The Time of My Life (16 page)

Then he told his three victims, who were rolling on the ground and screaming, that he drives by the park three times a week, and if they desired more of what he had given them, they could hang around. Then he loaded the mother and children into their car and told them to follow his rig until he overtook their husband and father, who was farther down the highway in a U-Haul truck, unaware that his family had stopped at the park. Then Cockrell reunited the family and told them to follow him and he would see them safely through Dallas, which he did, then drove off into the sunset to arrive at his truck yard only a half-hour late. Then, not bothering to tell his boss what had happened, he went home to Irving and cleaned his wound. He had received his reward, he said, “when those two little girls hugged and kissed me. That made my day.”

Besides the basic heroics, Cockrell's story is full of nice little human-interest touches. Cockrell is white, and the family he saved is black. Cockrell is an ex-Marine, and the family he helped is a Marine family being transferred from North Carolina to California. Before he joined the Corps, Cockrell was a three-hundred-pound fatso who dropped out of high school because he could no longer endure the bullying he got from his classmates.

The story also hints at several of the sicknesses in our society. While Cockrell was comforting the woman and the girls, the attacker whose arm he broke was threatening to sue him—and might have, if a lawyer had been among the onlookers. A woman who read his story in the newspaper approached Cockrell at a Burger King and asked him what he could do about wife-beaters. A man called him up and told him the Ku Klux Klan was going to get him for helping a black woman. And if Cockrell hadn't happened by, the woman and the little girls would have been abducted, raped, and very likely murdered because nobody else at the roadside park lifted a finger.

Granted, there were three attackers, and one of them had a knife (although, according to Cockrell, it wasn't a
big
knife), and there probably weren't any 245-pound ex-Marines among the eight or ten spectators until Cockrell arrived. It's possible that a smaller man, less adept than Cockrell at breaking jaws and arms and knife blades, might have been bunged up a bit had he tried to intervene.

But surely there were several men among the spectators, or a few husky women. Three or four of them, had they banded together, might not have been able to wreak the soul-satisfying havoc that Cockrell did, but surely they could have distracted the attackers from their dirty work long enough to allow their prey to escape.

They didn't, though.

It's easy to sit back and criticize those who out of fear or weakness fail to help the fellow human in danger. It's easy to condemn those who refuse to get involved even when little girls are screaming. It's nice to believe that if
we
had been there,
we
would have done what Cockrell did, within the limits of our physical strength and combat skills.

But would we?

If we're lucky, we will never have to find out. It's people like most of us who make it necessary for people like Dick Cockrell to become heroes.

January, 1980

Hollywood and the Two Thomases

O
NCE
UPON
A
TIME
there was a football player named Thomas Henderson. He was a very good football player. He tackled bad guys who would try to run past him with the ball, and when one of the bad guys would try to throw the ball to another bad guy, sometimes Thomas would pluck the ball out of the air and run in the other direction, which would make the bad guys feel bad and hang their heads.

Thomas played for a team called the Dallas Cowboys, and so did several other very good players. Some of these good players were called “stars.” There were so many stars on the team that people watching them were reminded of the American flag and started calling the Cowboys “America's team.” They even had stars on their helmets and their cheerleaders.

Thomas knew that he was a good player, but he wasn't sure he was a star. He wanted to be one very much. Whenever he would look at his helmet and think of the word
star
, he would also think of the place in California where the famous movie actors and actresses live, and he decided to stop calling himself Thomas and call himself “Hollywood” instead.

Now a man whose name is Hollywood can't behave as if he were still a mere Thomas. He must dress differently, drive a fancier car, make entertaining gestures in front of TV cameras during football games, and say lots of witty things to sportscasters and sports-writers. Hollywood did all this, and soon he was as well known as any player on America's team. Indeed, sometimes he was so busy being a star that he didn't have time to tackle the bad guys who ran past him or pluck the ball out of the air when a bad guy would throw it to his part of the field.

