A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry

Jack Benny Plays the Carousel Club

115 Fifteen Easy Minutes Jack Benny Plays the Carousel Club Sebastian Matthews —for Gerry LaFemina They say Jack Benny played it in ’55, flew into a little landing strip somewhere down highway 127 between Hicksville and Defiance, with just his manager and that famous violin. Blew in halfway through the first set, persuaded the owner to let him on. Think he’d turn him down? Picture the master, lit like a steam liner in harbor as he tries on the outfits of his repertoire at a manic clip— sawing the bow to punctuate the segues, smothering the laughs. Then Bam! into the next. Takes a while for the crowd to catch on. Damn, it really IS Benny! I believe the story, sort of. Maybe not a touchdown unannounced in a cornfield. That’s got all of myth’s markings. But blue highway down through western Ohio? Sure. A Buick tilted on the roof, drink specials at the half-moon bar, owner’s office hanging over the stage. Yeah, I buy that. Don’t you? Just not ’55, not when the “King of the Airwaves” had already headlined The Jell-O Program and jumped to the tube. More like when he was Ben K. Benny, fresh out of his teens, smeared in black face. “Fiddle Funology.” A man’s got to start somewhere. I played the Carousel once (you had to see 116 A Face to Meet the Faces that one coming) back in the late-70s, Duluth to Albany in a run of opening acts. I was reaching for whatever Pryor and Martin and Belushi were using to burn like that. Drove myself into town, as the joke goes, then blinked right on out of it. This Mom-and-Pop with a meatloaf special served up on a warm plate by a girl mouthwatering as the pies, who when I handed her the tab, shot me a “take me with you” glance, I swear. By the end of Benny’s set the lot’s crammed with pick-ups, folks lured off the road by a wild ham-radio call. It’s long past last call, and Benny comes off only to piss and refill his tumbler, then back up in the ragged spotlight, running through Kitzel the hot dog vendor, the vault in the basement, “Your Money or Your Life!” and a few squeaky bars of “Love in Bloom.” Slowing down for an eerie imitation of Rochester, sotto voice, eyes wide, elegant hands dead at his sides. The crowd erupting when Irving finally pulls him off; they part for him like the Red Sea. But here’s what gets me: Benny doesn’t fly out that night. No, he sleeps it off in the hangar. Daybreak he wakes the pilot and they take off as the sun rides its hotrod chariot into the sky. The plane banking over the great lake of green. I can see him closing his eyes (a gigantic field oak blankets a farm house in its shade) to rest for the first time since who knows when. Me? I stink up the place, 117 Fifteen Easy Minutes a carpetbag of glib jokes not flying with the farmer set. I lurch through “Eggs Benedict” memorized off Woody’s Nightclub Years. This John Deere hat stands up in the back and shouts “Go Home!” I’ve got a smart-ass comeback but nurse a bottle in my room, instead, hoping the girl will see my light on and knock furtively. Hey Mister, you in there? In the morning I pay up, drive on, the road I guess a kind of home. ...