Days Gone Bill - Chapter 3 - Taking Stock
Hansons come from strong Norwegian stock. Our ancestors came to North America by boat in a-boat the mid-to-late nineteenth century. In fact, my grandparents came from a small village that was technically in Denmark, although most of the people from that village spoke Norwegian, if they spoke at all. America, in any event, had peculiar allure, to my family in partic-u-allure. America stood for freedom. America stood for opportunity. America stood for the national anthem. I don't blame my great-grandparents for coming here, even if I do harbor a secret yearning to spend just one year on the old sod, so to speak. It's not as if I don't know who I am. Goodness knows, I'm actually over-qualified in that department.
I spoke of barely speaking at all. I spoke the truth. It was hideous, really, when you think of it. Silence was sort of a balm to our people, a method by which they were able to exist with a bare minimum of emotional discomfort. When I think about this I wonder why in the deuce it ever was they opted for a life in the great American heartland. Sure, I realize America absorbed a myriad of people, including some for whom the very act of communicating was borderline anathema.
Still, it seems odd they didn't choose Brazil. If you're really looking for a logical antecedent for my need to yodel, it may be the Hanson factor. Think about it. Not everyone yodels and, in most parts of Los Angeles, literally no one yodels. For most, the need to express oneself occurs in a more socially acceptable context. This explains the popularity of the Lorman Screwoff Singers and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, not to mention the Rap Group UBDumb. This also explains why it is now and why it has always been as follows: Where there's smoke, there's fire.
One night recently several of us yodelers were standing around in the Herman Melville Building parking lot, looking for returnable bottles. An old friend of mine named Bobby Barbato was kicking around a few theories, none of which made sense at the time and only one of which I can partially recall this morning. Bobby, a man of about 48 with the maturity of a 52-year-old, kept mentioning the importance of the entire folk revolution of the 1960s. You see, Bobby's parents owned a record store. Records are what they played before 8-tracks led the way to cassettes which opened up the door for CDs and other forms of technology we can't even mention because we don't understand them or care in any other way, for that matter.
Barbato Records & Appliances was a landmark, of sorts. I liked it because it offered a veritable galaxy of artistic styles, even yodeling. Hansons, as you're probably already thinking, are big on ultra planetary vision. Just saying the word instills a peaceful feeling in my soul. I can hear my great-grandmother now ... Jaa ... dis is gooood ... jaaa ... I'd like jos a leeetle more cream in za polar tea ... jaaaa, dis is goooood ... jaaaa jaaaa. This was a woman no one could forget, especially those who studied under her at Prairie Valley Woman's College, where this truly impressive woman who was my mother's grandmother served both in an academic and athletic capacity.
Looking back on it all now, I finally see the full irony of the situation. Great grandmother, whose name was Greta, was too old to visit Barbato Records or know Bobby Barbato. Still, it's funny. I just know she would have liked these people and she would have approved of the selection of vintage 78 rpm records in their store on North Eire Ave., by the old Slopski's supermarket.
In spite of the opinions of almost anyone I can think of, Bobby Barbato is one of the smartest people I know. Some of our friends disparage Bobby. They say he's lazy. They don't like the fact he doesn't have a job. They find being around him an energy drain. They find it hard to humble themselves to his position in the pecking order of life. They don't like his chinos. They don't like his Eastern accent. What do they know? Seriously, you'd think they'd be able to step back a pace or two and see what's really there, in terms of being Bobby. The man has charisma. The man has conviction. And the man has a wonderful library of old Fats Domino records.
No one since, not even the Beatles I don't believe, have captured the Fatman's spirit and Bobby Barbato is one of the few people I know who appreciates this fact. Bobby had a beauty of an idea. Why not, he asked, bring all the people of the community together under one tent for what would be, in effect, a social free-for-all at which time the entire social agenda for the next forty or fifty years would be something we could all bat around, if for no other reason than to understand one another better.
Wondering how much more of this I could stand, I decided to follow Bobby after we left the parking lot. I was both intrigued and disengaged and the counter effects of these two emotional outlets had left me in a suspended state, like an acrobat without the acro. Ambivalence is a way of life for just about everyone I know but I, somehow, seem to take it to a higher level. One thing about always getting higher: It's interesting, that's for sure.
