39-year string of Biograph Derby Day parties broken

The Biograph Naturals in 1980. (Original photo by Phil Trumbo.)

Referred to as the “hippie league” by softball players who played in the polyester-clad softball world governed by recreation and parks departments, the Fan District Softball League had its own style. Its games were played on “open fields,” rather than in softball complexes with fences. Among other things that meant the Fan League game put more emphasis on defensive play, rather than simply a home-run derby, with big-bellied Bubbas trotting around the bases.

It also meant the league’s activities received less scrutiny by authorities outside of itself, which was wisely viewed then as a good thing. The unorthodox Fan League bubbled up out of the pop culture ooze of the summer of 1973, which was the heyday of WGOE, the daytime AM radio station that then dominated the Fan District in a way that's never been equaled. Its sound could be heard in the shops and on the sidewalks of the bohemian commercial strip of West Grace Street, adjacent to Virginia Commonwealth University.

Anyway, it was WGOE that set what eventually became the whole shebang in motion, when its promotional softball team of DJs and a few ringers -- the ‘Nads -- played a few games against impromptu squads representing a few regular advertisers on the station, mostly bars.

By the next summer casual teams began to jell into rosters, but still there was no formal schedule. Fields were being commandeered, rather than secured by arrangement with any proper authority.

By 1975 the name "Fan District Softball League" had come into use and the six-team organization had its first commissioner — Van “Hook” Shepherd. Cassell’s Upholstery beat the Bamboo Cafe in a one-game playoff for the first season’s championship finale. The four other teams in the league that inaugural season were the Back Door, Sea Dream Leather, Uptop Sub Shop and WGOE.

In 1976, in addition to the regular season the league staged two tournaments. Teams representing the Biograph Theatre, Hababas, J.W. Rayle, deTreville, the Pinheads (the VCU sculpture department and friends) and the Rainbow Inn were formed in 1976.

As the years wore on more bars, and whatnot, came and went. During the first decade of summers of the league’s existence, next to the music and bar scene, softball-related activities were at the heart of the Baby Boomer-driven culture in the Fan District.

Unlike most softball leagues in those days, the FDSL usually had lots of fans at its games. Of course, the kegs of beer that were around — which meant free beer — probably had something to do with that. The freewheeling FDSL was also the only organized-yet-independent softball league in the Richmond area.

Thus, the Fan League governed itself, made its own schedule, cut its own deal with the umpires, etc. It remained so through its last season in 1994.

*

On the first Saturday of May, every year since 1980, a softball reunion is held. Anyone who ever played on one of the Biograph softball teams from any year has been welcome, along with their families, friends, etc.

Serendipitously, that first reunion/old timers game was staged on the afternoon in which the Kentucky Derby would be run. Chiefly, the annual get-togethers were set in motion by the initiative of the original Biograph team’s third baseman, Ernie Brooks, who had left Richmond to resume graduate studies at Virginia Tech in 1979.

Brooks corralled enough former players (1976-79) to challenge what was then the current Biograph team in 1980. At this time the Biograph’s softball franchise was one of the cars, maybe the clown car, attached to the runaway train known as the Fan District Softball League.

Serendipitously, that first reunion/old timers game was staged on the afternoon in which the Kentucky Derby would be run. The game was played at Thomas Jefferson HS. Afterward most of us went to the Track Restaurant to join a Derby-watching party already underway.
The reunion subsequently became an institution and it’s been Derby Day ever since. Over the years, the game has moved around to various locations. Several of the guys at recent Derby Day gatherings were teammates of mine in 1976, the first summer of organized softball at the Biograph.

We called our team the Swordfish, after a joke in a Marx Brothers movie. That first year the Swordfish played a schedule that was not set in advance. Instead, our practice was to challenge established teams to play us for a keg of beer.

The lucky Swordfish won 15 games of the 17 we played that initial season. In spite of having few experienced softball players on a roster made up of employees, old friends and a few film buffs -- including two French guys who'd never seen a baseball game -- we probably won half of those keg games by coming from behind in late innings.

Typically, our opponents saw themselves as more experienced/athletically superior, which only made it more fun when they bumbled their way into handing us the victory. That first year, it was uncanny how often those supposedly better teams seemed willing to overplay their hands.

Now, having played and observed a lot of organized softball, I know that virgin Swordfish squad was absolutely charmed. In any sport, it was the loosest team with which I’ve ever been associated.

Both of the Swordfish’s losses came in extreme situations. The first was the championship game of one of the two tournaments we entered. Yes, we won the other one.

The second was played inside the walls of the old state penitentiary. Located at Belvidere and Spring Streets, the fortress prison loomed over the rocky falls of the James River for nearly 200 years (it was demolished in the early-1990s).

