Elizabeth Hand - Chip Crockett's Xmas Carol

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Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol

by Elizabeth Hand

"This day we shut out Nothing!"

"Pause," says a low voice. "Nothing?

Think!"

"On Christmas Day, we will shut out

from our fireside, Nothing."

"Not the shadow of a vast City where the

withered leaves are lying deep?" the

voice replies. "Not the shadow that

darkens the whole globe? Not the

shadow of the City of the Dead?"

Not even that …

—Charles Dickens, "What Christmas Is as

We Grow Older"

Tony was the one who called him.

"Brendan, man. I got some bad news."

Brendan felt a slight hitch in his stomach. He leaned

back in his chair, nudging his office door closed so

his secretary wouldn't hear. "Oh yes?"

"Chip Crockett died."

"Chip Crockett?" Brendan frowned, staring at his

computer screen as though he was afraid Tony

might materialize there. "You mean, like, The Chip

Crockett Show?"

"Yeah, man." Tony sighed deeply. "My brother Jake,

he just faxed me the obituary from the Daily News.

He died over the weekend but they just announced

it today."

There was a clunk through the phone receiver, a

background clatter of shouting voices and footsteps.

Tony was working as a substitute teacher at Saint

Ignatius High School. Brendan was amazed he'd

been able to hang onto the job at all, but he

gathered that being a substitute at Saint Ignatius

was way below being sanitation engineer in terms of

salary, benefits, and respect. He heard a crackle of

static as Tony ran into the corridor, shouting.

"Whoa! Nelson Crane, man! Slow down, okay? Okay.

Yeah, I guess it was lung cancer. Did you know he

smoked?"

"You're talking about Chip Crockett the kiddie show

host. Right?" Brendan rubbed his forehead, feeling

the beginning of a headache. "No, Tony, I didn't

know he smoked, because I don't actually know Chip

Crockett. Do you?"

"No. Remember Ogden Orff? That time he got the

milk jug stuck on his nose? 'That's my boy, Ogden

Orff!' " Tony intoned, then giggled. "And that

puppet? Ooga Booga? The one with the nose?"

"Ogden Orff." Brendan leaned back in his chair.

Despite himself, he smiled. "God, yeah, I remember.

And the other one—that puppet who sang? He did

'Mister Bassman' and that witch doctor song. I loved

him.…"

"That wasn't a puppet. That was Captain

Dingbat—you know, the D.J. character."

"Are you sure? I thought it was a puppet."

"No way, man. I mean, yes! I am ab-so-lute-ly

sure—"

An earsplitting whistle echoed over the line. Brendan

winced and held the phone at arm's-length, drew it

back in time to hear Tony's voice fading.

"Hey man, that's the bell, I gotta go. I'll fax this to

you before I leave, okay? Oh, and hey, we're still on

for Thursday, right?"

Brendan nodded. "Right," he said, but Tony was

already gone.

Late that afternoon the fax arrived. Brendan's

secretary gave it to him, the curling cover sheet

covered with Tony's nearly illegible scrawl.

OGDEN ORFF LIVES! SEE YA THURS. AT

CHILDE ROLAND.

TONY

Brendan tossed this and turned to the Daily News

obituary, two long columns complete with photo.

The faxed image was fragmented but still

recognizable—a boyishly handsome man in suit and

skinny tie, grinning at a puppet with a huge nose.

Above him was the headline:

AU REVOIR, OOGA BOOGA

Brendan shook his head. "Poor Ooga Booga," he

murmured, then smoothed the paper on his desk.

Iconic kiddie show host Chip Crockett

died yesterday at his home in Manhasset,

after a long and valiant battle with lung

cancer. While never achieving the

recognition accorded peers like Soupy

Sales or Captain Kangaroo's Bob

Keeshan, Chip Crockett's legend may be

greater, because it lives solely in the

memories of viewers. Like other shows

from the late 1950s and early 1960s, The

Chip Crockett Show was either

performed live or videotaped; if the

latter, the tapes were immediately erased

so they could be reused. And, as though

Fate conspired to leave no trace of

Crockett's comic genius, a 1966

warehouse fire destroyed the few

remaining traces of his work.

For years, rumors of "lost" episodes

raced among baby boomer fans, but alas,

none have ever been found. The show's

final episode, the last of the popular Chip

Crockett Christmas specials, aired on

December 23rd, 1965.