After a time, Hollywood's new behavior began to bother another man named Thomas, who had decided not to change his name to Hollywood. This man, also called Landry, didn't look like a star, but he was one nonetheless. Indeed, he was praised far and wide as the greatest star of all, even though he didn't wear a helmet with a star on it.

This Thomas was the king of the stars, you see. He was a sort of magician who could take young men just out of college and make them into stars. His method of doing this was to make the young men into a football team that could win a lot of games, and those who did the most to help the team win seemed to become stars automatically. And it distressed the magician that Hollywood was too busy being a star to help the team win games anymore.

One day he took Hollywood aside and said to him, “Obviously, it has become irksome to you to go out on the field every Sunday and tackle bad guys and pluck their passes out of the air, when you would rather be doing funny things in front of the TV cameras. I realize now that it was presumptuous of me to expect a star like you to perform such tedious tasks. Therefore, I've decided to relieve you of your football duties so you may devote all your time to being a star. Don't thank me, Hollywood. I would do the same for any star like you.”

Hollywood went back and told the rest of America's team what Landry had said. “Bye, bye, Hollywood,” they replied, and Hollywood went off to be a star by himself.

Time passed.

By and by, Hollywood noticed that he wasn't getting interviewed on TV anymore. He noticed that nobody was calling up and offering him money to do movies or commercials. Sportswriters seemed less and less interested in what he had to say about America's team or the bad guys or the other Thomas or any other topic. He missed his old helmet with the star on it. “Hey,” he said. “Being a star by myself isn't easy. I think I'll call up some of the bad guys whose passes I used to pluck out of the air and tell them I'm willing to play football for one of their teams.”

He called and called, but the bad guys told him that they already had all the stars they needed. Now Hollywood was worried. He sat down and thought and thought. “There's only one thing left to do,” he thought. “I'll change my name to Thomas and go and talk to the other Thomas. I'll tell him I'm tired of being a star by myself and want to be a football player again. I'll tell him that if he will let me wear the helmet with the star on it, I won't even act like a star anymore. I'll just tackle the bad guys and pluck their passes out of the air as I did before I was so famous. I won't insist that the other Thomas make up his mind immediately. I'll give him some time to think it over.”

So Thomas Henderson, a very humble football player, went to the other Thomas and told him these things. But, alas, the Thomas who had never called himself Hollywood needed no time to think it over.

Moral: 'Tis easier for a star to fall out of its constellation than to get back in
.

February, 1980

National Letter Writing Week

D
EAR
READER,

How are you? I am fine. My lady and Pussycat also are fine, and I saw Mockingbird sitting on his utility pole the other day, even though the landlord hired a man to chop down the tree where he used to sit and sing. The weather where I am has been fine lately. I hope the weather is fine where you are, too.

I take pen in hand because today is the first day of National Letter Writing Week, which is a special week thought up by the U.S. Postal Service. Why does the Postal Service want us to write more letters? you may ask. Doesn't it have enough trouble delivering the letters that we've already written?

Well, the stack of stuff that somebody left on my desk says the objectives of National Letter Writing Week are “to focus attention on the power of the written word and letter writing to shape opinion, preserve memories, lift spirits and link people and to encourage more personal correspondence.”

Delving deeper, though, I find that the Postal Service has an ulterior motive. A letter in the pile from Postmaster General William F. Bolger to postmasters everywhere (which may have been delivered to me by mistake, since I'm not a postmaster) states: “In recent months, as I'm sure you've noticed, the phone company has been saying they do it better. They've been urging people to ‘reach out and touch someone'—and also to kick the letter habit!”

Aha! I thought when I read that. Ma Bell is giving the post office fits. Postage stamp sales are falling off, so now we have this National Letter Writing Week!