As it happened the guy in charge of recreation at the pen frequented J.W. Rayle, a popular bar of the era, located at Pine and Cary. During a conversation there he asked me if the Biograph team — I played outfield and served as the coach — would consider taking on the prison’s softball team on a Saturday afternoon. Chuck Wrenn, the bar manager at Rayle, had already told the guy the restaurant's team would do it. So I went along with it, too.

As it turned out the first date the prison guy set up was canceled, due to something about a small riot.

OK.

A couple of weeks later the Swordfish entered the Big House. To get into the prison yard we had to go through a process, which included a cursory search. We had been told to bring nothing in our pockets.

As we worked our way through the ancient passageways, sets of bars were unlocked and then locked behind us. Each of us got a stamp on our hands that could only be seen under a special light. Someone asked what would happen if the ink got wiped off, inadvertently, during the game. He was told that was not a good idea.

OK.

The umpire for the games — Rayle played the prison team first, then the Biograph -- was Dennis “Dr. Death” Johnson, a rather high-profile Fan District character, at the time, who played on yet another team. Among other things, Johnson did some professional wrestling, so he was good as hamming up the umpire's role.

The fence in left field was the same high brick wall that ran along Belvidere Street. It was only about 230 to 240 feet from home plate. Yet, because of its height, maybe 30 feet, a lot of hard-hit balls caromed off of it. What would have been a routine fly ball on most fields was a home run there. It was a red brick version of Boston’s Green Monster.

The prison team, known as the Raiders, was quite good at launching softballs over that towering brick wall. They seemed to have an unlimited budget for softballs, too. Under the supervision of watchful guards, about a hundred other prisoners seated in stands cheered for the home team. Actually, they cheered the loudest for good plays in the field and sliding collisions on the base paths.

During a conversation with a couple of my teammates behind the backstop, I referred to the home team as “the prisoners.” Our opponents’ coach, who was within earshot, immediately stepped toward me. Like his teammates, he was wearing a typical softball uniform of that era with “Raiders” printed across the chest in a script and a number on the back.

“Call us the Raiders,” he advised, somewhat sternly, as he pointed to an awkward-looking mural on the prison wall that said, “Home of the Raiders.” It looked like a jailhouse tattoo, blown up large.

OK ... it was obvious, I had made a faux pas.

“While we are on this ball-field, we’re not The Prisoners,” he said with, ahem, conviction. “We’re the Raiders.”

“Raiders,” I said. “Right.”

“And, all our games ... are home games,” he deadpanned.

We all laughed, grateful the tension had been broken. The Raiders coach patted me on the back and thanked us for being there, for agreeing to play them.

In a tight, high-scoring affair the Raiders prevailed. Johnson knew how to play to the crowd with his calls, too. Afterward, I was glad the Swordfish had met the Raiders. And, I was glad to leave them, too. Located smack dab in the middle of Richmond that prison was a perpetual nightmare in our midst. 

In terms of winning and losing, the Biograph teams that played on in the FDSL through 1994 never found anything close to the success that first year's team knew. Still, popups and bad hops aside, I'll wager most of the guys from the 1976 team remember more details about their meeting with the Raiders than many of the games we won playing at Chandler Ballfield, the home of the "hippie league" for 18 years.

*

In 1978 the league expanded to 12 teams. That's the year the FDSL began throwing a party draped around its All-Star Game, in the middle of each season. Each summer in mid- to late-June, the stars of the Mars Division played the stars of the Jupiter Division. As I remember it, Buddy Noble came up with the notion of using planets for the names of the two six-team divisions.

The method for selecting the all-stars varied with the year. Occasionally there were votes held, more times there were caucuses of the bossiest guys; the best teams always put more men on those squads. Other times, each manger just named three players from his team. No matter how it was done, popularity, or the lack of it, always influenced the results. 

In 1980, blonde bombshell Donna Parker and the aforementioned Dennis Johnson made a memorable appearance at one of the All-Star Games at Chandler Ballfield. The ever-outrageous Johnson was dressed in his Dr. Death mask and wrestling costume. His date was outfitted in a black leather bikini. Space limitations don't allow for elaboration at this time, but Johnson left town soon afterward.

In 1982, the Bamboo Cafe went through the regular season undefeated, 33-0, but lost to its bitter rival, Hababas, in the finals of the playoffs. Throughout the decade of the '80s one of those two outfits won the playoffs every time.
 

The 1984 Biograph team at a preseason practice.

For several years during the ‘80s the all-star exhibition/party was staged at the Colombian Center in Henrico County. That era had the largest turnouts for the annual event, as between 200 and 300 people paid five bucks each to attend. Once admitted the beer was free and the food was plentiful.

One particularly hot day for the party, according to the Budweiser truck guy, the attendees went through 22 kegs of beer. Figuring 200 beer drinkers, do the math.

