A meGEOFF EXCLUSIVE!

Inside the Tragic Death of the Great Pumpkin

“Aw, God,” Lucy van Pelt says. She stubs out her fifth Marlboro Gold. Her hardpack of 20 won’t last an hour. She is rueful, full of regret. It’s not yet noon. Lucy peers around the dim, shabby barroom, taking everything in except the visage of her ex-husband Charlie Brown. They’ve been estranged for years, but their relationship seems as fraught as the subject of the discussion: the Great Pumpkin.

Charlie sighs. “I feel responsible somehow.”

“It wasn’t just you,” Lucy says. “It was everything. When did the Halloween special come out, ’66? All its scenes were cut. Like Kevin Costner’s in The Big Chill. I counselled Pumpkin for years. I tried interventions. I tried everything. There was no talking to it.” Her plucked and bladed eyebrows arch. “I had my own problems to deal with.”

Charlie sighs again and shrugs. He’s looking everywhere else too. He says, “The whole thing, it probably wrecked our marriage.” He adds, “What do you have to do to get another drink around here?”

“Ditto, balloon head.” Lucy sneers as she fires up another lung dart.

The Great Pumpkin was found fatally blue in the toilet of a legendary Hollywood motel on this exact date three decades ago. The Los Angeles County coroner’s report confirmed an overdose of cocaine and heroin, a “speedball” in hardcore street parlance. And the Tropicana on Santa Monica Boulevard was hardcore before its demolition: home to vagrants, touring rock stars and Tom Waits. Sandy Koufax, the Baseball Hall of Fame Los Angeles Dodgers ace was its owner.

“I lived down the hall from Pumpkin at the time,” Waits recalls. “I crashed there for about six months. Good for my image. Very bad influences. It was a very jazzy place, more Charlie Parker – smack and whiskey – than Vince Guaraldi. I never saw Pumpkin. It was like the elephant in the room, like clinical depression. Peppermint Patty was always hanging around though. Some other girl too. Marcie? Maybe she had red hair. Trashed. Wasted. They were mules, groupies. Bringing stuff in. What do I know, no Polaroid memories. Me, I just fake it; watch, it’s an act, always has been. Pumpkin was the real deal. And Schroeder was always there too; I do recall that little toy boy, always up for a jam session with me. Knocking on my door, which was always open by the way.”

Linus van Pelt, alone in his luxurious Century City condominium sits guru-like, cross-legged on the floor on a tattered blanket. "The Trop was close to the animation studio. Pumpkin moved in there just to be close by. Standing by, so to speak. Poor bastard waited for a call that never came. I sensed it wouldn't end well. It was a crazy scene. The whole thing, it makes me very sad."

“I was Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’,” Schroeder insists over the line from his permanent residence at the Betty Ford Centre in Palm Desert, a mountain range away from the Tropicana’s infamous and notorious sleaze. “I really was. But when Tom wrote ‘The Piano Has Been Drinking’ about me, I realized I had a problem. Pumpkin was into way harder stuff. It was happy to share. I remember Lucy tried to help us but to no avail. And Pumpkin told Linus to ‘fuck off and die’ straight to his face, that poor fragile kid. I remember that; I was there. Can you imagine? Pumpkin's biggest disciple, apostle, fan or whatever.”

“I was the sort of de facto leader of the Peanuts gang,” Charlie says. He sighs heavily. “So, yeah, when I found out the greatest baseball pitcher of all time owned a Hollywood motel, of course I wanted to hang out there. I mean, that’s just what you’d want to do, right? I was working on my curve and slider. The team had to get better. I had to get better. But Sandy was never there. He was like the Great Pumpkin in that way. Good grief, it was all very frustrating.”

“Like kicking a football, Charlie Brown!”

“Not my best sport,” he tells Lucy.

When Lucy laughs, she emits a lovely, wet chesty sound, at once crapulent and captivating. She clears her throat. “Pumpkin was more insecure than the bane of my life sitting across the table here,” Lucy says as she points to Charlie. “All Pumpkin needed was a cameo in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown or maybe just one panel in the newspaper.” Lucy continues, “Charlie always had creative control, so Spike, Franklin, whoever, whatever, got their moments. But not Pumpkin. It’s Charlie Brown’s fault. It’s all his fucking fault. Fucking Snoopy got all the ink. Nothing left for Pumpkin! Snoopy! Snoopy! Snoopy!”

