Tag Archives: Synchronicity

A Magnificent Morning in Morgantown

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Two years ago the Not Now Silly Newsroom featured a Special Travelogue during The 2nd Annual Sunrise to Canton Road Trip For Research. After I published A Tribute to Don Knotts ► Morgantown’s Favourite Son, the search for Don Knotts‘ roots has became an annual tradition of my yearly Road Trips.

Through necessity The 4th Annual Sunrise to Canton Road Trip for Research was hastily planned. At first it appeared as if there would be no Road Trip this year, but fate intervened to make it happen. With just a few days notice I contacted all the usual suspects, loaded up the car, cranked up the tunes, and headed for the open road.

This year’s Road Trip was my most ambitious. It would take me from Sunrise to Hamilton and Toronto in Ontario, Canada. Then I would swing through Detroit, which inevitably leads to Canton Township, not to mention Ann Arbor for another visit with Pastor Kenny. Then would come Elyria and Columbus, both in Ohio, before making my way back to Sunrise. However, my first official stop would be Morgantown, West Virginia, to visit with one of my anonymous sources.

I had already been motoring north, with a carefully planned itinerary that left nothing to chance, when I recieved an IM from my source for all Knotts Knews. I was still a day from Morgantown. My my host wrote: 

“If you can manage to stay in Morgantown a few hours Saturday, the Don Knotts statue is being dedicated at 10 am.”

To which I replied, “YES!!! YES!!! YES!!!”

A picture of the maquette taken 2 years ago with
the crack in the leg (under the elbow) clearly visible

In that post of 2 years ago I exposed how some unthinking tourist broke the maquette of Don Knotts at the Morgantown Visitors Center. Amazingly I said this back then:

This maquette is to become a larger-than-life statue of Don Knotts to be erected on the waterfront. Morgantown is hoping to create a whole day of it, whenever it is, with a dedication and unveiling. An entire weekend of Don Knotts Days might include parades, picnics, band concerts, beauty pageants, culminating in a massive fireworks display. I sure hope I’m invited to the event I just created in my head.

Now, amazingly, synchronicity had worked to make my invitation happen. 

I checked out the weather report and learned it would be hot and humid in Morgantown. The northeast had just entered another record-breaking heat spell.

I cranked up the tunes even louder and stepped on the gas, arriving early enough on Friday to take a gander at where the unveiling would happen.

In front of the Metropolitan Theatre: The brass star with the Don
Knotts statue all wrapped up waiting to be sprung on the world.

While I had been told the statue would have a place of honour at the waterfront, either I had been misinformed or there had been a change of plans in the intervening 2 years.

When I arrived in Morgantown the Don Knotts statue was all wrapped up in a blue tarp on Main Street, directly in front of the window at the Metropolitan Theatre. It’s just a few feet away from the brass star featured in the Not Now Silly Newsroom Follow-up, last year’s Don Knotts Is Back ► A Morgantown Update.

To be perfectly honest, I thought the front of the Met to be a far more appropriate location for Knotts’ statue. After all, this is where he got his start in the Professional Show Business with his ventriliquist dummy named Danny “Hooch” Matador.

Having scoped out the location, I retired for the night, filled with dreams of how Morgantown would honour its favourite son:

The parade would start at the waterfront with the Morgantown High School Brass Band leading the procession. It would wind its way past all those places important to Don Knotts, from his childhood home to where he bought his chewing gum. Baton twirlers launch their instruments high into the air, the sun glinting off the chrome as they spin higher and higher and, just before they are lost in the glare of the sun, drop back into the twirlers hands in perfect synchronization. Vintage cars of all descriptions separate the marching soldiers from the motorcycle police, with sirens blaring. And, bringing up the rear, a giant float with a 20 piece Steel Drum band. [It’s my fantasy and I love Steel Drum music.] As the entire shebang winds its way up Main Street, patriotic bunting flaps in the lazy breeze, while the sidewalks are jam-packed with people all holding up a single bullet.

The reality was much more prosaic.

Because downtown Morgantown is a maze of one way streets, it would have been difficult to close Main Street entirely, so only half the street was closed down. That meant that all during the ceremony there were cars passing behind us, some with loud music drowning out the speakers.

I remarked to my friend that this felt like Mayberry all growed up.

There was a cozy, small town, Mayberry feel to the whole festivities. Local raconteur Larry Nelson was Master of Ceremonies, keeping the crowd assembled on the blacktop in the swealtering 95 degree heat entertained as a delay kept Karen Knotts, Don’s daughter, from arriving on time. Mayor Marti Shamberger was there to pay tribute and give us a capsule biography of Knotts. John Pyles, one of his oldest friends and the man who led the fundraising to get the statue made, told stories of Don Knotts’ many visits back to Morgantown to decompress away from the Hollywood scene. Karen Knotts continued along that same theme, telling the assembled crowd about how much Morgantown meant to her father and what an important touchstone the town was to the family during visits.

Then sculptor Jamie Lester, who graciously granted me a few words before the festivities began, spoke abut how humbled he was to have been chosen to honour Knotts in this way and why the statue is not a representation of Barney Fife, the character he’s best remembered for. While he holds Barney Fife’s Deputy Sheriff cap, the statue is meant to represent the entire man.

Which led to the inevitable unveiling of the statue:

After the ceremony Karen Knotts performed her acclaimed one woman play “Tied Up In Knotts” — on the same stage that her father had once trod inside the Metropolitan Theatre — about growing up with a famous father.

Sadly, I couldn’t stay for Karen Knotts’ performance. Under my original plan I was to have left for Hamilton, Ontario at the break of dawn. I was already a half day behind schedule with a whole lot of road, not to mention a border crossing, still ahead of me.

