When cinema becomes real Harvey And Me By Will Mayo I know Ive always been something of a skeptic when it comes to matters of religion such as these. Dr Talone-Sullivans visions of the Virgin Mary filled me with doubt and I always thought that Mohammeds step from the rock as just a legend to be disbelieved save in the fanciful tales of youngsters. Too, I recalled that Josephus, the Jewish historian of the Maccabean revolt (Jewish, yes, but loyal to the Romans), dismissed Jesus as a mere magician and I always thought that the Moral Majority (Jerry Falwell, et al) were better meant as jokesters than as politicians or preachers. But then I remembered how David Copperfield, our own American man of magic, made the Statue Of Liberty disappear one eventful night many years past (and then he brought it back, of course, thank you, David), and how the good doctor/pharmacist brought free food and medicine to the poor in our community regardless of whether they believed her stories of meeting Mother Mary. And then theres the old Arabic chestnut, If you cant bring Mohammed to the mountain then bring the mountain to Mohammed. So whos to say they werent all right? And, well, then theres Harvey. You know Harvey, dont you? Hes our invisible rabbit, the one who shows that crazy old men such as ourselves can work a little magic and prove that sanity and visions are not just the work of madmen and drugcrazed poets such as Coleridge with his dream of the crystal palace but that even hallucination is a relative concept. Herein lies my tale- What can I say about the movie Harvey that hasnt been said already? Its a very simple tale of a man on trial in a test of sanity before his peers. And what does the feller (as portrayed so aptly by the then-young Jimmy Stewart) do? He proceeds to prove that not only is he sane but that the whole town around him is the crazy one. Not bad for a guy whose only friend in the world is an invisible rabbit. This movie, in fact, was very much on my mind back in the early weeks of 1985, when off my medicine, and at all odds with myself and my family as to whether I should be a librarian or -- what could be better? -- a janitor, I spent much of my night hours driving around Frederick grabbing a beer here, a cup of coffee there. Anything to relieve the troubles from my mind as to where my life was headed and what my place in it was. Of course, in this respect I was not unlike many other young men (and women) in the world today. Sooner or later, after all, we all come to a crossroads and who among us is to say which is the high road and which is the low road? Looks can be deceiving. As always. Anyhow, I was in that frame of my mind when I entered a Dunkin Donuts back in one of those perambulations of the soul and, as luck would have it, I decided to play something of a practical joke on the waitress there. I sat down in one of the booths and when she asked what I wanted, I said Two coffees. One for me and one for my friend Harvey. She said Harvey? I said Yes, you know, Harvey. My friend the invisible rabbit and I motioned across the table to the opposite side of the booth. Harvey, she said. Of course. And just as I figured after she brought me and Harvey (who I was making up as I went along) our coffees, she went out back to call the cops and take this poor lunatic away. While she was doing that I quietly slipped out of the booth and to my car parked in front of the store. I fired the ignition and drove aroundabouts the highway until I was at the Dennys restaurant (also an all nighter) across the highway from that Dunkin Donuts where my much befuddled friend stood waiting for the cops to arrive and perhaps also wondering where her strange customer had gone off to in the 3 AM darkness. I was well into my coffee at the Dennys window when the sirens roared and what appeared to be a whole regiment of police cars and ambulances flew off into that little donut shop parking lot (I wasnt aware until that time just how many cars could fit into that tiny space). When all the cops and paramedics rushed from their vehicles and into the coffee house, I couldnt help myself. I laughed and laughed with tears of pleasant relief running down my face. Who was to say who was crazy and who was not? The Dennys waitress, however, didnt call for help. She just looked at me with a peculiar look on her face, wondering perhaps whether I knew something she didnt. Perhaps I did. Perhaps I didnt. One thing was for sure. I wasnt about to tell one way or the other. That was for her to figure out, not me.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 05:59:24 +0000