For music, a couple of years Chuck Wrenn deejayed the parties. In 1986 the Motovators played live. The softball games were played on what was a field always in poor shape -- rocks in the infield and overgrown clumps of weeds in the outfield. We played with a rule against sliding on the base paths, to prevent injuries. The late Pudy Stallard was once called out, when, out of habit, he slid into second to beat a throw from the outfield.   

In 1987 and ’88 the food contest was at the center of festivities. Each team put out a spread to share and the consumers voted for the best of them. Some teams went to great lengths to coordinate their overall entry, others simply had people bring out covered dishes and whatnot. 

 

 In the foreground: Artie Probst, Fitz Marston and Paul Sobel at the 
1985 All-Star Game at the Colombian Center.  

The most talked about of all the efforts was the 3rd Street Diner’s 100 pound hamburger in ‘88. The beef was packed into a giant patty at the Diner. It was hauled around with great care, so as not to break it apart. The huge bun was put together at the Tobacco Company and baked in one of its large ovens.

Cooking the burger on an open grill at the picnic site turned out to be the best part of the ordeal. There must have been 25 experts and assistant experts standing around that grill, opining on how to go about doing the the job. The burger itself was a good eight inches thick. The flipping of the thing, to cook it all the way through -- without having it fall apart -- turned out to be an engineering task.

After all the kibitzing, it was done without mishap, much to the delight of one and all. A spontaneous celebration ensued ... smoke-um-if-ya-got-um. 

The FDSL also established its Hall of Fame in 1986. The first class was elected by the 12-team outfit’s designated franchise representatives. To be eligible then one had to have retired from play and considered to be among the founders. Ten names were selected as the first class of Hall-of-Famers.

The same rule held true in 1987, when six new names were put on the plaque. However, by 1988, a few of those who had been inducted into the Hall had un-retired.

So, in 1988, eligibility to the Hall was opened up to anyone who seemed deserving. Those already in got to vote, as well. Nine new members were selected. The meetings to select new inductees were always quite lively, as were most FDSL meetings, the voting process was probably no more twisted than any hall of fame’s way of choosing new names.

For 1989 six additional names were added. The class of ‘90 included seven names, and in ‘92 the last five names were tacked on. In all, 41 players and two umpires were tapped. The list leans heavily toward those who made significant contributions to the league's lore in its early years.

Those men who were inducted into the FDSL’s Hall between 1986 and 1992 are as follows: Ricardo Adams, Herbie Atkinson, Howard Awad, Boogie Bailey, Yogi Bair, Jay Barrows, Otto Brauer, Ernie Brooks, Hank Brown, Bobby Cassell, Jack Colan, Willie Collins, Dickie deTreville, Jack deTreville, Henry Ford, Danny Gammon, Donald Greshham, James Jackson, Dennis Johnson, Mike Kittle, Leo Koury, Jim Letizia, Junie Loving, Tony Martin, Kenny Meyer, Cliff Mowells, Buddy Noble, Randy Noble, Henry Pollard, Artie Probst, Terry Rea, John Richardson, Jerry Robinson, Larry Rohr, Billy Snead, Jim Story, Hook Shepherd, Pudy Stallard, Durwood Usry, Jumpy White, Barry Winn, Chuck Wrenn.

*

Group shot at the 2019 Biograph Derby Day party

With the pandemic-forced postponement of 2020's Biograph Derby Day party the string has been broken. Every year since 1980 a reunion gathering of some sort has been held on the first Saturday of May. Still, hopefully, this isn't the end of this story.  

-- 30 --

The Jellypig

Note from Rebus: The little painting to the right was the third in a series Rea did in 1983 to amuse his mischievous girlfriend. In each of them I got killed off in a different way. She told Rea I was a chump and deserved it.

In the summer of 1983, it was generally assumed that Rea had quit his job on a sudden whim. In truth, the mysterious process had been anything but sudden. The weird telephone piece below was made and photographed by Rea in that same summer.

In 1997, feeling challenged by F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up," Rea first attempted to write an account of his departure from the Biograph. As it required laying bare some of his troubles with what he calls "melancholia," it wasn't such an easy project to execute. This version of the story was put together in 2007. 

*

The Jellypig
By F.T. Rea

When one divines the presence of a specific person in connection with some unexplained occurrence, without any tangible evidence of their involvement, what real trust should one put in such raw instinct?

How much of a hunch is a flash of extraordinary perception? How much is imagination?

In a high contrast crisis, doubting a hunch could get somebody killed. But in everyday life’s ambiguous gray scale of propriety, how much can anyone afford to put at risk strictly on intuition? Hey, if you shoot a guy based on your gut feeling that he was about to kill someone else, with no corroborative evidence, you’re going to need a good lawyer.

