Flicklives

Last Summary Update: 11-24-2008

Siphoning Gas
Airdate: Friday - November 3, 1961

WOR Show
Original Airing

audio

(NOTE ABOUT TIME REFERENCES: Since there are many different copies of shows out there from different sources, all time references are from the beginning of one single recorded copy, since various copies, depending on when the recordee started recording, had news at the beginning or shortened themes. The times would vary from copy to copy.)

First Spoken Line After Theme Ends

if you were in High School . . .
Opening of show is missing - these are first words of the available recording.

Show Description

[ Courtesy: GROK Summary - - ]   
  This monologue (WOR, November 3, 1961) is a confessional, sensory account of three unforgettable youthful encounters with the wrong liquids, framed by the dangers of following a "bad apple" and the lingering power of taste memory.

The floorboard-less Model A and siphoning gas
In high school nine kids jointly own a Model A with no floorboards and tires made from beach-rescued inner tubes. Driving over icy roads with the ground rushing directly under their feet makes them sick; kids' feet hang out beneath the car. When they need gas they normally take up a collection. One night Flick (the one who can turn any group into a mob) proposes siphoning. Shepherd goes along with a hose and jug. After a locked Hudson and an empty, rust-filled Willys, he hits a shiny Graham-Paige, sucks too hard, and swallows a large quantity of high-octane gasoline. His eyeballs feel like red ping-pong balls, he turns purple around the mouth, and he has dry heaves. His mother, unaware, doses him with Ex-Lax and Eno, making it worse. The taste of gasoline never leaves him.

Crowd psychology
A digression on how one person can flip a crowd into a mob (Hitler; a Friday-night jazz concert in Central Park where Brubeck, Paul Desmond, and Lester Young nearly face a surge until cops appear).

Silver polish
Rushing home hot and sweaty, he opens the refrigerator and slugs what he thinks is milk - actually white silver polish his mother had poured into a milk bottle. He falls backward and hits his head. The taste is like corroded copper or battery acid; it stays down, forms a permanent "dismal swamp" inside him, and returns with certain foods (escargot).

Fly soup at the gas station
At fifteen he works at a gas station for sixty cents a day (arranged by his father). Long, hot Sundays, busted fingernails, under cars, maps to nowhere. With his last dime he buys a cold soft drink from the cooler. It tastes oddly sweet. Held to the light it is cloudy with thousands of ancient dead flies that have come apart. He has drunk three-quarters of a bottle of cold fly soup. The station owner refuses to refund the dime.

Overall tone and point: Confessional, digressive, and viscerally detailed. Shepherd treats the gasoline, silver polish, and fly soup as permanent sense memories that cannot be buried, while using the siphoning episode to illustrate how easily a single "bad apple" can lead an otherwise respectable group into crime. Classic Shepherd: sensory, comic, and slightly nauseating.      
  