“That’s not true!” Charlie Brown slams the table, his fist clenched. He sighs. He grimaces. “We actually had that fleabag put down before we got married. They’re hard on furniture, hardwood floors especially. They shed. You wouldn't believe the vet bills.”

Lucy places her hand over Charlie’s. She says, “It was a long time ago. Best forgotten. Wounds have healed.” Lucy smiles. "You really should treat yourself to a new t-shirt."

Charlie Brown agrees ever so gently, ever so reluctantly with Lucy van Pelt. There is a softness in his voice. “Everything was a long time ago,” he affirms. “We can’t change it, not the Great Pumpkin's fate, not anything. We were all, in our own way, casualties.” Charlie's head droops. The great bald orb weighs heavier than usual. He sighs. "I mean, good grief, those were the times. And fuck Charles M. I never wanted any of this. I don't think any of us did."                                    

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. New fiction coming in 2025. 

NONSENSE VERSE

Bedtime Reading (Sleepover)

It’s time to say, “Good night, my dears”

But first some verse by Edward Lear

Perhaps ‘Bluebeard’ by Charles Perrault

Who knows where our story will go?

A meat hook or fancy runcible spoon

Implements aglint by the light of the moon

A green wicked witch or a very sly fox

Reynard a trickster, the son of Aesop

A vile nasty ogre grunts ‘neath your bed

Would you prefer seven dwarfs instead?

There’s an odious troll in the open wardrobe

Don’t worry, he just came in from the cold

How can I explain ‘The Hockey Sweater’?

Bygone days, les Canadiens were better

My Nana worshipped Maurice Richard

A rocket, a legend, goal-scorer at large

‘Three Little Kittens’ and ‘Little Red Hen’

I can still hear my Papa reading them

Cabbages, mad hatters, queens and kings

Your grandparents’ library has all these things

They can be scary, pages ‘tween covers

Skin-curdling adventures for young book-lovers

Pray, keep the curious habit of our past generations

Because words are the source of all creation                                       

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. New fiction coming soon, not very soon as in immediately but sooner than later.

EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Baby Break It Down

Ann and I still play Pinch-Punch-First-of-the-Month. I won last year, hands down. My lead this year is slimmer. Our game is important to me because there’s not enough talcum powder left in the world for the Scrabble ass-kickings Ann inflicts on me.  Maybe I pinch a little too firmly. A third competition is who will clock the first robin investigating our lawn come spring. Robins are like trends, the next big thing; they arrive with great fanfare, puffed out chests, and then quietly slip away as August dwindles. We don’t notice their absence at first.

We do take note of the Canada geese who haven’t made a chirp or a peep all summer. They stir unfailingly on Labour Day when the Canadian football schedule gets interesting – doesn’t matter when summer’s last holiday, September’s first Monday, falls. They must react to the lower light, the chill of the night. Put on your stockings, baby, the nights are getting cold. The mornings are notably crisper, half-zip fleeces or flannel shirts required for front porch coffees and traded sections of the Globe and Mail. Soon the day will dawn when we’re out there at our usual time, but morning’s late and we’ll have to wait awhile for enough daylight to read the paper by. And, it’s Ann’s new year even though she’s not taught music in Alberta’s primary or secondary school system for quite some time. Sticky fingers on cheap violins.