The gentle Crockett was noted for a

surreal sense of humor that rivaled Ernie

Kovacs'. His cast consisted of a dozen

puppets—all created by Crockett—and a

rogue's gallery of over-the-top human

characters, also given life by the versatile

performer. Every weekday morning and

again in the afternoon, Chip Crockett's

jouncy theme would sound and the fun

began, as potato-nosed Ooga Booga, sly

Ratty Mouse, and the lovable

knucklehead Ogden Orff appeared on

WNEW-TV, reaching a broadcast

audience of millions of children—and,

occasionally, their unsuspecting parents.

Chip Crockett was born in 1923 in

Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. His broadcast

career began in 1949 with a radio show …

Brendan sighed and looked up. Outside a sky the

color of scorched nickel hung above Pennsylvania

Avenue. In the very corner of his window, you could

just make out the scaffolding that covered the

Capitol building, a steel trellis overgrown with

plywood and poured-concrete forms. When he and

Robert Flaherty, his law partner, had first taken this

office, Brendan had proudly pointed out the view to

everyone, including the Capitol police officers who

dropped in with paperwork and Congressional gossip

during their breaks. Now Rob was dead, killed four

years ago this Christmas Eve by a drunk driver,

though Brendan still hadn't taken his name from the

brass plate by the front door. The Capitol looked like

an image from war-torn Sarajevo, and the officers

Brendan had once known were unrecognizable

behind bulletproof jackets and wraparound

sunglasses.

"Mr. Keegan?" His secretary poked her head around

the door. "Okay if I leave a little early today? It's

Parent Conference week at Jessie's school—"

"Sure, sure, Ashley. You get that Labor Department

stuff over to Phil Lancaster?"

"I did." Ashley already had her coat on, rummaging

in a pocket for her farecard. "How's Peter these

days?"

Peter was Brendan's son. "Oh, he's great, just

great," he said, nodding. "Doing very well. Very, very

well."

This wasn't true and, in fact, never really had been.

Shortly after his second birthday, Peter Keegan had

been diagnosed as having Pervasive Developmental

Disorder, which as far as Brendan could figure was

just a more socially acceptable term for his son's

being (in the medical parlance) "somewhere within

the autism continuum." Batteries of tests had

followed—CAT scans, MRIs and PETs—and the

upshot of it all was yet another string of letters:

PDDNOS, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not

Otherwise Specified. In other words, Peter Xavier

Keegan, now four, had never spoken a word to

anyone. If you touched him he moved away,

deliberately but casually, with no more emotion than

if he'd brushed up against a thorny hedge. If you

tried to look him in the eye, he looked away; if

anyone tried to hold him, however gently, he would

scream, and hit, and bite, and eventually fall

screaming to the floor.

He had not always been like that. Brendan had to

remind himself every day, lest the fragmentary

images of eighteen-month-old Peter smiling in his lap

disappear forever. Once upon a time, Peter had been

okay. Brendan had to believe that, despite the

doctors who told him otherwise. That his son had

been born with this condition; that Peter's neural

wiring was defective; that the chances for reclaiming

that other child—the one who clung to his father and

babbled wordlessly but cheerfully, the one who

gazed at Brendan with clear blue eyes and held his

finger as he fell asleep—were slim or nil. Just last

week Brendan's ex-wife, Teri, had begun a new

regime of vitamin therapy for their son, the latest in

an endless series of efforts to reclaim the toddler

they had lost.

They were still waiting to see the results. And

Brendan's secretary Ashley would have known all

this because Teri had told her, during one of her

daily phone calls to Brendan to discuss the million

details of shared custody arrangements—pickup

times, doctors' appointments, changes in Peter's

medication, nightmares, biting incidents, bills for the

expensive Birchwood School, missing shoes, and

loose teeth. To his recollection, Brendan had never

volunteered a single word about his son or his

divorce to Ashley, but he had no doubt but that, if

called upon, his secretary could testify in District

Court about everything from his prior sexual

relationship with his ex-wife (satisfactory if

unremarkable) to his current attendance at AA

meetings (occasional).

"Peter's very well," he repeated one last time. He

made a tube of Tony's fax and eyed his secretary

through one end. "Good luck at school, Ashley."

He walked home that evening, his briefcase nudging

his leg as he made his way up Pennsylvania Avenue,

keeping his bare head down against the chill night

wind. Tony's fax stuck up out of his overcoat

pocket, still curled into a tube. He ducked into the

gourmet kitchen shop and bought some coffee

beans, then headed down Fourth Street towards his

apartment. He was thinking about the old Chip

Crockett Show, and how his secretary was born a

good ten years after it had gone off the air.

How did I get to be so old? he marveled, kicking at

the pile of sodden leaves banked against his

building's outer door. "Mr. Keegan." When the hell

did that happen? And he went inside, to silence and

The Washington Post still unread on the kitchen

counter, the unblinking red eye of the answering

machine signaling that no one had called.