However, as I drove towards the Peace Bridge I couldn’t help but sing this song:

Before and After Synchronicity ► A Pastoral Letter

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A reading assignment from Pastor Ken Wilson.

Dear Pastor Kenny: I began this Pastoral Letter several weeks ago and have been tinkering with it ever since, trying to get it right. Then came the car crash. That’s why this essay is bifurcated into Before & After; before my accident and after.

BEFORE:

It’s been well over a month since my last Pastoral Letter and almost 2 months since I received your response. I have so much to tell you that I barely know where to begin.

It hardly seems like a year since I rediscovered you and wrote the first of my Pastoral Letters, which I called Finding An Old Friend. It was slotted under the Unpacking The Writer rubric because little did I know at the time it would become another series in the Not Now Silly Newsroom. I don’t know how they’re working out for you, but they sure are helping me. Being forced to turn what’s firing through my neurons into words, helps me get my thoughts straight on these weighty matters.

First let me thank you (I think) for your reading assignment and sending me “Changing Our Mind” by David P. Gushee. (I have so many books on my “to be read” shelf, that the last thing I needed was a reading assignment.) I’ve yet to crack it open, other than to look at the chapter titles, making special note of Chapter 20, Ending the Teaching of Contempt, the one concerning anti-Semitism that you felt I should read. However, I’ll be reading the whole thing.

In your last Pastoral Letter, which I called a Pastor Kenny Responds (in lieu of a better title), you said: 

One of the things I’d forgotten was just how racist things were growing up. You reminded me what it was like to grow up Jewish— and it all came rushing back, the horrible jokes about Jews, and Blacks, and Poles, and well, non WASPS. I remember being warned by someone not to attend a Catholic Mass because they spoke Latin and you didn’t know whether they were saying bad stuff or not.

It made me feel ashamed. Using the N-word was strictly forbidden in my family. Same with anti-Jewish rhetoric. But talk of “Injuns,” “Krauts” and “Japs” was tolerated. Now I’m ashamed. But I was also ashamed because of my forgetting. Forgetting how bad the Christian participation in anti-Semitism was in that era.

Back in college I edited the school’s alternative paper
(ie: the one not put out weakly weekly by the Journalism
students). This was the cover of our Revelations issue.

While I never participated in racial denigration growing up — perhaps because of my Jewish upbringing or the fact that Pops had a store on 12th Street, where I got to know a lot of Black folk — I have my own shame over the names I called people in the LGBT communities back then. I console myself with the notion that it was a different time and I simply did not know any better.

My children were taught to know better, which is one of the ways with which we CAN change the world. And, that reminds me of a story:

One day my youngest son and I were walking down the street when he was about 8 or 9. Suddenly he yelled, “LOOK, DAD! A FAGGOT!!!”

Just as I was about to blast him for using such an awful word, I looked at where he was pointing. There, waiting for trash pick-up, was a bundle of sticks. How can you not like word play like that from a child? He now owns a successful restaurant in Toronto.

Ken, you also told me:

I must say I have been honored by your interest in my little LGBT soap opera. Spreading the word about Letter to My Congregation,
being interested, curious, sympathetic.  But it has also been
comforting to reconnect a little bit with my Gilchrist past through your
reaching out. 

The cover design is a bundle of sticks

The fact of the matter is, Ken, that I feel you’ve written a very
important book, which I tell anyone who will listen, for as long as they
will listen. With your book you are on the leading edge of an important
Social Justice Movement within the church. Only time will tell whether
the masses will follow, and I mean masses in both senses of the word.

Books: another one of the ways with which we can change the world.

And, as I explained to you as we walked around downtown Ann Arbor in July, reaching back and reconnecting with my Gilchrist past has become very important to me because of The Trunk Lost In Transit.

What I find amusing, Ken — and your mileage may vary — is that I reject almost everything else you believe in. I identify as a non-evangelical Atheist. I don’t proselytize because I don’t care all that much whether people agree, or disagree, with me. Whether they do, or do not, affects my life not one iota. That’s why I don’t understand evangelicals, whether they’re about Jesus, Atheism, or FitBit. (Say Ken, have you heard about E.W.F. Stirrup and his house?)

Having said that, while you may be used to having your beliefs challenged, I am not used to having my disbeliefs challenged.

Which brings me to what I really want to talk about: Cosmic Synchronicity. But first, some definitions:

Merriam-Webster defines “synchronicity” as “the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality—used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung.”

In the same post I defined it differently:

Think of your own personal synchronicity as a blanket you are shaking rhythmically up and down. The sine waves created by the blanket is a two dimensional representation of your synchronicity in a 3-Dimensional space. However, everyone knows that synchronicity works in the 6th Dimension, where it interacts with the ‘waving blankets’ belonging to everyone else. Where these waves collide are where the EXACT moments and locations the FSM [Flying Spaghetti Monster] has stitched together Space and Time and Gravity and Dimensionality and Predestination. If, as they contend in Quantuum Mechanics or String Theory or Whatever They’re Calling It These Days™, that all choices are possible in the Alternative Universes that exist, then the chances of anything so improbable can be proven possible by multiplying boiling water with pasta and adding sauce.

So . . . where to start? Let’s go all the way back to the beginning, Ken. And, get comfortable, because this is going to take a while.

Barbara way back when

Back when you were visiting me in the early ’70s, my first ex-wife was going to school at George Brown College to learn all about the Sewing Arts, the field she eventually made her living in. There she met a gal named Barbara. I don’t think I met Barbara back then.