Bobby, as I barely recall, was talking about how the Civil Rights Movement linked white, suburban youth with their dark-skinned city counterparts, leading the way for the folk explosion, the folk-rock explosion that followed and the entire aftermath, which ranges now from skinhead anarchy to computerized Barry Manilow ballads, embracing a broad format of mostly mediocre material in between. Bobby said the music serves several effects in our lives though he couldn't, as I remember, list any of them, in particular.
As a Barbato, Bobby had an edge on ambiguity, which is not to say he in any way, shape or manner understood let alone embodied the virtues Goethe said form the basis of man's relationship with the headwaters of the Missouri River. If for no other reason than to explore the farthest reaches of our Solar System, as we know it in our time, Bobby always tried harder, reached more aggressively and generally had considerably more luck with teachers than any of us, including Marilyn Tucker, someone all of us would enjoy meeting in the context of an informal debate. Barbatos, it can be conceded, have little to do with the lineage of people named Hanson.
That being the case, it's also true that you don't have to be a family member to influence someone with an open mind, and "fresh air" thinking comes closer to defining what it means to be a Hanson than "fisherman," "industrialist," or even "Hansen." Certainly from a linguistic perspective, the difference between "Hanson" and "Hansen" may be a mere letter. If you're from the family, of course, the difference between an "o" and an "e" can be significant ... especially if you're walking.
Hooodalaidee, hoodalaidie, a hooooo, a hoooo.
The Hansons of North Dakota had it all over the Hansens from South Dakota. You could see it in their gait. In their teeth structure. In their laundry baskets. It showed up at the strangest times ... at family weddings, bar mitzvahs, and at other church services not related to theological issues. Over the years, as history shows in abundance, Hansens literally fought Hansons in the streets of many of America's smallest towns, notwithstanding Merleyville, Ohio.
"You're a Hanson," someone named Hansen would say, confronting an arch enemy. "You're on my turf now and I'm not going to let you out of here until you admit one thing -- Hansons are funnier than Hansens!" It may seem very elementary, unless, of course, you've walked in these moccasins. You don't have to be a Gomez or a Wong to know what it's like to be scorned in America. And, if your name is Hanson, like mine is, you not only know, you could write a book about it, which is what I did.
Among my more spectacular relatives I always think of Uncle Darnel. He was famous in local circles for a number of accomplishments. His was the first "male bouffant" hairdo in our town and there was really no one anywhere in our area who could begin to match Uncle Darnel when it came to imitations. He could imitate Richard Nikon better, I think, than even Richard Nikon could do Richard Nikon. I'll always remember Darnel doing that "peace" thing with his fingers, as if he were about to board the helicopter, Air Force One, just like Nikon used to do with his dog, Alice.
What was really neat about Darnel's Nikon imitation was the way Darnel would always wear a rented suit when he did this particular dramatic act. Even if we were at the beach, Darnel would rent that suit -- it may have been a leisure suit -- and simply crack everyone up, even my father, who was a Nikon man and found humor in typically unusual places.
"Darnel, you're an amusing chap but I wish you'd pick on a Democrat once in a while," Dad would always say to Darnel. "I'd like to see you do Ted Kennedy or another of those knee-jerk liberals." Every time Darnel heard Dad say this, he would fake a jerking motion with sometimes both of his knees and he'd bray like a donkey, which is the animal symbol of the Democrats, the Republican's rather owning the elephant image.
For years I didn't get it. Then Marilyn Tucker sent me a memo and everything crystallized for me. "They just don't get it in Hollywood," she wrote. "America wants clean TV and they keep offering us scurvy-esque shows. We're weary in Indiana and we suggest you get weary too, up there in suburban Detroit or in South or North Dakota, wherever you happen to be."
Another relative who made a strong impression on me when I was pretending to grow up but really reading the sports page was my brother Earl. Earl still gets through to me like no one else. He has this power over me, which is why I've always given him my paychecks to cash. "You don't want to go through all that," he always says. "Let me do it for you."
Earl has gotten me out of all sorts of jams so I don't really mind when he takes my checks. He always brings me a receipt and, the last time I checked, I had not frozen to death, starved to death or been arrested as an indigent, so I have to believe this system is working. I CAN tell you, I haven't missed going to the bank and I don't intend to change now. Dollar for dollar, I think Earl is looking out for number one and I do hope that's me. If you never had a brother, maybe you know what I'm talking about.
