When my stepfather was at the peak of his popularity as a small-time television personality in Detroit, some folks from a weekly magazine covering the movements and minutiae of local celebrities showed up at our home to ferret some facts and snap some snapshots for a spread about "Cowboy Colt."
Even at seven or eight I could feel what I then did not know was moral outrage welling within my childish breast as the photographer started staging the first of many phony-baloney shots. For instance ...
~ My mother, younger brother, and I huddling next to the Cowboy on the couch, pretending to listen to the Cowboy reading aloud, our faces fixin' to explode from smilin' so hard, our necks about to snap from gazing upwards at him adoringly. (Never happened and could not have happened in a million years.)
~ My brother and I racing down the front walk, pretending to greet the Cowboy with squeals of potentially lethal glee, as the Cowboy pretended to emerge from the car in triumphant return from yet another butt-busting two-hour workday. (See "million years" above.)
And if the phony-baloney photos weren't egregious enough, there were the putative facts in the story itself.
I learned, for example, that performing rope tricks topped my personal inventory of fun things to do, buckaroo. I queried my mom about this reeking blob of bull pucky using the 1950s equivalent of "Yo! What's up with this?" In those days, the only good use I could think of for rope was binding my brat brother's hands and feet.
She explained, matter-of-factly, that juicing the truth was a common and innocuous practice in the world of magazine journalism. I registered the explanation, but it did not satisfy. As far as my little-kid mind was concerned, the truth, juiced, was just a stinkin' lie.
(How did you find out about "truthiness"? Please comment here or drop me a line.)
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It happened when I read my dad's obituary and found out that he had been a successful travel agent with multiple offices throughout the suburbs of Detroit, and a well published writer...when, in fact, he ran a small travel agency from his enclosed porch at home, and had only written a short weekly column for a podunk small-town paper, free of charge. And it went on....."juiced"
ReplyDeleteAwesome case in point! Just what the doctor ordered. Many thanks.
ReplyDeleteThis post made me think of Mr. Lynch. Remember him? Mom and I thought he was so great all those years we went there for my dance shoes. And he was very nice, but he had us disillusioned. He was not the owner of the store, as he led us to believe. Only after I started working there did I get the real picture. He embezzled on a regular basis, left the store for hours at a time without telling anyone, talked trash about his family and was only interested in helping those few customers who thought he was great...like how I thought he was, before I worked with him.
ReplyDeleteMr. Richardson. Done and done-er.
ReplyDeleteWell, he never really lied, but he was creepy and sent me that hate letter...
ReplyDeleteMr. L. and Mr. R. were disappointments of life-altering proportions. I feel sick of heart whenever I think of them -- for me as well as for you. (Falls under "why this hurts me more...")
ReplyDeleteinteresting comments
ReplyDeleteThis post brings back memories of Kapil Malhotra, my Indian pen-pal. I was still pretty darned naive at the age of 18...when I foolishly thought Kapil was falling in love with me, what with all of the sentimental swash he was sending via air mail. Silly me! It was several years later, after I was married and then attempted to re-establish communication with him before I realized the creep was preying on my juvenile emotions in order to gain U.S. Citizenship!
ReplyDelete