A few years later I lived and worked on Bedford Road. Barbara lived on Bedford Road, just up the street. I don’t think I met Barbara back then.

I finally met Barbara when I
was a freelance writer selling my words to any publication that had a
few extra dollars to spend. Among those was TO Tonight, Yorkview Magazine and a tabloid called Entertainment Weekly (long before and no relation to the tee vee show), where Barbara worked.

She was gorgeous and I asked her out. We went to a concert and then a
bar. Afterwards, full of liquor and hormones, we repaired to my place on Nassau Street, in Kensington Market, which makes me an official Marketeer. At some point — maybe we were discussing George Brown College, or maybe it just came out in casual conversation
— but Barbara realized she knew my ex-wife. Which explains why we
never did The Deed that night. Sisterhood Solidarity was more important to Barbara. She left shortly after that.

Later Barbara left Entertainment Weekly and I became its Editor and Head Writer.

Skip ahead another 30 years, or so, and somehow I became facefriends with Barbette Kensington, her online persona. She’s done community outreach for more than 3 decades in The Market and is often called the “Unofficial Queen of Kensington Market.” She’s posted a lot of pictures of herself and the various Marketeers at various locations in The Market. There’s The Stoop, The Office, The Office Annex, the Alley and Lola.

Every time I saw one of her pics, I would gasp. She simply takes my breath away. She’s gorgeous.

Knowing she’s an event organizer, when I needed to throw myself a party in Toronto, I went to her (digitally) and asked where she’d hold such a party. [Read: The Nuptial Nostalgia Tour and the follow-up, Love Makes The World Go Round.] In all honesty, I had no expectations, other than she might know of a place. I haven’t lived in Toronto in 17 years and Canada in 10. What do I know about entertaining in Toronto these days?

I certainly didn’t expect her to take that ball and run with it. As an event organizer she assumed that’s what I was asking. She found the perfect location in Kensington Market, Lola, and went about organizing the whole thing. Selfishly I let her because I didn’t have to do a thing. However, I did sent out the invites on the facebookery.

When Barbara and I met up I hugged her. Hugged her hard. She tells me was not the kind of hug one normally gives an old acquaintance, but she allowed herself to fall into it. We’ve been allowing ourselves to fall into it ever since.

I keep telling Barbara that “I don’t believe in any of that Mumbo Jumbo.” She’s Mohawk and deeply spiritual. I keep saying that because of all the coincidences that have built up to the point of cosmic synchronicity.

• Late last year one of Barbara’s face-to-facefriends messaged me requesting facefriendship on Barbara’s recommendation. I replied, “That’s good enough for me.” Little did I know that ever since this friend has been urging Barbara to go to me.

• One of the first conversations Barbara and I had at our reunion included an off-hand remark she made about her upcoming birthday and how she always thought she’d be married at that age. Without thinking I blurted out, I’ll marry you. And, I meant it.

• Days later, at my Coming Home Party, one of Barbara’s dear friends, who is downsizing and loves to give her things to random people, arrived at my party at Lola with a bag of jewellery. Some of it was real, some of it was costume. [I was on the other side of the patio, so I didn’t realize this was going on at the time.] She slipped Barbara 2 very simple, tasteful, wedding rings and said, “Here.”

This hand shook the hand of Bob Marley

• After the jewellery had been divided up, there remained one piece which was handed to me. It spoke to me immediately. It’s the colours of the Jamaican flag and the Rastafarian religion, if a religion is said to have colours. I slipped it on my right wrist, where it has remained. Since returning to Florida several people have taken note and remarked on it. Now I get to say with more emphasis than ever something I’ve been saying for many years anyway: “This hand shook the hand of Bob Marley.”

That’s as far as I’d gotten with this Pastoral Letter.

AFTER:

And, then came the car crash. Long story short: I was sideswiped by a car turning right on the red as I motored through a green light just a mile from home. After all those 3,000 mile road trips it seems ironic to be taken out of commission so close to home.

That was more than a week ago and I didn’t know where to take this essay after that. Therefore, I’ve just let it sit and stew in its own juices hoping I would be inspired.

The problem was: I no longer felt inspired. I’d read this and re-read this, not knowing where to take it, what to add, what to subtract, and whether to start all over. Yet, this morning I woke up inspired by the word “bifurcated.” Here’s where I’m taking this now:

I returned from Toronto feeling better than I have in decades. 

It wasn’t just being back in the city that I love and call home, no matter where I happen to be. It wasn’t just how Toronto feels as comfortable as a Johnny LaRue‘s smoking jacket. It wasn’t that, as a Marketeer, this was like a homecoming. It wasn’t even that Kensington Market, in which I spent most of my time while in Toronto, revitalized the Hippie slumbering in me. And, it wasn’t that I fell in love with one of the most fascinating women I’ve ever known.

Me in Johnny LaRue’s actual smoking jacket

No, Ken. It’s that one of the most fascinating women I’ve ever known fell in love with me and calls me handsome. It was such an ego boost to know my affection was being returned. It made me feel good right to my core. It made me forget all the trials, tribulations, and challenges I have in Florida taking care of Pops. It gave me something to look forward to after feeling my life has been on hold for so very long.

Then came the car crash. Like an elastic band, it snapped me back to where I was — what I was — before I went to Toronto. I was morose. I was filled with ennui. While I put one foot in front of the other, I merely moved through life, life didn’t move through me.

During the interregnum between returning from Toronto and the car accident I had more than once wondered, “What’s it going to be like when this good feeling goes away as it inevitably will? What will the bubble-bursting feel like?”

