written and read by Tom Lyford
Here’s to those too few and far-between
bastions of diversity we’ve occasionally
stumbled upon over time… those vibrant,
spice-of-life oases of heterogeneity in the
deserts of conformity: our talk-like-us flocks,
our act-like-us herds, our pre-fab,
chameleon-career lives--
To the public schools of years gone by where
slide-ruled, pocket-protectored eggheads communed in
cafeterias across from Streetcar-Named-Desire Stellas
in the Archie-and-Jughead-hijinks melting pot,
all waiting together in the lunch line
for the big segregation crapshoot
of becoming somebody someday--
And here’s to Basic Training, that
close-quarters barracks bunking
community with its human rainbow of
Beetle Bailey Buddies, the Bilkos,
the Klingers… the Audie Murphies
and Gomer Pyles… and to a man,
equals: all literally of the same stripe--
And drink to those intermittent blackout years bottled
in barrooms where everybody knows your name (if
they can only just find where they’ve filed it among the
spinning rolodexes of their dying brain cells)… where the
Cliff Clavins and Charles Bukowskys you were rubbing
and bending elbows with came from different
walks of life and greener pastures than you--
And to the health of dependency rehabs
and twelve-step programs everywhere… all
the alky bikers and barbers, teachers, truckers
priests and proselytes, merchants, mechanics
and millworkers... for where else might you be
able to number a doctor, a lawyer, and… an
Indian Chief among your circle of friends…?
Here’s to those too few and far-between
bastions of diversity we’ve occasionally
stumbled upon over time… those vibrant,
spice-of-life oases of heterogeneity in the
deserts of conformity: our talk-like-us flocks,
our act-like-us herds, our pre-fab,
chameleon-career lives--
To the public schools of years gone by where
slide-ruled, pocket-protectored eggheads communed in
cafeterias across from Streetcar-Named-Desire Stellas
in the Archie-and-Jughead-hijinks melting pot,
all waiting together in the lunch line
for the big segregation crapshoot
of becoming somebody someday--
And here’s to Basic Training, that
close-quarters barracks bunking
community with its human rainbow of
Beetle Bailey Buddies, the Bilkos,
the Klingers… the Audie Murphies
and Gomer Pyles… and to a man,
equals: all literally of the same stripe--
And drink to those intermittent blackout years bottled
in barrooms where everybody knows your name (if
they can only just find where they’ve filed it among the
spinning rolodexes of their dying brain cells)… where the
Cliff Clavins and Charles Bukowskys you were rubbing
and bending elbows with came from different
walks of life and greener pastures than you--
And to the health of dependency rehabs
and twelve-step programs everywhere… all
the alky bikers and barbers, teachers, truckers
priests and proselytes, merchants, mechanics
and millworkers... for where else might you be
able to number a doctor, a lawyer, and… an
Indian Chief among your circle of friends…?
