You Can’t Get Me to Scream

Everybody’s screaming at me, I can’t hear a word they’re saying. That’s untrue—it’s a lie!—but it’s never wrong, from this corner, to invoke the folk singer Fred Neil (1935-2001), a gifted songwriter who, today, is barely a footnote in America’s leaking-like-a-sieve popular culture. I far preferred his version of “Everybody’s Talkin’” to Harry Nilsson’s still-famous cover that was in Midnight Cowboy, although Jefferson Airplane did him right with their version of “The Other Side of This Life.” On July 30, 1971, my oldest brother and I saw Neil make a guest appearance at Stephen Stills’ better-than-expected show at Madison Square Garden. I’d lost interest in Stills—the ticket was a birthday present—but his guitar was on fire (cocaine must’ve been in Stills’ brain), and I was glad he played “Rock and Roll Woman” from the Buffalo Springfield days. But it was Neil’s “The Dolphins” that I was humming on the Long Island Rail Road trip back to Huntington.

But I don’t scream for ice cream—a “vibe violation” in, God help us, a Kamala Administration, in which Mayor Pete will helm the new (20 hours a week, for stay-at-home dad Pete) the new cabinet position “Social Media Czar.” Might set me back $500; I’m doubtful they’d send this older guy (who, like Kamala, grew up in a middle class home) to the clink, despite the tut-tutting all around. It’s been at least 25 years since a spoonful of Haagen-Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s has slid down my throat, and just the thought gives me the creeps; I’d rather eat frozen or canned peas.

I’m an American, though, so ice cream was a big part of my childhood diet (gelato hadn’t yet appeared here), whether it was from the Good Humor Man (toasted almond or chocolate cake bars for a dime, popsicles cost a nickel), Carvel swirly cones, Big Apple, IGA and Grand Union knock-off brands, Breyer’=s (when on sale), Sealtest, Howard Johnson’s peppermint stick or, and this was when hanging out with friends on Main St. in Huntington, Rocky Road cones from Baskin-Robbins. My dad, beat from a long day at work, would have a bowl of Neapolitan while watching I Love Lucy re-runs before he conked out, and I’d join him, and didn’t even mind if the dessert had freezer burn. (“Just scape it off, honey,” my mom would say.)

I won’t make the sweeping statement that “Sweets Are For Kids,” because that’s mean and also untrue, and I will not lie. In fact, I’m not sure I can think of anyone I know who holds the same aversion. Definitely not my wife or (adult) kids, who enjoy ice cream in all forms. I’m out in the wilderness on this one, Rutherford, but will persevere, and I Will Survive, oh good golly I Will Survive. On the other hand, I’m not sure Donald Trump will (and that ends the political intervention of today’s sermon).

At the Splice Today office last Friday, I was visited by a college friend, and at 69 he looked terrific, despite a couple of unsettling medical “events” in the past 15 years. He’d read my column from a few weeks ago about the Johns Hopkins Faculty Club (he’d stop occasionally while I was at work there, and once or twice, after my shift, we’d help ourselves to the basement tap of National Premium beer), and was surprised that the Club closed down in 2020. “That’s impossible,” he joked, “where do the professors go now for a couple of cocktails in between classes?”

We filled each other in on mutual friends—careers both successful and busts, kids, premature deaths, strange romances and the reticence to attend college reunions—and I was delighted to learn one classmate, a conservative (in the mid-1970s, I didn’t know anyone who subscribed to both The Economist and National Review) buddy who’d—open secret—spent his career with the CIA, was fit and happy, in semi-retirement in Florida. Man, the stories our Snowbird could tell about the “Deep State,” but I’d imagine agents who took the “code” seriously, like him, wouldn’t spill the beans, unlike today’s characters from the FBI and CIA who seek fame, and lots of dough, whether from a clandestine government slush fund or just, like in the days of “dead-drops,” in brown paper bags.

The accompanying picture is of my sons Booker and Nicky at the Venice Pier in Los Angeles, on a visit to my in-laws a long time ago. I’ve no idea what kind of ice cream they were eating, but know that I didn’t partake, although I did have a corn dog, dripping with yellow mustard, the junkiest of junk food, the memory of which right now led me down to the kitchen for pineapple slices.

Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: The History Channel is launched; Yahoo! Is incorporated; the New Jersey Devils win the Stanley Cup; Apollo 13 is released; the Yankees don’t win the World Series; Madison Cawthorn is born and Mickey Mantle dies; Goosebumps debuts on Fox Kids; and Richard Ford’s Independence Day and Jane Smiley’s Moo are published.

—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023