How Black Thunder Entered My Life, and How Practice Always Pays Off

The Noble and Enchanting Story of

How Black Thunder Entered My Life,

and How Practice Always Pays Off

Letter to Chet in Boulder:

(This is the story I never wanted to publish. It is a story of shame and hubris and infamy, and every time I've told it, listeners encouraged me through tears and gales of laughter to definitely do just that. It is the story which should never have been as true as I'm afraid it is, I am ashamed to givein to the urge to let it take its rightful place among many so-called Sam-Stories. It is the tale of an accordion.)

Defense Language Institute Monterey, August 1987

First I should explain that I've always loved the accordion and the versatility of its abilities. My own, by contrast, leave something to be desired, hence the occasionof this ridiculous anecdote.

When Agni and I flew to Chicago last December, I still did not own an accordion, nor did I actually intend this trip to materialize one. My full 120-base white and used Americano or Amerago or Arrivederci went to the pawn shop for thirty bucks before I left for Ft. Dix Basic Training. He was really in the market for one, you know, ofthis quality, as he'd only had about two shelves of them and they were selling like flap-jacks at the chow hall.

We met John Cunningham while in Chicago, and he'd just come down fromt he Montana backlands to peddle real Christmas trees to Chicagans – wait, Chicagoans. Myself, I was mostly employed that weekend in chauffeuring a certain young – if that word could apply – Rinpoche about town. I got to know the City, or parts therein, pretty well as driving goes. Mine has been beyond reproach, by the way, since we'd left Austin. So John wanted help unloading the trees and Agni and I agreed that we had to have a concertina for this, to squeeze out carols, notwithstanding the conspicuous absence of any snow .

She called one place, Walles Music, which happens to be the accordian capital of the USA if not beyond. They would not rent a concertina to us, but when I went down there they helped arrive at the conclusion that I didn't come all the way to The Big Windy to rent a concertina but indeed to purchase a robust new 120-base accordion. It was a tad smaller than the white, and was just what I'd have envisioned had I been in the market again, and a nice subdued solid black, all of which suited me. I downpaid the fifteen bucks cash which freed up my pockets so I could walk around Chicago with my hands in them, and by June it was all paid off and in my hands. Black Thunder became the long awaited addition to my barracks room, which by the way, is like Motel-6 style accomodations inside a Monterey-Spanish Holiday Inn quality building overlooking the peninsula, its woods and the ocean. When asked upon its arrival, why I got the thing, I replied cryptically, “Oh, just an ocean of mine.“ Yeah, war is hell, light my Cuban and freshen my drink.

The Practical Story of the Texan and the Big Apple

A Texan visiting Manhattan stops an elderly Jewish man on the street, meaning to ask directions: “Pahd'n me, suh, but c'id yew tell me how I git to Carnegie Hall?“

The New Yorker replies with a delicate hint of admonition in the wave of his hand: “Practice, practice …!“

How I Loved Black Thunder

The squeeze-box to me is a living thing, like the harmonium, and I cherish it as such. After a half-hour of fiddling around on it (can you do that with an accordion, fiddle around I mean?) I can spend hours just trying out new possibilities. I understand now, after many such hours, that I a m a sick man and I am seeking help right now from those who have come out of the closet and are willing to admit that they have had sufficient, even loads of experience with this. You see, whenit comes right down to listening to me – well I'm about as popular with it as John Cunningham's Montana-grown Christmas trees in dry Chicago. Neither of us would break even with what we do.

What Really Happened At Graduation

“The horror, the horror of it all, the horror...“ (Col. Kurtz, Apocalypse Now)

Chet, you know me too well to forgive me for what I've done, I only expect you to cover the next round of drinks after you've fully digested the shame and the horror of what I am about to relate.

My graduation day from Egyptian dialect, following a delightfully grueling year of standard Arabic, was approaching. A briefing was held the previous Friday, attended by some classmembers and myself, and those from other classes, other languages, mostly strangers to me. Hey – I had no idea what I was going to do when I went in there, in that ex-hangar now-auditorium they called The Tin Barn, I just wanted to have done with it like the next guy. Then I noticed something about this Air Force Staff-Sergeant briefing us, that struck me in a way which rather minimized the remarkable impression her logistical talents had already made on every one of us sitting there. She vaguely reminded me of a girl I'd known in school years ago...

My classmates know me well enough that I need to be watched and monitored, as skillfully as possible, or my behavioral instincts will kick in and cause them usually avoidable regret. I swear I had nothing up my sleeve – nor my pant leg when I'd walked in there. Even as we all filed out like buffalo off a cliff I had nothing in mind, until I caught a dangerously familiar smirk edging its way like a San Andreas Fault across my soldierly punim, my eyes literally steered my body around and my feet followed suit. Without so much as a ponderous stroking of my stubbled chin, I strode over to this NCO as she concluded some last minute business – and I got right down to business. Alone with her in a conspiratorial huddle I proposed...a plan. “Sergeant,“ I said, with that relaxed and confidant air of intimacy with which NCOs usually addressed each other – yet assuming with my half-turned smile that she would notice my brilliant idea was sheer kidding, that she would get it (with a bare touch of hope that she wouldn't): “I could wrangle out a mean 'Pomp and Circumstance' on the accordion at graduation if you'd like.“ She didn't get it. She bit.

