A Rain of Frogs 

Why William Powell?

Because, that’s why. In the Ninepatch Variation—a story of mine, you can get to it here—William Powell plays Tiresias the Seer to Libby Pease’s Antigone:

“If Myrna Loy is thinking of you, you are bound to link up,” says Libby reassuringly. “Eventually.” Her needle is flashing again. Red embroidery thread bounces from its skein. Places too distant and glamorous to be visited by her in life dance behind the screen in a darkened movie theater.
The Thin Man delicately digs a little finger into his ear.
“When you have an itch it means someone is thinking of you.” Libby has heard this. “Myrna Loy, I mean. You will see her soon.”
“If somebody bites you on the ass it means they are thinking of you, too, dear Libby. Eventually the Earth will fall into the sun,” says The Thin Man.

Libby Pease is my favorite person out of all of Willipaq County—an evocation of the usually broke and always hopeful denizens of, perhaps, just perhaps, Washington County, Maine—living free and wild in their very own Yoknapatawpha. The Libby tales became a triptych and she picked up a spiritual counselor, a 400-year-old medicine man (in The Red Sneaker Zones):

“I shall wear purple.” Libby Pease touches the framed poem that hangs on her kitchen wall. Libby could have memorized the verse, but prefers to be surprised by it.
“All the damned thing says is that when you’re old people expect you to be aligned a mite off center...” says the 400-year-old Algonquian spirit-priest who regularly joins her for morning tea, “...look at me. Go for it, Lib. Get naked, paint the cat; you’ve earned it,” says Sun-ripples-quiet-pool-to-call-of-loon.

Ah, but Libby's interlocutors, even as Doctor Who's companions, had to start somewhere. William Powell as the first choice was all Wayne Croft’s fault. Wayne was a chum from the WBAI days. This was the 1960s and I followed him around toting the company’s (Pacifica Radio) Nagra III with neo-pilotone (The Nagra is a tape recorder and pilotone is a film sync thingy that we didn’t need at listener-sponsored radio—don’t ask. Try Googling Stefan Kudelski.) for his production of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Tall and attenuated, Wayne sported a spindly beard and resembled John Carradine as Preacher Casey in the Grapes of Wrath. He heightened the effect by wearing three-piece box-back dark suits and chain-smoking Russian style, cigarette held between the thumb and index finger. Wayne was an actor, a damned good one, too. Hurd Hatfield played Faustus however.

In the seventies Wayne had become the manager of the Carnegie Repertory Cinema—three floors down under Carnegie Hall where the subway (57th St. Station, a loop on the Q line) passed by on the far side of plush-covered walls. Once a month they ran all the Thin Man movies back-to-back. The big sliver faces and the discrete drapery of Myrna Loy’s shimmering dressing gowns got me hooked on the Thin Man and Myrna Loy.

And now… a plug for WBAI

—or Bob Fass, where are you?

Bob, an intractable free spirit, occupied the midnight to dawn slot and one night played Jerry Jeff Walker’s Mister Bojangles for five hours. (See Invocation for a Bowling Tournament)

In the 60s, WBAI was the place to be. George Coe, Richard C. Neuweiler and Nancy Weyburn and the Second City delivered satire and commentary along with Severn Darden, Rene Santoni, Don Calfa and Lord Buckley. Eric Bentley expounded on Brecht. John Corigliano was the music maven. Dave Amram played Lady Bird Johnson in our parallel spoof on the Democratic National Convention—The Big Tune Out. Ayn Rand in her 2nd hand mink struggled up the three blocks from the Nathaniel Branden Institute to hold forth on philosophical objectivism. Harry Schwartz and Dick Elman interviewed Malcolm X while Richard Lamparski interviewed Connie Boswell. WBAI lost a microphone cord at the Audubon Ballroom, cut in two by a shotgun blast when Malcolm was shot.

In 1980 I attended a get-together of WBAI 60s survivors at the KitKat Klub on 14th Street at Union Square—cash bar, sugar and complex carbohydrates. Old coots, new suits, and everybody handing resumes around. Nothing has changed and that was 26 years ago. So what’s new? I bought my suit at Abraham & Strauss (Fulton St., Brooklyn). I still have the suit and that was the only time I’ve ever worn it. Polyester never sleeps.

There was a war in Europe and the Pacific and Libby’s mother played the piano, her Chopin nocturne that she had by heart.
Six-year-old Libby hides behind the pedals, a haven from Charles Wyndham Pease, her younger brother. Hoagy Carmichael sings Old Buttermilk Sky from the parlor radio.
There had been a gentleman caller once when Libby was sixteen—a date for the movies at the Willipaq Cinema. Libby Pease still loves the movies as she loved them when she was a child.
“I should get out more often,” says Libby the grown-up.

Oh, yes—I seem to have dozed off. Why William Powell was the question…

Well, William Powell as Libby Pease’s Thin Man because I could get around Manhattan pretty well on my old Sears 10-speed, how’s them apples? This is now the 1970s when a Post Office truck gave me a clip with its protruding side mirror on 56th Street. I went flying like a gyroscopic top in a magnetic anomaly. The driver tossed me a hi-five and sped away on 56th Street toward to Grand Central Post Office; he had government business. The close call reassembled my priorities and hiding out at the movies was a fine idea. I walked the bike to work and decided to take Wayne Croft up on his offer for one free admission to the Carnegie Hall Repertory Cinema. That very night.

Technorati tags: Magical Realism, Sci-Fi