Now I know.

However, and here’s the important part: I don’t feel as if I have regressed completely. Barbara has provided an important spark, which won’t be extinguished. I told Barbara I was seeking her healing energy, which she gladly gave. Her spiritual beliefs go far deeper than my deeply held Atheism.

I feel spiritual when I’m banging two wooden sticks together in a drum circle when the rhythm takes me to a place where I’m not thinking any longer. I call that my Zen space, but I don’t really know squat about Zen because I also say that driving with the tunes cranked up is also my Zen Space.

UNITY

I won’t even begin to describe Barbara’s spirituality (because that would be unfair to her), but I have on several occasions felt the need to say, “You know I don’t believe in any of that mumbo jumbo.”

Which is, I guess, the worst I can say about your beliefs, Kenny. While we appear to agree on so many Social Justice issues, we have a giant disagreement about the core belief driving us. I act in a socially conscience manner because I’ve long come to the conclusion it’s the only way to live, both with the world at large and with myself. I don’t need a God in my life in order to know the difference between right and wrong. You know I don’t believe in that mumbo jumbo.

Maybe it would be easier if I could ascribe all events to a higher power. Reconnecting with Barbara after all these years certainly feels fated, predestined, kismet. Yet, the car accident does not.

My happiness can only be found within myself, as opposed to the belief that praying to a higher power brings me fulfillment and makes me happy. That thought, and that belief, makes me happier than I’ve been since the accident.

Two headlines that crossed my electronic transom yesterday couldn’t be more diametrically opposed:

Now, that’s funny. We’ll see if I’m still laughing once I start fighting with the insurance company of the teenager who hit me.

Your childhood friend,
Marc Slootsky

The Nuptial Nostalgia Tour ► Throwback Thursday

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In August I announced my Road Trip to Canada, which took me to Hamilton and Toronto, cities I’ve written about previously. It was transformed into a magical road trip, filled with Deja Vu and synchronicity; a trip when finished felt preordained. It was truly throwback in ways I could have never imagined and I’m still trying to process it all.

Wedding photography outside The Werx The Spice Factory

The first strong echo of the past was the wedding venue. The Spice Factory is in a building that was once called The Werx, but that was several owners ago. After the building sat idle for a while, the new owner renovated it to be a bar/special event venue. However, The Werx was the place in Hamilton where we all used to hang and put on our own events more than a decade ago. Now we were back in the building experiencing extreme Deja Vu.

In fact, The Werx was the location of the ghost hunt I conducted with the Girly Ghostbusters, first described in Hamilton Magazine.

It was great being in that building again. It was also pretty special being back with that group of people again. These are people I dearly love, but only get to have computer contact with. At one point we were all standing out in front of the building — in our tuxedos and fancy dresses — and realized, “How many times have we done this?” We laughed and laughed and laughed, just like we used to.

And yet, as comfortable as this all was, there was also a sense of dislocation. While some things were the same, other things were very different. And, the same is also true for all the other experiences I will relate below.

That’s my old apartment on the top floor, left

After the Hamilton wedding I went to Toronto, the city I truly consider home.

One of the best apartments I ever had in Toronto (and I’ve had several great ones) is in a building I never thought I’d be in again after moving out some 17 years ago and leaving behind a pull-out couch that was too heavy to carry.

Yet, recently my daughter was looking for a new apartment and found one in the very same building. I spent 2 nights with her and it was so weird and wonderful being in the same building again.

While in the old neighbourhood I spent a couple of days looking for my old supers, who had moved to an apartment above a store on Queen Street West, above one of the antique stores. I had absolutely no luck. If anyone knows where to find Shane and Margaret, I’d be most interested in hearing all about it. They were two people I had really hoped to find while in Toronto.

While in Toronto I used Kensington Market as my home base because it was convenient to everything and everybody.

It was wonderful being in Kensington Market again. I lived in the Market 40 years ago, when the Island Records Canada offices were on the ground floor of a house on Nassau, at Augusta. That’s why I’m considered a Marketeer and why this was a long-delayed homecoming.

There are few places on earth quite like Kensington Market. The WikiWackyWoo says:

Kensington Market is a distinctive multicultural neighbourhood in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Market is an older neighbourhood and one of the city’s most well-known. In November 2006, it was designated a National Historic Site of Canada.[1][2] Robert Fulford
wrote in 1999 that “Kensington today is as much a legend as a district.
The (partly) outdoor market has probably been photographed more often
than any other site in Toronto.”[3] 

Kensington Market: A small
place with a very big heart.

However, there’s no way the Googlizer can convey the sense of family one finds in The Market. It only runs a few blocks in any direction and feels like a small village. Everyone looks out for everyone. While I was there I saw store owners bring out food to give to the Punks that congregate near the alley. There’s an amazing energy in The Market, with the sidewalks crowded from early morning to late at night.

I could easily see myself living in The Market because it felt like home. Everyone welcomed me with open arms and seemed truly sorry that I had to leave.

For the most part The Market is The Market. On the surface it appears to have not changed at all. The cheese shop is still there. The fishmonger has the same smells. The green grocer next to my old house is as busy as it ever was. Yet on closer examination one notices new businesses tucked between the same stores as before: New Age stores, fancy coffee shops and restaurants, and funky vintage clothing stores.

You can take the boy out of the Market, but you can’t take the Market out of the boy. That’s my
old house behind me. Island Records was on the ground floor and I lived above on the third floor.
When I  walked into Lola, I ran into Brad, who I worked with at
Citytv for over decade. Now that he’s retired, this is his hangout.

It was terrific being in the Market again!

