“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part Fifty-Nine: Arnold makes yet another new friend

When last we saw our hero, Arnold Schnabel was experiencing a rare moment of -- dare we say it -- happiness, sitting on the second-floor porch of the Biddle residence with his “innamorata” the Bohemian Elektra.

Also in attendance, Sammy (strumming a guitar), Dean (crooning), Shirley (sitting on Dean’s knee), and Arnold’s friend Steve with his date Miss Charlotte Rathbone.

Dateline: Cape May NJ; August, 1963...

Next Shirley sang a song with Dean:

If our lips should meet, innamorata
Kiss me kiss me sweet, innamorata…

The words were pretty inane, but who was I to be critical? After all, just now I found on the floor a clipping of a sonnet I wrote last year, it must have fallen out of my scrapbook when I took it down to Miss Rathbone:

"First Communion, St. Helena’s, 1962"

The little children pass all dressed in white,
their first communion gravely to receive,
that they might not dwell in eternal night;
the Good Lord has granted them His reprieve.
but what of the Hindu, Jewish, Moslem,
and Protestant boys and girls, whom, through no
fault of their own, God chooses to condemn
to at best an afterlife in Limbo?
He has His reasons for this I am told,
but still it seems a little harsh to me,
a bit arbitrary, a trifle cold;
and worse, some say that they might even be
sent to Purgatory or even Hell;
this seems far from fair to me, truth to tell.

What the — go on, say it, they can only damn me once — what the hell was I thinking?

It wouldn’t be so bad if the above lines were a joke, but at the time I wrote them I was quite serious.

I’m becoming convinced that I didn’t just go mad this past January, oh no, I think I was secretly quite mad for many years, perhaps since birth.

And for that matter how mad is my longtime editor at the Olney Times, Mr. Willingham? (An Episcopalian I might add.) He’s the one who printed this rubbish. But then I’ve suspected for some time he only glances at my copy once or twice a year, if that.

So, yes, I had been a madman. But was I still a madman?

Frank Sinatra and Miss Evans came up and joined us. More songs were sung. Frank did a nice version of “The Lady is a Tramp”…

Then the guy who had been in the car with Frank and Sammy and Dean and Joey came through the screen door, the guy that neither Steve nor Miss Rathbone nor I had recognized.

He was a hearty, muscular guy of about my age, with a receding hairline and a face like a boxer’s. He wore khakis and a pale blue alligator polo shirt, and he smoked a fine cigar.
He said hello to Sammy and Frank, Dean and Shirley, how-do to Steve and Miss Rathbone, to Miss Evans and to Elektra. Then he said to me that I must be this Arnold he’d been hearing about.

I said I was, and he put out his hand. The knuckles were scarred and gnarled.

“My name’s Larry,” he said. “Larry Winchester. Pleased to meet you, Arnold.”

(Click here to dig our next grooving chapter. And kindly turn to the right hand side of this page for listings of links to all other existing episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven™, as well as to many of his classic poems.)

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 53: bad karma

Larry Winchester now shifts his cinemascopic gaze to the young recently-returned soldier Harvey in this, our Costco Award shortlisted serialization of the “director’s cut” of the novel Harold Bloom called “an epic on the order of Moby-Dick, except not nearly as boring”.

The time: an evening in early September, 1969.

The place: the Johnstone Ranch, just a couple of hoots and a holler outside of a town called Disdain...

Harvey wandered off a ways to take a leak behind a scrub oak that stood alone like sentry in front of the grey prairie stretching out to the lumpy foothills and the black mountains behind them.


He had been very stoned by the time they got back to the ranch that afternoon, and after leaving the stable he had to lie down in his bungalow for a while. He dozed, and in his dreams he flew over the desert, not exactly flying but leaping effortlessly, and each leap vaulted him miles and miles over the desert. He only had to touch down and make another easy bound and he would go sailing up again over the desert and over the hills and the mesas, and then he sailed out toward the little atomic town.

In the atomic town he landed in the town square, and Mrs. Smith or Ridpath walked up to him holding a martini and a cigarette, and then she was Hope, and then Hope became Attie Parsons.

And then he and Attie were in bed with Miss Enid in one of the split-level houses in the atomic town and Cleb sat there on a big chair watching them and then Mr. Smith or Ridpath came into the room and said something to Harvey except it sounded like he was underwater, and then the house began to rise up in the air above the desert and into the sky. Then he woke up.


Harvey didn’t feel like going back to the party yet so he lit up a smoke and sat down with his back against the scaly bark of the oak and looked in at all the people and the glowing fire-pit with the ragged remains of the side of beef skewered across it. A cool breeze rolled in waves down from the mountains in back of him and when a gust hit the fire-pit a sprinkling of red sparks swirled up and then disappeared.

It felt good just to look at all the people for a while but not be with them. He’d gotten a little bored sitting with the rest of the hands, but he’d figured it wasn’t really his place to go sit where he’d rather sit, with Mr. and Mrs. Ridpath or Smith and Miss Enid and that English fella and Hope and Doc Goldwasser.