“Great!“ she said without reservation, and she was not joking. “But what I'd really like is if you would play 'The Star-Spangled Banner'...“ She looked right at me and she meant it. I fixed my best Dennis Quaid held-gaze on her, testing the moment. And then it happened: that was it, I bit.

Sure, I'd get back with her Monday. I went straight to my deluxe room and worked it out after a shower and a few bangs on the head against the tiled wall for being so stupid – and a few dance steps on my carpeted floor for the daringness of it all. Is it any wonder that I've had three roommates leave town for good since I arrived here?

Sharing this in strict condidence over lunch in our cafeteria with my one real fellow-hoodlum, Jenna-of-the-Wild-Hair, a beauty then and a beauty to this day, with very dangerously prankish Scots blood in her veins,  she said, characteristically, "Saaam,I love it!"  Then chillingly adding:  "Wouldn't it be great if you blew it!"  That ended lunch, with an Arabic phrase, "la' jinnani!" - a play on her name and capabilities, translating:  "don't start driving me insane!"

It sounded great, the key was right, and I spent the weekend working out a couple or three chords and practicing the coordination of it all. If played smoothly and well, the acoridon can and will produce a round of the National Anthem – right, any national anthem – equal to a big brass band, and I do mean a good one. I practiced secretly all week, informing no one who would be attending the ceremonies, and only a couple who would not. And I'm quite comfortable with audiences, however large – as long as I have a clue what I'm doing and I knew this had to be note-perfect, as it was not an improvisational setting nor jamming around in a night club nor even a company picnic. I knew everyone woudl be standing at attention (and at my mercy), that my name with the National Mayhem would have top billing on the program, that behind me would be standing high Brass and academic supervisors and hoity-toity ex-thises and ex-thats, ad nauseum. Well, we're coming to the nauseum shortly.

I knew that what would really be useful would have been a dry run on the stage prior to everything else that morning, but that in the absence of this opportunity, I had to settle for waiting in the wings and going over it softly. One highly placed gentleman said it would be far better than that phony piped-in band music we were listening to at that moment as the hall filled with graduating Arabs, Russians, Germans, Eskimos and assorted weirdos and their respective families. I knew that if it came off as well as I'd envisioned, it would be a beautiful gesture of farewell to my stay here.  And I drew inspiration from Robert Preston's Prof. Harold Hill in "The Music Man," who taught the "think method"!  Of course, he was a con-artist.

And then it happened: I was asked by some high-ranking NCO whether I actually knew what I was doing. I knew that I didn't need that; and neither did he, because he sort of gulped and appeared a bit shaken when I nodded my assurance and informed him that I'd just gotten the thing a month ago. I knew I could do it, I knew that my growing sense of doubt would abate, this gnawing would all pass the moment I stood out there turning on the juice. No crowd, no Air Force E-5, no Brasso, no ammo. Just hair-raising tones of national collective exaggeration.

What I did not known, and did not fully grasp until I walked out there, was that I do not know who to play the accordion. I mean, I knew but not really – until just then. My friends and classmates who were standing at attention at that moment would gladly have pointed this simple fact out to me had they but known I was so much as contemplating this feat – which now was turning to cold feat. Shall I describe what went on behind me among the esteemed guests of honor, speakers from officaldom? Suffice it to say, they wer profoundly moved. As for my class, they bit their lips out of the warmth and affinity they were feeling toward me just then, great humored as they were. All the others stood open-mouthed – and they were not singing this “Star-Mangled Banner“ I'm afraid.

Nor will they ever again, without wincing, after I'd finished with 'em. Four hundred-odd people with one oddball on the stage squeezing out the strains of a strained patriotism that morning, teaching them a whole new perspective on humor.   The look on my entire row of fellow-Arabic graduates with whom I'd just spent 15 months of intensive classtime, as I took my seat among them, was worthy of any sit-com. I spent the rest of the weekend between hysterical appreciation and horrified agony just reminiscing it all. One classmate told me afterward that there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Another thought it was the best rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Waters“ he'd ever heard.  Still another met me with a drive-by revenge hit a day later as I was strolling across the green; he stopped at a foot's distance, rolled down his window, and grinning, cold-bloodedly handed me the following, which required a week on intensive and lots of stitches - my God, I thought, seems some people just have no sense of humor:

They did not take one stripe away from my dear Air Force seargeant - who'd whispered a nod of encouragement as I left through the wings and darted outside to re-enter and take my seat (my mind screaming "Now!  Run for it - run!!"), nor have they shipped her off to some post in Alaska sorting mail to the seals. How did I know that Monday after the briefing, when I'd hand-delivered that fresh spring flwoers arrangement to her desk with a note: "Val, 'The Star-Spangled Banner“ is on! - Sam", that she wouldn't insist on hearing me first? I don't know everything, least of all Lady of Spain and Melancholy Baby.

As I walked back to the wing the Major or Colonal at the podium off to the side, wheezed out a strained, “Thank you, Specialist.“ Thank God I didn't do any stand-up just then. Immediately following was the Chaplain who stood there and saved the horribly awkward moment with a well-placed “Now let us pray.“ No shit, Sherlock. Still, no clues either.