And, I want to extend a special THANK YOU to Gwen and Huong Bang, the two sisters who own Lola in Kensington Market.

I had this crazy idea to throw myself a party while in Toronto. It was borne out of practicality. I couldn’t possibly visit everybody I wanted to see and who wanted to see me in the 4 days I was there. But, what if they all came to me?

I approached a woman I knew slightly 40 years ago, when she became friends with my first wife after we had split. They went to George Brown college together. Barbette Kensington and I reconnected a few years back on the facebookery. I knew she was an event organizer so I asked her where she would hold a party for me. She found Lola (because it’s one of her hangouts) and, somehow, ‘convinced’ Gwen and Haung to allow all of my crazy friends to descend on their place. [I’m told they were happy to do so.]

Barbette Kensington making sure all goes well at my party.
That’s the infamous Richard Flohill in the foreground.

In fact, Barbette took that ball and ran with it. My party went off flawlessly and I had such a wonderful time that I wished it would have never ended.

In some respects it hasn’t.

I’ve had a smile on my face since my trip to Toronto and my spirit has been changed in ways I can barely describe, despite my facility with words.

All I can say for now is that my life has been transformed and there are new roads and adventures in my future.

Richard Nixon’s Synchronicity In Death

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On the day Richard Nixon died, 21 years ago today, I happened to be visiting the United States from my home in Canada.

Coincidentally, I was wearing my blue jean jacket with my treasured Nixon pin on the collar. It was given to me by my dear friend Stephen, many decades ago, and I have treasured it ever since.

I was standing at the cash register in a K-Mart at Lincoln and Greenfield, in Oak Park, Michigan, waiting to pay for a cheap pair of sunglasses. I didn’t yet know Nixon had died; it happened the night before. Suddenly the cashier started screaming at me about how rude and offensive I was. I had no idea why I was suddenly singled out and, for a brief moment, thought I was in the middle of a racial argument, since the cashier was Black and incredibly angry at a slight I didn’t understand.

When I was finally informed that Nixon had died overnight, I apologized profusely for my accidental faux pas, removed the button, and have never worn it again.

Eight years later, to the very day, I was watching the news when it was blasted that Linda Lovelace, born Linda Susan Boreman, had died.

To me it seemed to be a cosmic joke. Linda Lovelace, famous for the movie Deep Throat, died on the same day as Richard Nixon, who was brought down by Deep Throat, the nom de guerre given by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to their secret Watergate tipster.

The book “All The President’s Men,” and later the movie of the same name starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, further publicized the connection between their whistle-blower and the movie that changed the erotic entertainment industry.

Three years after Linda Lovelace’s death, and 11 years after Nixon’s death, W. Mark Felt, former Deputy Director of the FBI, came out as Deep Throat on his deathbed.

Read: My exposé on Treason, Watergate, and Roger Ailes:
Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka?

 

Animation by author from White House press photos

A Tribute to Don Knotts ► Morgantown’s Favourite Son

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DATELINE: Morgantown, West Virginia – As part of the 2nd Annual Sunrise to Canton Road Trip for Research, the Not Now Silly Newsroom sent ace investigative reporter Headly Westerfield to Morgantown, West Virginia, for a privately conducted Don Knotts Memorial Nostalgia Tour. Here is his uncensored report: *

I drove into Morgantown after midnight, although I had been expected hours earlier. Because I was running so late, my correspondent had already gone to bed. To make matters worse, due to a faulty GPS and an incredibly dark section of road on the outskirts of town, I passed the driveway of the condo complex several times before I finally gave up and phoned. A teenager I had never spoken to before answered. Even with his help I managed to pass the entrance another two times. Finally he came out to the main road, while still on the phone, and waved a flashlight. To my chagrin, I was in the parking lot right next door. I hoped this would not be an omen for the Don Knotts Memorial Nostalgia Tour.

Morgantown is city tucked into a valley, in the crook between Cheat Lake and the Monongahela River. Downtown Morgantown has the appearance of a small town. What is known as Greater Morgantown, these days, is really comprised of several distinct neighbourhoods. Some of these had been separate towns that were annexed into the city proper. The surrounding area is so hilly, and with suburban sprawl occurring wherever they could make the land flat, each neighbourhood is almost a town onto itself, connected by highways and roads which wind up one side of a mountain and down the other.

A quick dip into the WickyWhackyWoo also tells me that Morgantown was named after one of the first homesteaders, Zackquill Morgan. Morgans Town was incorporated as Morgantown by the Virginia General Assembly in 1838. It is best known — for better or worse — as being the birthplace of Don Knotts.

Before my editor arranged for the privately conducted Don Knotts Memorial Nostalgia Tour, I didn’t know a whole lot about Don Knotts, other than many of his roles. I remember as a kid seeing him on the Steve Allen Show, often playing a nervous man-in-the street. Then, of course, there was Deputy Barney Fife, the role that made him famous. Another of his tee vee roles was that of swinging-single-man-about-town, Ralph Furley. Knotts jumped into the already successful Three’s Company after ABC ill-advisedly spun off The Ropers, which barely lasted a season and a half before it was cancelled. And, of course, I knew all those whacky movies from the ’60s: The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Reluctant Astronaut, and The Shakiest Gun in the West, among others. I grew up on Don Knotts comedy. He made me laugh.