As is rarely the case with some of my run-on sentences and long paragraphs, the patio flower pots have been edited, some spent annuals weeded out so to speak. I’ve started cutting back the perennials. The day lilies are always the first to turn to straw, stems and fronds. The ferns, bleeding hearts, ragged yellow hostas and bloomless peonies are next. I mow our lawn about twelve times between Victoria Day and Thanksgiving. A City of Edmonton diktat declares cats strictly indoor pets, akin to those wretched, eye-watering albino bunny rabbits. Cats exact their toll on bird flocks (magpies excepted), you see. So do modern reflective UV-treated tinted windows. They’re also something of a delicacy to our burgeoning population of urban coyotes. On the other paw, a savvy outdoor cat, our late tabby Scamp for example (He thrived some eighteen years, ignoring skunks and staring down aggressive dogs and knew exactly where to lay across our Saturday morning crossword puzzle), is ruthlessly efficient at rodent control. Catless (like the entire neighbourhood) these days but not pining for the smell of kitty litter dust, I limbo the lawnmower’s blades for the last couple of cuts; get them down as low as they can go: Ann and I theorise we’re shutting down the local voles’ winter salad bar. A sneeze barrier of a s(n)ort.

I took down our patio umbrellas. Their storage bags are still fire engine red. The umbrellas themselves have paid the cost of doing their job in the heat of the sweet summer sun. They’re like cheap plywood, one side good. But the fabric has held up and, anyway, we don’t hover over them, we sit beneath their faded shade. I can’t remember if red was our primary choice for colour or if we settled for late September clearance pricing and lack of selection five years ago. Same goes for the patio overflow set of Canadian Tire folding chairs in day-glo urine sample colours. When they go on sale now they cost $10 more than we paid. I store all this stuff at the rear of our attached single-car garage, one without a human door. To do this I have to move the snow shovels, the ice chipper and the ice scraper. I’m always tempted to move them outside a titch too soon because, you know, autumn in Edmonton, sometimes a leaf rake just won’t do.

Changing seasons, changing hats. My outdoor work cap features a football logo now because the summer game is winding down. After Grey Cup I debut my Montreal Canadiens winter headwear. A Habs cap I’ve worn for twenty-five years has faded to pink in some places. I only mention this because it used to be as blue as their home helmets. Just 76 points last season; they’ll have to rack up another 16 above and beyond that total to sniff at the playoff pool this year. Ideally those points come with wins rather than cheap overtime loss rewards because the league's cock-eyed accumulative methodology, essentially a football rouge, does manage to subtly sort contenders from pretenders. Eh bien, I digress; too soon to talk hockey.

And it’s too soon to be too hasty, we’re still in September after all – my favourite month in this town, blue sky above green and gold foliage, ideal temperatures. I can’t cut back everything at once because some plants pick their moment, delay it, become a little showy once their competitors are spent. Ann’s already thinking about her garden next spring: There will be fall transplants, weather permitting, and so I do what I can with the information I have, what I know for sure. Anyway, I have labour limits, one-hour shifts – I’m not as lithe and limber as I used to be. I can tell you I feel great but if I said I was in the best shape of my life you’d laugh at me.

It's too soon to break down the picnic table for storage in the crawlspace underneath the back porch. Ann and I are grateful to be in sort of a holding pattern now, enjoying what’s left of our patio and garden before the night of the killer frost. Then we’ll have to scramble a bit. There’s always more work to be done before the ice pellets fly.                                       

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. New fiction coming soon. Finally.

JUST A BOY AGAIN

Pen Drop

My Nana was 101 at the time, maybe 102. At 99 she decided she’d had enough of looking after her apartment, housekeeping, cooking. She moved herself into an Anglican ladies’ residence on Guy Street in downtown Montreal. A grand old place that reminded me of one of those summer resorts in the Eastern Townships or upper New York State. Clapboards and verandahs. Adirondack chairs.  White paint, green doors and green window trim. “An institution, mainly for tax purposes,” Nana told me. Staff insisted she walk with a cane. When I visited her from Alberta, Nana simply dragged it behind her. “They say I need it.” Nana said that knitting, playing cards and completing crossword puzzles had become more challenging because her eyesight wasn’t what it was. Oh, and a dead tooth needed extraction. These were not complaints, just facts.

Nana led me on a tour. The place was quaint and musty. A group of elderly women, decades Nana’s junior, were watching a video of The Sound of Music in a common room. Nana pointed at one woman with the tip of her cane. “You remember your Auntie Agnes, Geoffrey.” I did. “Look at her; she’s a cabbage now.” Agnes began to tell me that when she was 16 her long red locks of hair were the envy of all the other girls in Brighton (UK), or possibly Montreal. She was unclear. She did remember that boys had really liked her. Nana said, “Agnes, maybe the doctor will give you a new head.”

