I love 60s Rock and Roll

Sometime in high school Pauline Laro,

a classmate, fulfilled an assignment to

write a short story by using nothing but

the titles of pop songs like Don’t Step

On My Blue Suede Shoes, On Wolverton

Mountain, or Come Along And Be My Party

Doll.  She also made little circles for dots

above small case eyes and jays.

I thought this was way beneath what we

ought to be doing in English class.  I was

reading Poe and my friend Clark was into

Theodore Roethke so we decided to write

a truly hideous story.

The story which ran four scrawled pages

tops was about a WWI pilot who gets shot

down but bails out successfully only to get

hung up in tree limbs.  Years later our

protagonist searching in a marsh for the

bad egg smell of hydrogen gas to buoy

the new German war effort looks up

and sees the dead and rotting pilot.

We called our work Moor Gas and it stunk.

If there is a heaven for English teachers

our teacher, Fred Fosher, probably still takes

our story to bars to show strangers and

get a laugh or perhaps a free round.

FG                   9/23/2016

I once taught a junior class in Bristol, NH where I asked a girl what the theme of Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado was.  Without hesitation she said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  I regret to say I couldn't stop laughing.  I’m still laughing.

Hideous, by the way, is a word Poe alone owns.