guy singing about?” asked Stanley, perturbed.

“Nothing,” said Dreadful Albert, “nothing at all.”

“He sounded like he was singing about something,” replied Stanley.

“OK, well, if he was, then what was it?” asked Dreadful Albert.

“That’s what I asked you,” observed Stanley, “and you said ‘Nothing.’”

“It was nothing that sounded like something,” explained Dreadful Albert, pleased to be explaining something to Stanley for once.

“See, there’s a whole lot of people listening to folksingers these days, and some of them probably are singing about something, which is cool, although I prefer rock and roll, but this guy, he isn’t singing about anything, because he doesn’t believe in anything, because he’s got nothing.”

“Nothing except Mary Sue McGinty,” taunted Stanley.

“You shut your mouth right now,” Dreadful Albert threatened, “he doesn’t ‘have’ her at all. She just thinks he’s the next Bob Dillenger or something, and she’s acting all star struck.”

“Bob Dylan,” corrected Stanley, who’d read a story in the Village Voice about it. His uncle had sent it to him, but not for the Dylan article. There was a story about a New York taxidermist who had raised the dead, and forced them to perform slave labor for him, perfecting a miniature aqueduct system that ran under the quite impossible process of perpetual motion. If Stanley’s uncle could prove it, he would be the richest man in the world, not to mention quite popular with the ladies.

That was the last time anybody had heard from Stanley’s uncle, and it was presumed he was either dead, or had gone so completely insane that he was most likely working as a clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Dreadful Albert turned from the road into another field, and up onto a high hill.

“This looks like a good spot to set up that telescope,” he said. Stanley was impressed. They were far from the lights of the city, and the sky was as clear as diamonds.

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