I love music. It’s ironic… now that I have a car with a good radio, I have decided to drive in silence during my 55 minute journey from Woodbury to Norwalk and back.
My day is filled with sound of one type or another. Yes, music; but mostly it’s the spoken word. Incessant sound. So my drive in quiet solitude has become a cherished part of my daily routine. Thoughts come and go, ideas drift in… old stories, old conversations. Or they can be new… looking for a better way to describe a young Chianti I had just tried. I think of things that make me sad… and I think of things that make me happy.
And last night I thought of something that made me laugh… laugh hysterically… which is perfectly OK. Laughing out loud in an outrageous fashion, when driving alone… is like singing out loud alone (off key). Who cares? Not that I have ever worried too much about laughing out loud outrageously in public (which will be in evidence later in this story).
This is how it starts…
In February of 1962 my Father took my Mother on a trip around-the-world. Their journey began in Hawaii, proceeded to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Manila, Thailand, India, Israel, Greece, Spain… and maybe London & Paris, too. Official photography for the trip was a shared responsibility. The “simple camera” was relatively new and the entire trip was shot in slides (favorite shots would be turned into photos later).
My Father also brought a new camera along… perhaps as back-up. The instamatic may have been shared; but this one was his. It was a Minolta or Minox… I forget which; but the key here was its small size. It was smaller than a six inch ruler & no wider than a stout cigar. At the time it was the smallest commercial camera by miles. It looked like something 007 would use. The camera had a small tan leather case and a “watch chain” that you could clip to a belt loop and slip the camera into your pants’ pocket.
Dad was proud of that camera. Although he never impressed me as being a “shutter bug.”
If the camera was small… the film size was ridiculously small. Micro film really. But he wasn’t shooting secret files purloined from the Kremlin… he was photographing the Taj Mahal. And since a slide is nothing more than a positive image of a negative… the size of Dad’s slides looked like a computer chip. So when his film was developed, we had to get a special projector, which had this magnifying attachment so that you could see an image from a decent distance away.
Mom’s slides had no such difficulty… and I guess I must have seen her slides a half dozen times before we had the right equipment for Dad’s…
We finally get to view Dad’s slides. I’m looking at shot after shot… Dad explaining this or that. And then we get to a staged photo of Mom and Dad standing before a Thai Temple in Bangkok. Dad must have asked a passer-by to take the shot… Mom is in a light coloured sleeveless top and a skirt. She is standing at an angle facing Dad. Her feet are positioned in that classic pose… one foot slightly in front of the other, and pointed slightly out. She has a beautiful smile.
My Father is wearing an English lisle polo shirt, a silk foulard tied around his neck, light grey tropical worsted slacks and cordovan penny loafers. He is facing slightly toward my Mother, and the empty leather camera case (having given the camera to the passer-by for the shot), attached by the strap to his belt loop, was hanging about crotch level.
My Dad takes a look at the slide and lets out a serious chuckle, “Jesus, it’s looks like I have my pecker on a leash.”
Then I crack out a laugh at this comment. My trouble is… I can’t stop laughing. And then of course Dad picks up his laughter pace, too. And there the two of us were unable to call a halt to the laughing. Mom left the room saying if she stayed she was going to pee in her pants.
That’s the way it was with me and my Dad. Boy could we laugh… and poor Mom would have to scurry from the room lest she pee in her pants.
I thought about this story a couple of years ago… don’t ask me exactly how I arrived at the recollection. We were in Taos for Fan and Chipp’s Wedding… after the service we were gathered on the patio of this wonderful place trading stories… enjoying a drink, taking in the view… And I am sure that Paul and I got to talking and it was probably mentioned that it would have been great for Mom and Dad to have been there, too…
I guess that’s how I connected to the “pecker on a leash”. And geeze, if I laughed hard with my Dad… I laughed harder with Paul. Because I had a much better understanding of the improbability. And the more I thought about it… the harder I laughed. The clear image of that photograph came back in highest detail… Mom and Dad, although casually dressed, dressed impeccably… standing in front of a magnificent Holy Shrine… and it looked like my father’s penis is hanging out of his fly, and it was on a wire tether. This wasn’t like some smart assed teenager giving the finger in a sneaky way or something. This was my Father!! How improbable is this?
Eventually all my laughing gets the attention of others on the patio. And I mean I am laughing! Pictures were taken. It looks like I might be in pain, or maybe just threw up. Paul’s expression is one of bemused toleration. If anybody asks me about the shot, I’m going to tell them that Paul had just farted (or peed in his pants) and I was creating a ruckus to cover his embarrassment. Yeah, I think that’s a good bluff.
Last night, the silence of my drive was broken… like I had hit a pocket of turbulence on Route 136. The picture of my Father and Mother standing in front of that Temple in Thailand came back to me… And I laughed once again… harder and harder. This time it was about the caption. I mean sure, it’s a funny shot; but maybe only funny if you knew what to look for. And even if you knew what to look for, the hysterical part was the “caption”… the name Dad had coined off-the-cuff… pecker on a leash.
My Father was a master at the Title.
So… I had a good laugh with my Dad last night. Pecker on a Leash? Isn’t that a Pub in London?