Don Knotts with Danny “Hootch” Matador (right)

But, I have to admit I didn’t know anything about Don Knotts, the person. Imagine my surprise to learn he led an early life of heartbreak and confusion. Again, the WikiWhackyWoo saved me from abject ignorance:

Knotts’ paternal ancestors had emigrated from England to America in the 17th century, originally settling in Queen Anne’s County, Maryland. Knotts’ father was a farmer. William Knotts had a nervous breakdown due to the stress of the fourth child, Don, being born so late (Don’s mother was 40). Afflicted with schizophrenia and alcoholism, he sometimes terrorized his young son with a knife, causing the boy to turn inward at an early age. Knotts’ father died of pneumonia when Don, the youngest son, was 13 years old. Don and his three brothers were then raised by their mother, who ran a boarding house in Morgantown.

Like so many that have experienced early tragedy, Don Knotts became a comedian. During his teen years Knotts had a successful ventriloquist act, entertaining his Morgantown High School classmates at parties and other paid performances, including appearing occasionally at The Metropolitan Theatre, the big deal theater in town that opened the same year Knotts was born.

The Metropolitan Theatre in beautiful downtown Morgantown

After a failed trip to New York City to see if he could make it in the Big Time, Knotts returned home, enrolling in West Virgina University. However, WWII intervened and, like most of his peers, Knotts signed up for duty. Knotts didn’t see much combat. He was assigned to the Special Services Branch, where he and his dummy Danny “Hootch” Matador entertained the troops for the duration.

When the war was over, Knotts decided to try New York City all over again.This time he used the connections he made during his tour of duty to get a toe-hold in the business called Show. Aside from appearing at some comedy clubs, Knotts started to get a bit of radio work. Tee vee was still in its infancy when, in 1953, Knotts took on the regular role of Wilbur Peterson on Search For Tomorrow, his only dramatic part in a long comedic career. However, it was on Steve Allen’s show where he gained his first brush with real fame. While he was appearing on that show, Knotts his Broadway debut in No Time For Sergeants. 

No Time For Sergeants has an interesting history, especially since it’s the vehicle that brought Don Knotts and Andy Griffith together as an enduring comedy team. It started as a 1954 novel by Mac Hyman, about the antics of an unsophisticated country boy drafted into the Army Air Force during WW2. It was adapted a year later by Ira Levin as a 1-hour segment of The United States Steel Hour, which starred Andy Griffith (and some folks that few people remember). Andy Griffith had become an over-night sensation when his rural comedy monologue, What It Was, Was Football, was released as a single in ’53. It was a no-brainer to look at Andy Griffth when a country bumpkin was needed for the No Time role.

The Don Knotts Childhood Home

After Levin adapted No Time For Sergeants for Broadway, Griffith reprised his tee vee role with an up-and-coming Don Knotts playing several parts, the first pairing of this comedy team.

Then Levin adapted the teleplay and Broadway hit into a full-length motion picture, called, not surprsingly, No Time For Sergeants. Both Knotts and Griffith reprised their roles in that 1958 hit movie directed by Mervyn Leroy. This flick is considered the springboard that launched the national careers of Don Knotts and Andy Griffith.

Two years later when Andy was looking for a second banana for The Andy Griffth Show he didn’t have to look much farther than Don Knotts. The rest is tee vee history.

The Morgantown High School auditorium

The Don Knotts Memorial Nostalgia Tour began soon after the crack of noon, because that’s when teenagers wake up.

The first stop was, fittingly, the Don Knotts Childhood Home, which sadly is unmarked or commemorated in any way. The house presents a very small façade from the street, but because it was built on one of Morgantown’s many hills, the land drops away sharply in the back revealing a deep 3-storey structure that could have easily been used as a boarding house. It’s a humble beginning for the 5-time Emmy Award winner.

Not very far away, after navigating a few more of Morgantown’s hills and one way streets, we come to Morgantown High School, where Don Knotts began his long career as an entertainer. Outside the school’s auditorium there is an appropriately moving tribute to those alumni who gave their lives fighting in various wars. However, there was nothing that this reporter could see that commemorated Morgantown High’s most famous graduate, Don Knotts, ranked by TV Guide as #27 on its list of 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.

Bigger disappointment was still to come.

This reporter heard through the grapevine that there was one place in Morgantown where Don Knotts was commemorated as he so rightly deserved. According to the requisite several confidential sources, I should head over to the Metropolitan Theatre immediately. There, according to urban legend, I would find a large brass plaque embedded in the sidewalk which honours the location where Don Knotts got his start in Legit Show Biz.

Jumping back into the car, we raced the several blocks to the location, fighting the heavy downtown Morgantown traffic all the way. We were forced to pay for parking at an available meter more than a block away. Walking up to the building, this is what greeted us:

The scene of the crime against humanity! Where is the brass plaque honoring Don Knotts that was embedded in the sidewalk?
And, I made sure I wiped my dirty shoes on their nice rug, too!

I was heartbroken!!!

Now, keep in mind that I had already
traveled some 2,000 miles on the Sunrise to Canton Road Trip for Research to get this far (not counting several touristy
side trips). Why wasn’t Don Knotts getting the kudos he deserved, other than a small section of University Avenue renamed Don Knotts Boulevard during a Don Knotts Day held while the comedian was still alive?

There was no way I was going to put up with this bullshit.

I stormed inside and marched right up to the ticket windows. The two women inside the booth cowered as I demanded to know where the Don Knotts Memorial sidewalk plaque was. I made sure they learned some new expletives. I impressed upon them how many thousands of miles I had already traveled. Raising my voice to the highest dudgeon, I informed him that, as an employee of the Not Now Silly Newsroom, I refused to leave unless they gave me satisfactory answers to my questions. As they shuddered under the power of the press and the weight of The First Amendment, I threatened to expose them, the Metropolitan Theatre, and their entire bullshit town, which merely pretends to honour its greatest citizen of all time, but in actuality thumbs its nose at all the rubes who come to Morgantown for the full Don Knotts Experience.