Years later my mother moved herself into a ritzier residence in a ritzier part of Montreal. Mom expected to spend her final years in a reasonably priced hotel as opposed to an institution. Her plan panned out for the most part; scheduled communal activities held no allure. Probably the next to last time Ann and I saw Mom, she required a wheelchair to move around anywhere beyond the confines of her one-bedroom suite where her walker and any number of canes were always at hand. In this particular instance we wheeled her down the hall to the elevator. The three of us were to lunch together in the dining room. The elevator doors slid open. It was crammed with residents and visiting relatives. There was an apologetic shuffle in the lift, a lame attempt to create space for three more bodies and a wheelchair where there wasn’t any. I addressed the crowd: “That’s all right! We’ll take the stairs.” Half of them laughed. Mom did too.

Our former neighbour Forest, a cranky lifelong bachelor and self-described “lapsed Buddhist”, moved into a seniors’ residence on Jasper Avenue, Edmonton’s main drag, just before the covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns hit. Prior to that, Ann had two part-time jobs next door, dietician and handyman. I was Forest’s secretary: I sorted and reviewed his correspondence, helped him take care of business. When his latest issue of New Scientist was delivered, I went through it for him at his kitchen table, reviewing the content, describing the illustrations, reading aloud when required. Ann and I accompanied him on his walks. He told us that we had allowed him two additional years of independent living. Very precise.

His new home, while completely understanding he had no other option, still doesn’t quite suit. Legally blind, he doesn’t want to hear about other residents’ grandchildren and their pets. All this useless talk. He was banned from a Bible discussion group because hadn’t doctrine and dogma retarded civilization and therefore enlightenment? Didn’t it make sense that the purported da Vinci portrait of Jesus would portray an androgynous figure because the Christ must embody and personify all that is righteous in the feminine and masculine. The best of everything. And speaking of perfection, the Oilers need 40 goals from their fourth line and better goaltending.

All these things. All these things add up. All these vignettes stored, milled and put through the hopper. They colour my night dreams, sometimes they wake me up a little ahead of my bladder. A story churning. My God, how would I fare in one of those places? What would the tenor of a retirement home be like with the tail end of the baby boom cohort in residence? The Sound of Music on movie night just wouldn’t do. I thought about high school: its cliques, the new student, its dynamics, crushes on girls and smoking in the boys’ room. I thought about Hogan’s Heroes and Stalag 17,  finks and ferrets, rules and confinement, non-adherence.

I dread the thought of having to play out the end of the game in such a place whatever the marketing brochures promise. It could happen: you just don’t know; you never can tell. What would I take when time and space got tight? So many books and record albums. Meaningful pieces of furniture. All the pictures on the walls. Shoeboxes overflowing with mementos and curling snapshots. A threadbare twentieth century t-shirt. An Expos baseball cap. It’s the dessert island scenario for a glutton, the entire buffet is out of the question. One slice of cake, one wedge of pie and as many cookies and brownies as your pockets will hold.

I began to type in May, 2022. My Hilroy exercise book was filled with notes. I decided to run with a first-person narrator again because that technique, that single point of view, allows some leeway for narrative inconsistencies and outright mistakes. They’re not my fault! Tom Danger from Of Course You Did was still in my head (I still don’t know if his surname is on his birth certificate or just in his mind). I knew his backstory inside and out. I decided to run with his voice again, but pitch it fifteen or twenty years into the future. Write what you know – less research. Besides, fiction is made up.

So, a new book due sometime in 2025. Just a Boy Again is not a sequel to Of Course You Did. It’s merely a continuation of that voice. That may sound like a very precious distinction, but I sell so few books that an actual, proper sequel would be an utterly pointless exercise. The continuing futility of my need to create is already enough, maybe too much, for me. But having just dropped my pen in September 2024 after many drafts and lots of fussing, I’m compelled to tell you that I’m feeling all right, pretty good myself.                              

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date.