I love reading aloud, because I was read aloud to as a child by two masters—my mother performing with full orchestration Dickens and Twain, my father doing the Psalms, the Gospels, Paul, and Jack London—as but a teenager at the helm in a high running northern sea. You would be on that dark churning boat with JL’s young legs braced, determined hands on the wheel, to hear my father lay it down. So, I share this wonderful and unexpected reading with you, by my favorite actor of all time. Once, when I was nearly on the verge of a neurological episode with the great love of my teen years, we settled into one of those rare moments of young peace at home, parents out for the night. We ate macaroni and cheese and snuggled on the couch to watch Hitchcock’s “Jamaica Inn,” with Laughton in the lead. It seemed sooo exotic to watch an old black and white movie, near the stockyards in Salinas. I still remember the simultaneous click of jaws when we realized that Laughton, as local squire, is the actual ringleader / mastermind of the wrecking / pirate gang. I said to myself right then, that was what I wanted to do to people—to lure them into a deeper plan. She and I had been through some stuff. A miscarriage I hadn’t been informed about before, while playing in the snow in Yosemite. An awkward morning when her drunken mother was found beside me on the sleeping porch one thunderstorm 4th of July. A fight with torque wrenches with her father, when he caught me syphoning his gas tank at 2AM trying to get home. When I worked briefly at an Alpha-Beta store, I chased down a stoned thief who’d stolen a canned ham. Turned out to be her deranged brother, who tried to stick firecrackers up cats’ butts. I let him go that night—only to see him run head long into an oncoming car. Would’ve been better if he’d died. But Laughton…that great night of just being normal on a couch, as if it were our own home. She got that miscarriage thing worked out and has three kids, I believe. I’m sure if I ever saw her again, we’d say, “Make way for Pengallan! https://youtube/watch?v=hMoAzWgNSm4
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 19:38:33 +0000
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