In reality: I walked up to the ticket booth in the lobby and politely asked the two very sweet women if they knew what had happened to the plaque. All they knew for sure is that it had just recently been removed for repairs and they didn’t know when would be returned. Just then the manager of the theater came along and suggested I inquire up the street at the Morgantown Visitors Center, where they might know when the plaque would be returning.

Morgantown Visitors Center

Back into the car, fighting the awful downtown traffic all over again, we finally pitched up at the Morgantown Visitors Center, a mere two blocks away. And, it’s there that the entire Don Knotts Memorial Nostalgia Tour was redeemed because, there, just inside the front window, was an entire display all about Morgantown’s favourite son, Don Knotts.

Taking a picture through the window wouldn’t work because of the glare. I was so excited to finally hit pay dirt that I rushed inside and started taking pictures. It’s my normal practice to ask permission before taking pictures because it’s the polite thing to do. However, I simply forgot my manners and knew I had screwed up mightily when a woman started screaming at me, “STOP! Don’t touch it! What are you doing? STOP!” Only my mother has ever yelled at me like that.

As if I was answering my mother, it all came out in a torrent: “I’m so sorry, I would never touch a display, but had traveled thousands of miles for the Don Knotts Memorial Nostalgia Tour, and this was the first acknowledgement of Don Knotts I’ve found, and just down the street was supposed to be a huge brass plaque embedded in the sidewalk, but it’s missing, and they sent me down here because you might know about it, and, I’m so sorry, I should have asked, but all I want is get some close up pictures. Honest, lady. Don’t hurt me.”

That’s when she relaxed. To help me get better pictures, she even turned the entire display around, so I could get a better angle. If you look closely at the pic above, you can see why the woman was so protective of the maquette. Just above the knee is a crack that runs right through the leg. It seems that just the week before my arrival someone grabbed the leg and broke it. Now the woman makes sure that Don Knotts doesn’t get damaged any further.

Guarding Don Knotts

This maquette is to become a larger-than-life statue of Don Knotts to be erected on the waterfront. Morgantown is hoping to create a whole day of it, whenever it is, with a dedication and unveiling. An entire weekend of Don Knotts Days might include parades, picnics, band concerts, beauty pageants, culminating in a massive fireworks display. I sure hope I’m invited to the event I just created in my head.

I am always looking for the hidden Easter eggs real life has to offer. Finally, there are two weird pieces of synchronicity on which we’ll end the Don Knotts Memorial Nostalgia Tour.

SYNCHRONICITY #1: Almost 300 miles south of Morgantown I was reminded of the enuring legacy of Don Knotts on ‘Merkin culture.

After leaving Morgantown, with more than a thousand miles still to go before I get home, the Sunrise to Canton Road Trip for Research was just marking off the miles with no more side trips. The farther south I traveled, the less hilly the terrain. The road began to level out in southern Virginia. Crossing the state line into North Carolina, I was in great need of rest stop. The first one I happened across was not far into the state, just outside of Mount Airy, North Carolina.

I didn’t realize it until I walked inside, but Mount Airy was the birthplace of Andy Griffith. Inside the rest stop, in a display cabinet given pride of prominence is a tribute to Mount Airy’s favourite son. Of course no tribute to Mayberry is complete without a nod to Dan Knotts, second banana extraordinaire.

SYNCHRONICITY #2: As I was editing this into a coherent arrangement of words, sentences, and paragraphs, the tee vee was playing in the background. A noisy commercial distracted me and I looked up to see what it was about. There, on my tee vee tube, was Don Knotts!!! As it turns out, MeTV is bringing The Andy Griffith Show to its comedy calvacade, replacing the ever-dreadful Gilligan’s Island, starting September 1st, and every weeknight at 8PM Eastern, 7 Central.

* As the Not Now Silly Newsroom Fact-Checkers were preparing this article for print it was discovered that not all events took place as described. We were going to just scrap this travelogue as not worthy of publication, but Headly has already cashed the cheque.

Synchronicity Two

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The Rolling Stones at Altamont

Dateline October 24 – In a weird act of Flying Spaghetti Monster manifested Synchronicity, today is the birthday of both Bill Wyman (1936) and Meredith Hunter (1951). Although separated by 23 years, they will always be linked by a singular event in history: The Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969.

Bill Wyman

Bill Wyman was the second bass player for The Rolling Stones after the original bass player, Dick Taylor, decided to return to school. There are conflicting stories of how Wyman heard of the opening. One says early Stones drummer Tony Chapman told him; another report says he answered an advertisement. Both could be true. Either way, by December of 1962 Wyman was a Rolling Stone and stayed with the band until he quit the Stones in 1993.

Meredith Hunter

Meredith Hunter was an 18-year old from Berkley, California who went to Altamont Speedway (along with an estimated 300,000 other people) for a free concert which advertised appearances by The Rolling Stones, Santana, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and The Grateful Dead. In the end the Dead declined to play because of the violence.

The concert was a gift from The Rolling Stones to ‘Merka and had been hastily organized after many people criticized the band for the high price of tickets for their ‘Merkin tour. Originally the concert had been planned for San Jose State, then changed to Golden Gate Park, but they couldn’t get a permit. The next proposed venue was Sears Point Racetrack, which was owned by Filmways, Inc., the same company know for such tee vee hits as The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres. However, Filmways wanted $300,000 up front and the distribution rights to the resulting movie. This left slighly less than 2 days to find a new venue and the Altamont Speedway was hastily chosen.