Thursday night he met Tony Kemper at Childe

Roland. The club had been a big hangout for them

back when Brendan was in law school at Georgetown

in the early 1980s. Tony was still playing with the

Maronis in those days, and the Childe Roland was a

popular after-hours spot for musicians on tour.

Later, after Tony left the Maronis and moved back to

D.C., he'd headline with local bands, and he and

Brendan and Brendan's cousin, Kevin, had gotten

into the habit of meeting at the Childe Roland every

Thursday after closing time, to drink and listen to

whatever performers happened to drop by.

Now, years later, all three were veterans of

Alcoholics Anonymous, although Kevin was the only

one who still attended meetings regularly. But they

still met once a week at the Childe Roland, sitting at

a table in the shabby downstairs room with its brick

walls and fading posters for Root Boy Slim and

Tommy Keene and the Dale Williams Band. They'd

eat hamburgers and drink coffee or Evian water,

feed quarters to the vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes,

and argue politics and football over "96 Tears" and

"Bastards of Young" and "Pretty Vacant."

Tonight Brendan was the first to arrive, as usual.

He'd been divorced for nearly a year but still couldn't

quite get the hang of being single. He didn't date, he

didn't cook. He worked late when he could, but

Flaherty, Keegan & Associates didn't generate

enough of a caseload to merit more than two or

three nights a week. He had Peter on alternate

weekends and Tuesdays, but that still left a lot of

downtime. He hated to admit it, but when Tony or

Kevin had to cancel Thursdays at Childe Roland,

Brendan was depressed—depressed enough that

he'd come to Childe Roland by himself and sit at

their usual place and feed the jukebox, playing the

songs Kevin or Tony would have played, even the

ones he hated.

But he wouldn't be alone tonight. He heard Tony

before he saw him. Or rather, he heard everyone

else seeing him—

"Tony, my man! What's shakin'?"

"Tony Maroni! 'Hooray, hello, whoa whoa whoa!' "

"Tony!"

"It's the Tonester!"

Brendan watched as his friend grinned and waved,

crossing the room in that bizarre way he had,

half-glide and half-slouch, resplendent in his ancient

black leather jacket and decrepit Converse hightops,

his long black hair streaked with grey but otherwise

pretty much unchanged from the lanky, goofy-faced

nineteen-year-old who once upon a time had been

the Great White Hope of Rock and Roll. On the

Bowery, anyway, for a few years in the mid-1970s,

which (according to Tony) was the last time rock had

mattered.

That was when Tony founded The Maronis, the

proto-punk band whose first, self-titled record had

recently been cited by The New York Times as one of

the ten most influential rock albums of the century.

(The follow-up, Maronis Get Detention, came in at

number 79.) The band's formula, equal parts

three-chord rock and Three Stooges, won them a

record contract with EMI, a national tour, and all the

attendant problems as Tony, Mony, Pony, and Tesla

(né Tony Kemper, Marty Berenstein, Paul Schippa,

and Dickie Stanton) played, fought, drank, dropped

acid, shot up, and eventually OD'd.

Not all at the same time, of course, but that was it

as far as EMI was concerned. The Maronis lost their

only contract with a major label. Worse, they lost

their catalog—they hadn't bothered with an attorney

when they signed—and the ensuing decades had

seen one failed lawsuit after another brought by

band members, whenever one was flush enough to

hire a lawyer.

Still, the band continued to tour and record, on the

small New Jersey-based Millstone label. When Mony

died of a heroin overdose, he was replaced, first by

Joni, the band's first female guitarist, and then by

Sony, a Japanese fan who attached himself to the

Maronis after their disastrous 1984 Tokyo

appearance. That was when Tony left the band.

Despite the rumors, he'd never gotten into heroin.

Even as a kid in Yonkers he'd been terrified of

needles; Kevin used to steal hypos from his doctor

father and hide them in Tony's Deputy Dawg

lunchbox, something Brendan would never have

forgiven his cousin for, but Tony was incapable of

anything resembling anger. Whatever demons he

encountered, he fought them down with

beer—preferably Budweiser, even when he (briefly)

could have afforded Heineken. He'd finally lost it in

Japan when, jet-lagged and suffering from food

poisoning, he'd gotten the DTs and started

screaming about Gojiro in the lobby of the Tokyo

Hilton. Millstone had no money for an emergency

medical evacuation, and so Brendan and Kevin

arranged to have their childhood friend flown back to

the States. Kevin had gone over to escort

Tony—Kevin was raking it in at Merrill Lynch—and on

their return he and Brendan checked their friend into

detox.

