Today's Story From the Orange Room takes place in the Summer of 1986. It had been many years since I left the glorious ORANGE ROOM...my bedroom in Mardell Manor. I had been to college, left college, played in a traveling rock band, moved out of the orange room, went back to college and then, moved back home. After finishing school, I moved out with a woman who became my first wife... we eventually had two children together, but on this Summer weekend, we were still single but living together.
Our first place had been in a basement house where our bedroom was also the kitchen. We’re talking small, but our new place was actually a HOUSE right next door to the SKY HARBOR. I set up a makeshift studio in a room off our bedroom that faced the PEORIA AIRPORT RUNWAY. It was small but it had a PANORAMIC view of the airport and runways.
My studio consisted of a TASCAM four track cassette recorder, a Sherwood stereo receiver with a pair of Altec speakers, Sony turn table and a Fisher cassette boombox.
I could smoke a hitter and listen to mixes while watching airplanes take off and land out side my house. If you walked out our back door, there was NO GRASS.... it was concrete and the distance from our house to the airport fence was probably 10 or 12 feet! I could throw a rock and ALMOST hit an airplane landing. We were that close. I loved it!!!!
My future wife and I had both landed jobs at FAMOUS BARR and had recently met a brand new group of people who became close friends. We were all the first group to work for Famous Barr. In fact, we were the ones who actually unloaded the trucks and stocked that store as we sang the hit song of the day, Money For Nothing. “We got to move those microwave ovens, we got to move those Color TVs”. We all became tight. There was a fantastic morale and many parties.
By this time, I had got to know our landlord, Daryl Klusendorf, co owner of the Sky Harbor, and he and I became a lifelong friends and instrumental in forming the Flying D'Rito Brothers a few years later. As I mentioned, our backyard was the Airport but we did have a nice front yard that stretched until it met AIRPORT ROAD. To the side of the house, was a small patch of grass and beyond that was the Sky Harbor Parking lot. At night, cars would park in the lot and their lights would shine directly into our BEDROOM window!!!!
One day, I decided that we should host the next Famous Bar party and invite EVERYONE we knew..... It was going to be be epic!!!!! My friend, Chuck and I built a bar that consisted of two barrels that sat out side the Harbor. We built a roof to cover the bar and glued tons of reeds and cat tales that we found on the side of road. Volley Ball nets were set up in the front yard and Chuck purchased a pig to roast. Up on our roof, we placed big letters saying WELCOME TO THE ISLANDS.
The day of the party came and the weather was perfect. I had recorded hours of music which played through the windows of our house and before long, the yard was filling up with Famous Barr employees, family and friends!!!! The pig was roasting and EVERYONE WAS FEELING FINE.
The first indication that the party was taking off was when an employee of the Sky Harbor arrived in a grass shirt and COCONUT bra!!! A breast in each coconut!!! She was awesome!!!! Everyone was wearing some kind of island wardrobe but her's was out of this world!!! She must have been having a great time because at one point, with a drink in one hand and a plate of pig in the other, she attempted to sit down on the shrubbery that divided our yard with the Sky Harbor parking lot!!!!! I watched in amazement as she leaned back and her legs shot up into the sky. With her grass skirt opened wide....she then, fell back behind the shrubs with a loud scream!!!! When the poor girl finally did re appear from behind the shrubbery, she had barbecue sauce all over her grass skirt and her coconut bra was off kilter!!!! She just laughed and and we all applauded her good nature!!! Grab some more pig!!!!!
Hours passed and the sun began to set. People were playing volley ball and drinking from the homemade TIKI BAR. Music was in the air and there was an orange glow in the sky. There was a large DUMPSTER in the Sky Harbor's lot that was full of trash and probably grease form the kitchen. Without my knowledge, someone threw a lit cigarette into it and a started a large FIRE that was getting BIGGER all the time. Someone called the fire department and soon there were SEVERAL fire trucks on the scene and they managed to extinguish the fire before any damage was done. We thanked them and then invited them over to the party!!!!! Plates were fixed and they received a hero's welcome. My Mother, who never wasted a perfect PHOTO OP, posed with the firemen on their trucks and they were all smiles. I must find that picture. We probably cost the Village of Bartonville HUNDRED's of dollars for that visit!!!!
The party lasted into the early morning and many of us had been partying for over 12 hours. Once the last of the islanders had left, myself and another person, decided to drive to Creve Coeur and watch my friend’s band play. He had been at the house earlier in the day and invited me up to sing harmony on a song when we arrived. We had no reason to be in that club let alone in a car!!! Somehow we got home, but I remember the tires of my car sliding off the road and back several times. We were toast!!! I don't even remember going to bed but we did make it. But that's not the tale I wanted to share with you. Our tale actually begins a few hours later in the early morning.
Have you ever slowly opened your eyes after being completely asleep and then not recognizing where you were....or how in the hell you got there? I opened my eyes, and I was actually SITTING. I could see the volley ball net in the front yard and a LIMBO POLE next to it. But why was I looking into the front yard, I thought. Shouldn’t I have been looking out at the parking lot next door? It was almost as if I were in our bathroom. Hmmm? OUR BATHROOM?????? WTH???? I looked around and yes.....there I was, sitting on the "throne" sure as hell!!!!! "OH NO" I thought to myself. I looked down to survey the damage!!!! My white boxer briefs were around my ankles and resting snugly in the middle was what looked like a dark easter egg, a piece of chocolate perhaps, a TURTLE NUGGET????? Yes, I'm afraid it was what I was dreading...a turtle nugget of poop!!! AAAAAAAAAaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!
I was totally awake now. Were there other signs of foulness? I didnt find anything. Nothing on the floor, nothing on the toilet or even IN the toilet for that matter….. Only the lone TURTLE NUGGET that seemed as if it had been strategically laid there by some amphibious creature in the night!!!! Then I became totally OUTRAGED!!!! Good Lord... how gross. Although it was pretty clean by poop standards.
I slipped out of my briefs, washed my hands, put on some shorts..... went outside, and in a fit of DISGUST...I threw my underwear as far as I could across the Airport fence. "Perhaps they made it to the runway,” I thought. Then, with a feeling of accomplishment, I returned to the couch and fell back to sleep.
A few hours later, I awoke for the second time and felt like I had been hit by a MAC TRUCK!!! I was so hung over that I swore I'd never drink again. You know.....that one? Then it hit me....a feeling of dread as if I had committed some crime the night before....a murder perhaps? Did I kill someone? I thought and thought….but I was coming up empty. Crash the car? I looked out side and the car was ok. What then? Did I poop my pants and throw the evidence onto the airport runway? BINGO!!! Oh Shit!!!! Literally!!!!! Yes I had.
I went back outside and searched for the long LIMBO pole then retraced my steps back to the fence where I spied my soiled white under pants...complete with turtle nugget and a couple dozen green flies!!!!! I hadn't tossed it quite as far as I thought, so I leaned over the Airport's fence, and with my LIMBO pole, began fishing for my BVD's!!!!
Eventually, the limbo pole caught it's prey and I reeled in the whitey tighties….sans the turtle nugget!!!!! Immediately, I threw the underwear away and swore to never fish again!!!!
Just another NUGGET from the ORANGE ROOM.
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