Tip came moseying over. He rolled a joint while he moseyed, and by the time he got to Harvey it was rolled up tight and licked. He hunkered down, lit it up with his Zippo and passed it to Harvey.

Harvey stubbed out his ciagrette in the dirt, took a couple of hits from the joint and then passed it back.

Tip sucked deep twice, exhaled, and then said, “Your rich folks want you.”

“Yeah?”

Tip grabbed another good hit and passed the joint to Harvey.

“Yeah,” he said, holding in the smoke.

Harvey took another hit, and holding in the smoke himself he said, “They ain’t really rich.”

Tip exhaled and reached for the joint.

“Nah?”

“Nah,” Harvey said, letting out his own cloud of smoke. “The dude told me they’re broke.”

“No shit,” said Tip. “So what’re they doin’ here then?”

“Beats me,” said Harvey. There was no point in going into all the weird shit Mr. Ridpath had talked to him about. No point at all. “I don’t think they know either,” he said.

“By the way, did ya really bang that lady Mrs. Smith?”

“What? No. Who says that?”

“The whole town’s sayin’ you was bangin’ her in that T-Bird when them Motorpsychos came up on y’all.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“You didn’t bang her.”

“Nope.”

“Damn, that’s what everbody’s sayin’.”

“These people are pathetic, man. This whole town’s pathetic. That’s why I’m leavin’.”

“It’s the noble west, man.”

“Fuck ‘em.”

Tip took another long toke and slowly exhaled.

“Here, boy.” Tip handed Harvey the joint. “Take a good one now and get on back to your lady friend.”

Harvey took his hit, and they stood up.

The world rocked back and forth, like a great ship on an even greater swell. And then it settled down.

“Whoah,” said Harvey. “Stoned again.”

“Righteous shit,” said Tip. “Get it from them Motorpsycho dudes.”

“Really?” said Harvey.

“Yeah. What the hell.”

They started slowly back.

“You thinkin’ it’s bad karma, Harve? Smokin’ this Motorpsycho weed?”

“Yeah,” said Harvey.

“Well, ya smoked it last night, and it didn’t feel like bad karma then, did it?”

“No.”

But now it sure did.

****

(Turn here for our next exciting chapter. And please feel free to check out the right hand side of this page for up-to-date listings of links to other episodes of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain™, a Sheldon Leonard production.)

Arnold sings the body electric

Our recent publication of Arnold Schnabel’s poem “Cuban Missile Crisis” generated such a wave of appreciative e-mails that we have decided to bow to popular request and broadcast another of his fine pre-breakdown poems, only recently unearthed from the Schnabel Archive in the basement of the Oak Lane Library of Philadelphia PA.


(This sonnet originally appeared in the Olney Times of August 19, 1962, and is presented thanks to the kind permission of the ladies and gentlemen of the Arnold Schnabel Society, all rights reserved. Nihil obstat, His Reverence John J. "Jack" Graham, SJ.)

“St. Helena’s Parish Carnival, 1962”

I wander through the carnival, but why
I don’t know. I don’t gamble, and I don’t
Shoot guns, I don’t do much in life, and I
Generally prefer to say “I won’t”
To “I will”; but this evening an odd thing
Happens, I suddenly feel the thick rind
Of myself melt into this air ringing
With shouts and with laughter, and then, my mind
Replaced with popcorn and cotton candy,
My soul spinning round like a carousel,
For an hour I forget to be me;
But then I awaken, and I come back
To this abundant and eternal lack.

(Kindly look to the right hand side of this page for listings of links to many other classic poems from Arnold Schnabel, as well as to our serialization of his sprawling memoir Railroad Train to Heaven.)

A particularly grey October

The recent retirement of El Jefe, Fidel Castro, reminded us of one of Arnold Schnabel’s more disturbing but nonetheless oddly beautiful poems, here republished for the first time since its début in the Olney Times of October 26, 1962.

It is perhaps worth noting that Arnold suffered a complete mental collapse just a little over two months after writing this poem.

(This sonnet brought to you by the kind permission of the Arnold Schnabel Society, all rights reserved. Imprimatur: Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.)

"Cuban Missile Crisis"

An ash-grey morning, I stare at the sky;
Will this be the day that the missiles fall?
There’s nothing to be done, except to pray
Upon our knees, and ask the good Lord why
He cannot spare some of us, if not all,
If we promise to worship Him each day
And every night for the rest of our
Portion of what He should grant us of life,
If only a year, or a month, or just
A week, or a day, or even an hour,
No matter how fraught with fear and with strife,
Before we are blown into cosmic dust.
An ash-grey evening, I stare at the sky;
Will this be the night that you and I die?

(Kindly turn to the right hand side of this page for a listing of links to other classic poems by Arnold Schnabel, as well as to his Schaefer Award-winning memoir, Railroad Train to Heaven.)