He'd been sober ever since. Although, because he

was Tony Maroni, this wasn't always readily

apparent.

"Hey, Brenda Starr! How's it goin'?"

Brendan looked up, making a face at the boyhood

nickname. "Tony. Good to see you—"

He reached across the table to shake his hand. Tony

leaned forward and grabbed him in a hug. "Yeah,

man, great to see you, too!" As though it had been

a year instead of a week; as though they hadn't just

talked on the phone, oh, about two hours ago.

"Where's Kevo?"

Brendan shrugged. "He should be here soon."

"Right, right. The Family Man. Family matters. Family

matters," Tony repeated, cocking his head and

scrunching his face up. "Hey, get it? Like, it

matters—"

"I get it, Tony."

"I never did. Not until just now."

Brendan sighed, glanced up to see a young woman

in torn fishnets and polyester skirt, Mandelbrot

tattoos and enough surgical steel piercings to arm

an emerging nation. "Oh good. Here's the Bionic

Waitress."

Tony whirled to grin at her. "Bethie! Hi! Hey, you

look nice in that outfit—"

"It's my uniform, Tony," the waitress said, but

smiled, displaying more gleaming metal and a tongue

stud. "Where's your other partner in crime?"

"Kevo? He'll be here. He's got kids, you know—"

Tony suddenly looked across the table, stricken. "Oh

hey, man, I didn't mean—I mean, he's got kids too,"

he said, pointing at Brendan. "It's just—"

"Tony. It's okay," said Brendan.

"—just, uh, Kevin's got a lot of 'em. Well, two,

anyway."

"Really?" The waitress looked down at Brendan

curiously. "I never knew you were married."

"He's not," said Tony. "He's—"

"I'm divorced," Brendan broke in. He gave Tony an

icy look. "I have a little boy."

"Yeah? You ought to bring him in some night. Okay,

you want something now or you want to wait for

your friend?'

They ordered, coffee for Brendan, club soda with

lemon for Tony. When she brought the drinks back,

Tony took the straw and blew its paper wrapper

across the table at Brendan. "No offense, man," he

said. "About—"

"None taken, Tony." Brendan lifted his coffee mug

and smiled.

"Cheers."

"Cheers." Tony took a sip of his drink, then slid from

his chair. "Gotta feed the jukebox, man. Right back."

Brendan watched as his friend sidled over to one of

the club's vintage jukeboxes, spangled man-sized

bijoux that glittered and bubbled and glowed along

the brick walls. There was a Seeburg, a Rockola, and

the Childe Roland's crown jewel: a 1946 Wurlitzer

Model 1015, special edition "Rites of Spring" in mint

condition, down to the 45s stacked on their

glittering turntable spindle. Tony hunched over this

now, drumming his fingers on the glass surface. The

green-and-gold Bakelite pilasters and ruby lights

made him look like one of his own adolescent

daydreams, long hair touched with crimson, his Silly

Putty face given a momentary semblance of gravity,

as though he were gazing into some piece of

sophisticated medical machinery instead of an old

jukebox.

"Hey." Tony frowned. "What happened to 'Moulty?'

And who the fuck put the Eagles on this thing?"

Brendan shook his head, marveling as he always did

at how long it took Tony to make his selections.

"You know," he said as Tony slouched back to the

table, the opening drumbeats of "Be My Baby"

echoing around them, "it took Phil Spector less time

to record that than it did for you to punch it in."

Tony slid back into his seat. "Hey, you know what

that is? That's the Big Bang, man! Bum, bum-bum!

Bum, bum-bum! That's the noise God made when

He made the universe! When I die, make sure they

play that, okay?" He clapped a hand to his forehead.

"Geez, I almost forgot! Check this out—"

He fumbled in a pocket of his leather jacket,

withdrew a wad of folded-up paper. "There's, like, a

Chip Crockett Web page. Listen—"

Tony smoothed out the paper, then cleared his

throat. " 'Like a lot of other people, I grew up in the

early 1960s watching The Chip Crockett Show,' " he

read. " 'I was still pretty young when I watched it,

though, and I don't really remember much, except

that the puppets were sort of scary. But since

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ChipCrockett'sChristmasCarolbyElizabethHand"ThisdayweshutoutNothing!""Pause,"saysalowvoice."Nothing?Think!""OnChristmasDay,wewillshutoutfromourfireside,Nothing.""NottheshadowofavastCitywherethewitheredleavesarelyingdeep?"thevoicereplies."Nottheshadowthatdarkensthewholeglobe?NottheshadowoftheCityofth...

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Elizabeth Hand - Chip Crockett's Xmas Carol

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