It’s a lovely morning on March 23rd, spring has sprung, the days are getting longer, the long-cold winter is behind us, we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave, home-home on the range, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day, life is like a song, oh de do da day. What a bunch of #@$#@#@$, that is. Sorry, you caught me channeling my inner Bennie Turner.
Years ago Bennie declared himself a soldier in the war on hypocrisy. If you have a load of BS to sell, drive by Bennie’s house cause he ain’t buying. If, on the other hand, you want to hear his stories on how ridiculous life can be, call him up and see if you can arrange a road trip to Alaska and back.
While you’re riding along, to spice things up; ask him to tell you why meat balls don’t bounce, what the purpose of soap is (to make water wetter), how effective it is to bite into an electrical cord, the funniest joke you can play on someone who wears a hearing aid, whether leaving your car parked in neutral at the top of a steep hill is a good idea and just how scary a possum on the back porch can be.
We humans have created many myths to mollify the harshness of our condition, that is; to be conscious on a little rock in a vast universe. How many of those myths does Bennie Turner live by? None. Bennie is an anti-philosophical philosopher - a truth seeker cautious to never bring up the search. You will have to study what he does to discern the code he lives by, because he is not likely to tell you.
Bennie’s search for truth (he will surely laugh at such a word) has probably always been part of him, but it must have started in earnest after the events of the Spring of 1966. He turned fifteen on March 23rd and by tax day, three weeks later: his beloved Kentucky Wildcats had lost to Texas Western in the NCAA finals and his Aunt May Wallace (he was her favorite) had picked him up at school to tell him his father had died of a massive heart attack - collapsing at work where he rebuilt automobile generators. It was as if the vast universe paid a visit and said: “Happy fifteenth birthday, Bennie Len Turner”. He could not sleep for some time afterwards, so they took him to the doctor who said, “He’ll sleep when he’s tired.” Healthcare at its finest, huh?
Bennie must have been forever altered, which may help explain how he became his family’s pioneer. His family, friends, pretty much everybody he grew up with, had no desire to attend college. Bennie, on the other hand, was determined to go. No doubt he got the desire from his mother who had been denied the chance to continue her education past the eighth grade because she was needed in the tobacco fields. She had made straight A’s in school and persuaded her parents to let her repeat the eighth grade, before finally succumbing to the family pressure to work on the farm. Bennie figured out all the hoops you had to jump through and went to college; and because he did, his younger brother went too and his younger sister followed. None of it would have happened had it not been for Bennie’s courage to break away from what everybody expected.
I came to know Bennie in around 1976, when his sister took me home from college and introduced me as her boyfriend. I can only imagine what he might have thought of me then. It’s not often two grown men share recollected impressions of one another the first time they met, let alone what they think of one another right now. I suppose our ignorance permits us to move ahead in situations where we otherwise might have turned back.
I do know this, Bennie hates phonies. He sizes people up, figures out how to make his summary of them funny; and the humor can be caustic if the person exhibits pretention or self-importance, and keeps the summary on hand for whenever he needs it. He has a beloved friend who is, shall we say; less than industrious, but who tries to hide his lack of desire to work, so when Bennie sees another “lazy person”, say Sue Smith; he will say: “Sue Smith must have gone to the John Doe (not his real name) school of looking busy”. If he knows you, rest assured; he has you summarized. (We all do this, I imagine; but Bennie raises it to the level of art.)
My wife recently sent he and other friends the link to a website where I am pictured and listed as “Director” of a program, asking: “Do you know this man?” He emailed her back immediately and said: “Is it Joseph Mengele?” If you do not know (we didn’t until we googled it), Josef Mengele was nicknamed “The Doctor of Death” for his role in Nazi concentration camps of WWII. In a later email Bennie explained: ‘Sorry, I just saw that and thought, "I am zee Directoooor, you Vill do vat i Saaaaayyyy!!!!!" So, I guess I have a glimpse into Bennie’s summary of me.
That sort of humor endears Bennie to me, and a host of others; but probably makes him threatening to some. Bennie would prefer certain people remain in the dark on what makes him tick, bending over backwards to show them his cynical side.
I have often said there are only about five or six types of people in the world. Bennie is in a group where the numbers are small. I have only known a handful of other people like Bennie; his daughter being one, and my former boss in Knoxville another. These types (see I’m summarizing him now) seem to not be as trapped in a time or a place the way most people are. They’re interested in the whole world, not just their own little section of it. If we are all living in a room we call our self; and some have big picture windows, while others have tiny little submarine windows only reached by step stool, the walls of Bennie’s room are made of one-way mirrors. He can see you and the rest of the world clearly, but you will need to knock on the door and spend time inside to understand who he is. And when you think you understand him and are walking back out the door; you might hear him mumbling something and know - you’ve been punked.
Bennie, his brother JR, a friend and I; were on hand when Johnny Bench was inducted into the hall of fame in 1989, taking in Niagara Falls together on the way home. Bennie was the first of us to get to the Falls. He is deathly afraid of heights; so by the time the others of us walked up to the viewing platform, he had seen enough and said: “That’s enough of this, wanna go get some pizza?”
Once, on the ride over; when he was driving across New York state from Courtland to Cooperstown, the song: “Bird, bird, bird, bird’s the word” came on, and Bennie proceeded to regale us with his version of it, complete with gestures - both hands fully involved. When he is in the mood to entertain, he is like all great comedians or actors; he can make time stand still for everybody in the audience and have them thinking: why can’t life always be this much fun? He’s one of those people you want others to meet, just so you can observe their reaction to him.
I have learned a lot from Bennie over the years, but the thing I have probably learned most is to be who you are and not something you want people to think you are. The only problem is, in Bennie’s case; whatever he is, is far from clear. But isn’t that true of all the most interesting people - a little something to puzzle over.
Happy Birthday Bennie
No comments:
Post a Comment