One of the major complications of the venue change was the height of the stage. It was only a meter high. That would have suited the Sears Point Raceway, which would have placed it at the top of a hill. The location for the Altamont stage was at the bottom of a hill. To keep people from rushing the stage The Hells Angels, hired to provide security for a reported $500 in beer, surrounded the stage.

By now everyone knows what happened. The Hells Angels were out of control, as was the crowd. There were many fights, long before The Rolling Stones hit the stage. However, the one that everybody remembers is when Meredith Hunter, hopped up on methamphetamines, was stabbed to death by Hells Angel Alan Passaro. The horrifying act was caught on film directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin. The resulting movie was called Gimme Shelter and chronicled the entire ’69 tour, but culminated in the disater at Altamont, often called the deathnell of the Hippie movement.

Passaro was charged, tried and acquitted of murder after he claimed self-defense. The jury agreed after being shown some of the footage above. He later served time on unrelated charges and was found drowned in the Anderson Reservoir a year after he was released from jail.

Happy Birthday Bill Wyman and Meredith Hunter.

Synchronicity

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Josephine Baker hiding behind crossed
eyes, a favourite pose of hers.

Merriam-Webster defines “synchronicity”as “the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality—used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung.” Seems simple enough, but there are whole web sites are dedicated to making it complicated, like “Understanding Synchronicity.” Then there are others that profess to make synchronicity to understand, but only complicate it all up. A perfect example is this interesting essay as Dr. Eric Weiss who jots down “Some Reflections on The Definition of Synchronicity,” which spins the Merriam-Webster definition into 3,553 words that makes my head hurt:

We cannot define synchronicity in terms of any one conventional
discipline. It certainly doesn’t belong in physics as that discipline
is normally understood. Nor does it really belong in the sphere of
general academic psychology.

There is no academic discipline for which synchronicity is an object
of concern. Not only is synchronicity outside the boundaries of any
particular conventional academic discipline, it is actually outside of
the entire meta-structure of academic disciplines that contains both
physics and psychology as we usually understand those terms.

More generally, we might say that synchronicity is a concept that has
no place within the modern view of the world. It is a concept that is
relevant to the modern world, that was developed in response to the
needs of the modern world, and that is of interest to people who have
been educated in the modern world. But it comes into the modern world
almost as a koan, as a kind of indigestible pill. If we are going to
digest it, we need to define it, but we can’t define it in modern terms.
What are we to do?

I know what I do when faced with extreme waves of synchronicity: I remember that we are all governed by the immutable, invisible, odourless, colourless laws of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. That’s when I begin look for the deeper meaning which exists beneath and within the unexplainable. There are no coincidences. All Hail His Noodly Appendages!!!

Since losing the nom de plume “Aunty Em Ericann” I have been awash in His Synchonatic Reflections™ and revel in the New Order of the Universe as it now aligns. Let me explain in a nutshell, without resorting to complicated theorem.

Think of your own personal synchronicity as a blanket you are shaking rhythmically up and down. The sine waves created by the blanket is a two dimensional representation of your synchronicity in a 3-Dimensional space. However, everyone knows that synchronicity works in the 6th Dimension, where it interacts with the ‘waving blankets’ belonging to everyone else. Where these waves collide are where the EXACT moments and locations the FSM has stitched together Space and Time and Gravity and Dimensionality and Predestination. If, as they contend in Quantuum Mechanics or String Theory or Whatever They’re Calling It These Days™, that all choices are possible in the Alternative Universes that exist, then the chances of anything so improbable can be proven possible by multiplying boiling water with pasta and adding sauce.

The 1st time I saw Sally Kellerman

Pastafarianism explains how and why Deborah Barry, The Happiness Coach, dropped back into my life unexplained a full 35 years after we first met. It also explains how and why I was to meet Sally Kellerman immediately following — dare I say it? — a spaghetti dinner 40 years ago, only to have her thrown back into my life recently in a way that proves that Noodly Appendages direct our every reality.

[I have reached out to Sally Kellerman and we’ll see whether she remembers that evening in Burlington, Ontario 45 years as fondly as I do. It all depends on how attuned she is to her own synchronicity.]

Add to all of this my latest and last bit of synchronicity: Over the past weekend a large group of us split off from the family festivities and wandered over to The Rust Belt Market at Woodward and 9 Mile in Ferndale, MI. After a while I had seen it all and wandered across the street by myself to a used bookstore on 9 Mile. It was a wonderful bookstore with every shelf jam-packed to the ceiling with books of every size and description. This is the type of place I could lose hours inside.

Not the actual shelf in the actual
store, but an amazing recreation.

As I walked along the narrow entrance aisle created by all the bookshelves. To my right, at about the six foot mark, was a book pulled out at an odd angle. Every other book on the shelf was perfectly perpendicular save one, that drew my attention. The word Jazz was almost completely exposed and the copper-coloured cover was an usual hue. However, it still didn’t get my blanket shaking yet. However, as I reached up to straighten the book I pulled it out a little farther instead. Suddenly I was holding a book that I never knew existed and wanted to read immediately: “Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in her Time.”

I had only just, more or less, finished my little pocket biography of Josephine Baker, which had been highly praised by some of my friends. Baker’s life events were still rattling around in my head. Just that morning I had been telling my brother-in-law the high points of her life. Joe (my bro-in-law) had heard of the Stork Club incident, but didn’t realize it led to a life-long friendship with Grace Kelly. Then suddenly this book actually tried to jump off the shelf into my hand. Naturfally I bought it.

It seems like The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not quite done with me. I will go wherever He takes me.