Earl, Part One

For
the rest of the year, this blog will intermittently feature pieces
that will serve as testing grounds for a longer format project I’m
working on, featuring my experiences as a youth in 1983, for future
publication in book form. This is one of them.

“Earl”
was born on Saturday, September 17, 1983. He was 56 years old and
unemployed. As for the “real” Earl who inspired this
creation, I have no idea of his life story. It was during the Delhi Harvest Fest, a weekend-long celebration of the year’s tobacco
harvest (the area’s best known crop). My father was a member of the
Lions at the time: they had a food booth down on the main street
right by the big beer tent. On that Saturday, I was helping out at
the stand, taking people’s orders and running cash. In
mid-afternoon, I took a break, and wandered into the tent. (Even
though they served beer, kids could still go in there during the
daytime.) The joy of finally getting out to do something that day
made me less introverted than usual, and I was nodding “hello”
to people as I went in. The only one to return my nod was Earl, who
was sitting at one of the picnic tables inside, drinking one of the
several beers I would see with him that afternoon.

This
guy was probably in his fifties, with short grey hair, chipmunk face
when he laughed, plaid red flannel shirt, blue work pants, blue
trenchcoat and a sharp pair of slip-on leather shoes. Why was it that
all the boozers back in the day always wore nice shoes? I guess they
still had dignity, one way or another. While I was standing over at
the roulette wheel, still keeping an eye on this fellow (then as now,
I was fascinated by “character” people), Earl had asked Al
the bartender to buy him a beer. Al said no. Earl replied, “Well
I bought you one three years ago.”

I’m
not sure who else heard this remark, but I laughed my ass off over
it, and still spent most of the weekend convulsed in laughter at the
mere thought of it. That night, I was with my father, his new wife
and several of their cronies to see the Elvis impersonator, Glenn
Bowles, at an event put on by the Lions. At one moment when everyone
else but me in our party was up dancing, I had my head in my arms on
the table still laughing. People sitting nearby turned to smile at
me. They thought I was laughing at the woman with the huge rear end
on the dance floor who was making a spectacle of herself gyrating all
over the place. Nope. I was still thinking of Earl’s comment.

Anyway,
back to that afternoon. I learned that his name was Earl because Al’s
wife Judy (who was running the roulette wheel) called him by name to
tell him to sit down and drink his beer or else she’d have the boys
throw him out. At that remark, Earl proceeded to dance around, snap
his fingers on one hand (beer in the other), and sing. Looked good on
the drill sergeant. Another time I had seen Earl with a beer, and
asked him, “Where’d you get the money for that?” His
response: “Bummed it.” Later that afternoon, I had seen him
sitting on a picnic table outside the tent looking much more serious
than before. As far as I know, that was the last time I ever saw
Earl- however, at the next two Harvest Fests, while still working at the food booth,
I may have seen him. In 1984, he may have been eating a hot dog in the tent; and in
1985  he may have asked me personally if they were serving beer in the
tent next door. If either gentleman was indeed Earl, he obviously
didn’t remember me from that afternoon in 1983, but I certainly
didn’t forget him. And if he had, he certainly wouldn’t have known
how much of a mythical figure he would have become in my own creative
output during those two years.

This
brief encounter was all the inspiration needed to give birth to
Earl’s fictional counterpart- with much creative license of course.
“Real life” Earl’s visage, wardrobe and love of beer
(especially paid for by someone else) were imbued into the character
of Earl Taylor. After spending some weeks thinking about it, the
script for the very first “Earl” adventure began at about
11 PM of Thanksgiving Sunday, when I was supposed to have had my rear
end in bed before the big car ride commencing in a few hours. Tough
turtle soup- creativity doesn’t work 9 to 5. In fact, some of our
greatest ideas come during that semi-conscious midnight state of
delirium when inhibition and reason are tossed aside for whimsy.

The
result was a comedy-drama set during that very same Harvest Fest
weekend, combining the previously mentioned “Earl”
vignettes with my own experiences, and -you guessed it- a lot of
creative license. I had even written in my father and myself as minor
characters. Within about two pages of script (things move fast in a
Greg Woods Joint), Earl Taylor loses his job, his car and his
girlfriend, and is threatened with eviction if he doesn’t cough up
some rent money pronto. Screenwriting 101 would dictate that Earl
would spend the rest of the story trying to make rent and win back
some of his self-respect. This scenario would have none of that- Earl
simply didn’t give a shit. All he cared about was who he could con
next for a free beer. The story arc then was just a series of
vignettes in which Earl and his pal Walt blurred from one party to
the next on this boozy weekend. In more responsible hands, this would
be a realistic look at an alcoholic whose only motivation is the next
drink. To a naive fifteen year-old scriptwriter however, this story
was about defiance.

Perhaps
to my young eyes, Earl was a Chaplin for the modern age. In this
sense, he was an outlaw figure who resisted authority in any fashion:
cops, employers, and especially landladies- forsaking all
responsibility for pleasure and spontaneous freewheeling adventure.
Earl Taylor was conceived at the height of another economic
recession, and for me, in some cockeyed way, he represented the
freedom that most people wouldn’t have dared.

This, and subsequent stories, chronicled the adventures of Earl and his pals raising hell on the mean streets of Delhi: boozing, gambling and bringing institutions to their knees. My
conservative mother knew about the “I bought you one three years
ago” story, and that I was writing all these “Earl”
stories, but she was less than thrilled that I was making a hero out
of “some drunk that you met”. (During the Christmas season
of 1983, I had even made a 1984 “Earl” calendar, with a
different picture for every month depicting our hero in some zany
misadventure. No, this calendar didn’t display in the kitchen.)

(to be continued…)