The Postal Service means business, too. It has collaborated with the National Council of Teachers of English and published a little book called
All About Letters
, which tells, well, all about letters. It tells how to write letters to senators, congressmen, President Carter, newspaper and magazine editors, movie and music stars, how to write letters applying for college admission or jobs, how to write letters complaining about something you bought that doesn't work, how to write Dear Abby. It even gives the addresses of a lot of these people. I'll bet every single thing that anybody would want to know about writing letters is right there in that little book. Everything except how to write anonymous letters.

Anonymous letters are those that writers forget to sign or put their return addresses on. I know about anonymous letters because I get one from time to time. The funny thing about them is that they're always from people who are upset with me for some reason. They think I've written something stupid, or they want to call me ugly names and tell me they don't like me much. They're so upset, I guess, that they just forget to let me know who they are. Sometimes they also forget to tell me what it is they're upset about.

But sometimes I get letters that shape opinions, preserve memories, and lift spirits, too. These are almost always signed, and the return addresses (including ZIP codes) are on the envelopes, just as
All About Letters
recommends.

I agree with Postmaster General Bolger that these letters are better than telephone calls. Sometimes when someody writes me a nice letter, I carry it around in my pocket for days, show it to my friends at lunch, and take it home to show my lady and Pussycat. Then I put it in my desk drawer, intending to answer it someday. I usually don't answer it, but months or years later, when I'm cleaning out my desk and happen to find it, I read it again and still like it.

On the other hand, if I get a nice phone call and try to tell other people about it, they just say, “Sure, sure,” and I get the feeling that they don't believe me.

Another good thing about letters is that if I don't like one, I can just throw it away and pretend I didn't get it. But if someone calls me up on the telephone and wants to say something bad to me, well, I'm stuck. I can't pretend I didn't answer the phone, so I just have to sit there saying, “Uh-huh” and “I see” until the person who called me gets through telling me unpleasant things. I could hang up, I guess, but that would be impolite, and the guy would probably just call me back anyway.

Also, I never have to get out of the shower to read a letter.

One kind of letter I don't like, though, is that with a window in the front of the envelope. Boy, I really hate those. They're always from people who are trying to sell me something or want me to send them money for something I've already bought or want me to send them money just for the heck of it. Letters with windows aren't mentioned in
All About Letters
(so I guess the book
doesn't
tell you all about letters, after all), but watch out for them during National Letter Writing Week. They're the pits.

I guess I'm cheating a little, sending you this letter without buying a stamp, and I hope Postmaster General Bolger doesn't get mad and write me an anonymous letter or call me up on the phone. After all, I'm saving a little wear and tear on his mail carriers.

Well, I've got to go now. Say hello to the folks and be good. If you can't be good, be careful. (Ha, ha!)

Yours truly,
Bryan

February, 1980

When Spring Is in the Neighborhood

T
HE KIND OF WEATHER
we've been having lately makes my blood want to run in all different directions. I mean, I can
feel
it flowing, trying to break over its usual banks like a spring flood. It kind of pops, too, as if there were little boats with cannons on their decks, floating up and down my veins and arteries, firing small salutes to the season.

Spring in Texas makes me sorry for people who live anywhere else. New Englanders blather forever about the first crocus sticking its little head out of the snow. Kentuckians pick banjos and sing about dogwoods and thoroughbreds and all that. It ain't nothing, folks. I've been in both places, and it ain't nothing compared to the first day when the Texas sun decides it's time to start getting hot as well as bright, and the first dust blows in from Lubbock.

If dust comes, can spring be far behind? Not far. Pretty soon the guy the landlord sends around to mow the lawn will come and cut the dead, brown winter grass, and the weathermen will be watching for tornadoes. They'll come, too. The black funnels will dip down from the clouds like fishing lines dropping into Laguna Madre, and I'll stay up late with a six-pack, watching the TV track them like Russian bombers sneaking under the radar, rooting for the folks in Wichita Falls and Mineral Wells. Not many of the funnels will touch bottom, though, and I'll go to bed warm in the belief that I've successfully defended the homestead again.