Qev.
Uults
Editorial Ê
Now & Then
Now, for the other shoe.....yes, it is true, the
Upper Left Edge will, next month, complete our
promised five years of publication, and take a deep
breath. When we started this project we did it
tffgk
because we could. It was cheap enough and we
cared enough to spend the time. After five years of
volunteering in the service of a free press and general
fun we have found ourselves on the edge of America
so busy that it is often days between walks on the
beach. This is not why we moved here. Yes, we
fear the loss as much, if not more, than you, our
faithful readers and supporters. We try to tell
ourselves it is like a song, it has a begimng, middle
and an end Still, w e wish it could go on. And the
possibility does exist. If some person, or bunch of
folks who feel about this rag as we do could get it
together to run the operation, and write the letters and
make the run to the printer, and return the phone
calls, and do the billing, and write the checks, and all
that stuff,.... we would love to play. But the idea of
publishing ‘real’ books and not looking at the
calendar and starting to have trouble sleeping, and
spending more time with our books, and our ocean,
well, we all know selfishness when we see it, and it
seems like it’s coming on our last chance to be
selfish and enjoying doing what ‘we’ want to do, on
our terms.
This paper actually began in the days of the Gulf
War, when America was making the world safe for
OPEC. Some of us watched on CNN as a quarter of
a million people w ere killed and the largest man
made environmental disaster in history (and that’s
saying something!) unfolded before our riveted
eyes. We, being older veterans of the anti-war
movement, some just w ar veterans, felt the need to
speak, with the w ritten word about what was going
on. Images were a constant, we had much more
information that we could ever digest. Wolf Blitzer
and the Scuds, live from the Baghdad Hilton. No,
our little paper was reflections and comments on the
reality by folks that as they say have, “been there,
done that, burned the tee shirt.” We called it, with a
humble lack of imagination, “The Peace Paper” It
was a bunch of old hippies and activists bitching as
usual, but it w as kind of interesting to your beloved
editor, and he kind of got printers ink under his
nails, if not in his veins. The idea of the Edge was
based on the idea of the New Yorker magazine under
Harold Ross, when Dorothy Parker, James Thurber,
E.B. White, and so manv wrote the notes of the time.
Uncle Mike since he moved to this silly little beach
town has even instigated a poker game, that your
beloved rev. named the Thanotoplis Literary and
Inside Straight Society, Pacific Chapter. With that
strange energy that w e got from the New Yorker and
adding the anti-war sentiment, (remember the New
Yorker w as started by W.W.II vets who worked on
Stars and Strips.) we felt there were enough folks
who could write a declarative sentence that was
worth reading, that we knew and could bribe, beg,
or blackmail into contributing. We were smart
enough to leave Portland to be closer to the actual
edge, and to find the humble ms sally who added the
visual on a level that CNN w ill never be able to
match, and a low tolerance for ‘close enough’ that
made us proud of what we printed. Getting Prof.
Lindsey and June Kroft, Margi Curtis, Alex
Lafollett, Sandy Rea, Ron Logan , Mr. Baseball,Dr.
Karkeys and others to contribute gave a voice to the
community, and the region. And of course Uncle
Mike and Blame it on the Stars will be missed,
though Blame it on the Stars is available in Inkfish.
We might continue, we truly don’t know, that is
the hands of others, maybe you? The point of this
rambling dialogue is that next month might be the last
Edge. If that is the case, and even if it isn’t we
would like to invite you all, our advertisers,
subscribers, writers, artists, silly friends, to do
something special, we will do our best to make the
March Issue something you will be proud to be a part
of. (ended a sentence with a...)
ed.-
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1 guess I owe it all to Jill Staffleboch —all
ttese long yeais of social ineptitude, shyness,
loneliness, and stumbling bachelorhood. Jill sat
adjacent to me in the first grade at Green Hills
Scliool, Millbrae, California, in 1949 — a
precocious, composed, little Peppermrnt Pattie
girl, blond, ink-well dipping pigtails and wire-
rimmed glasses. She always liad her hand raised
because she knew all the answers. Her father, a
professoral Stanford, liad written tire
penmanship book we used in class. Naturally,
she was despised and villified. Ted, a poor kid
with six fingers on each hand, and I, got
whatever 6-year old animosity was left over after
Jill got her daily helping. Playground jeers,
stolen marbles, jabs in tte bock with pencils, dirt
clods in the head, gobs of spittle hocked from the
top of tire jungle gym, that was our lot.
My mother dressed me in a Little Lord
Faunteleroy suit for my first week of school: a
little camel-hair blazer, a jaunty Eton cap, short
pants with a bib and suspenders, saddle shoes
and white socks rolled down just so. I was
doomed.
Then tilings got worse.
Our teacher. Miss Bailey, selected Jill and I to
dance a little Mexican Hat Dance for a monthly
P.T.A. meeting. We liad serapes made in class
from cheese cloth, with Crayola designs and
some huge sombreros. I can still tear that music
and the chorus of taunts we got the next day.
"Teacher's pet," "What a farmer!” ("farmer"
was a pretty deragotory tenn in San Francisco in
tte first grade classes of 1949, "That sissy would
rather dance with girls than play football!" "He
eats dog doody on Wonder Bread!"
And then, tte really terrible tiling liappened.
During a reading lesson, Jill kept raismg ter
liand to answer a question. Miss Bailey
apparently avoided calling her to give some
other students a chance to respond. I glanced
over at Jill waving her liand furiously in the
air . and she liad wet her pants. An enormous
yellow puddle spread from tte legs of te r desk
Ste buried te r head on tte desk and cried.
From that day on I became "tte boy who
danced with the girl who wet her pants." In tte
first grade at Green Hills Scliool I was tte scum
of scum. As I walked home from school
through the Emilio Brothers truck farm, fourth-
graders sliagged rotten tomatoes after me, ("If he
comes tlirougli here again, we’ll pants trim”). I
shuddered and slirank
Tliat was tte end of my dancing days. By
1957. all my peers had lathered their faces with
Clearasil and headed for tte high school hop.
Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Antliony, and
Robin Luke strummed and wailed. I stayed
home. No more dancing for me. The music
rattled around teasingly in my soul, but the
phobic terror, the fear had struck My family
moved to Oregon At Seaside High School, I
spent prom nights with "tte greasers" parked up
on the 400 Line at Crown Camp, drinking
Thunderbird wine in a '49 Ford.
The rules were clear: no dancing, no girl friends.
Over the years, my darte phobia lias plagued
me in bizarre ways. Ladies have approached me
in lounges and restaurants where bands perform
asking if I’d be inclined to dance. I waffle
around and begin my sorry apologies. Once I
dissembled and told a young lady tliat I couldn't
escort her to a Sadie Hawkins dance because I
was Jewish.
"Jewish," she said, "what kind of Jewish?"
"A very orthodox kind," I said.
On another occasion, a robust lady
approached me as a band played, and asked if I
cared to dance. I declined.
"You’re just embarrassed to dance with me
'cause I’m fat," ste blurted out to me. Oh, dear.
So, tere I am, flotsam cast adrift on tte sea of
life. I am denied any hope of marriage. Tte first
tiring any new groom lias to do is dance with the
bride!
Perliaps in some lonely condominium in San
Francisco, Jill Stafflebach ticks off the gray
moments of te r passing
days. If we could just get together on tliat
ballroom floor, those colored circles where you
place your feet, a few swirls around the
room.. .perhaps the damage could be undone.
E d ito r /P u b lish e r /J a n ito r : The
Beloved Reverend Billy Lloyd Hults
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