The torturous story of why I left my longtime job as manager of the Biograph Theatre began with a ringing telephone on an Indian Summer afternoon in 1981 that I remember all too well. I put the Sunday newspaper aside to pick up the receiver and said, “Hello.”

There was no reply. At that moment there was no reason to think it was more than a wrong number or a malfunction on the line. Yet, after listening to a creepy silence for half a minute and repeating “hello” a few times, I sensed I knew the person at the other end of the line.

As I hung up that mysterious feeling was replaced by a flicker of a thought that named a specific person. Then the notion faded into a queasy sensation that made me go outside for some fresh air. For an instant I thought I knew something there was no plain way for me to know. Moreover, I didn’t want to know it.

My grandmother had told me a thousand times to never go against a hunch. Had I have discussed it with her she would have said a clear message from what she would have called my “inner voice” should always trump all else.

Instead of seeking her counsel I asked only myself: “Why would that person call me, to hang on the line and say nothing?” It made no sense. So, I tried to study the hunch, to examine its basis.

As I walked toward the closest bar, the Village, I was already caught in an undertow that would eventually carry my spirit far away from everything that had mattered to me.

Now I know that my grandmother understood something I was yet to learn -- a hunch is a bolt from the blue that cannot be gathered and investigated. It can’t be revisited like a conclusion. A true hunch can only be felt once.

Yet, for a number of reasons it was easier for me to view my inconvenient hunch as counterfeit. A few weeks later, by the time the calls had become routine, the whole concept of believing in hunches was on its way to the same place as beliefs in the Tooth Fairy and Heaven. A grown man, a man of reason, needed to rise above all such superstitions.

The caller never spoke. Usually, I hung up right away. Sometimes I’d listen as hard as I could for a while, trying to hear a telltale sound. The reader should note that telephone answering machines, while available then, were not yet cheap. Most people did not have one at this time.

After a haphazard year-and-a-half of one-night stands and such, following the break-up of my ten-year marriage, at this same time I had a new girlfriend. Tana was long-legged and sarcastic; she could be very distracting. She was a fine art major who waitressed part-time at one of the strip’s busiest saloons, the Jade Elephant. My apartment was just two blocks from there and she stayed over at my place about half the time, so she knew about the calls.

Tana was the only person who knew anything about it for a long time. She was sworn to secrecy. Mostly, I just let Tana distract me.

Quite sensibly, she urged me to contact the authorities, or at least to get an unlisted phone number. Offering no real explanation, I wasn’t comfortable with either option. Playing my cards close to the vest, I simply acted as if it didn’t really bother me. At this point she didn’t know about the hunch. We spent a lot of time riding our bicycles and playing Frisbee-golf.

As I rummage through my memory of this time period now the images are smeared and spooky. I stayed high more than before. For sure, I’ve forgotten a lot of it.

A few months later my nose was broken in a basketball game, and by pure coincidence I saw my grandmother on a stretcher at the hospital while I was there. Feeling weak, she had checked herself in. Nana died before dawn: March 5, 1982.

Later that morning, when I went to her apartment to see after her affairs, she had already packed everything up. She left notes on pieces of cardboard taped to furniture about her important papers and what to do with everything. A few days later my daughter and I sprinkled Nana's ashes into a creek in Orange County; it was a place she had played when she was a little girl.

Unmercifully, the stalking telephone calls became more frequent. Wherever I went, home, office, or someone else’s place, the phone would ring. Then there would be that same diabolical silence, no matter who answered.

Anxiety had become my familiar companion, although I didn’t know then to call it by that name. While I surely needed to do something decisive about the telephone problem, the energy just couldn’t be mustered.

If someone had told me I was sinking deeper and deeper into a major depression, well, I would have laughed it off -- I was too cocky to be depressed. In my view, then, depression was an affliction of people who were bored. It never occurred to me that pure confidence was leaking out of my psyche, spilling away forever.

Unfortunately, my narrow view of the problem centered around the mystery of who and why.

Part of the persona I had created and projected in my role as the Biograph’s manager was that everything came easily to me. I liked to hide any hard work or struggle from the public, even the staff at times. While I might have wrestled with the artwork for a Midnight Show handbill for days, I would act as if it had been dashed off in an hour.

Looking back on it now, I’d say that pose was part of a cool image I wanted to project for the theater, itself, too.

Living inside such a pretend world -- within a pretend world -- rather than seeing the debilitating effect the telephone monster was having on me, I saw only clues. My strategy was to outlast the caller, to close in like a hard-boiled movie sleuth without ever letting anyone know it was getting to me.

Since the calls started around the time I began seeing Tana, it seemed plausible it could have to do with her. Maybe an old boyfriend? Also, there was my own ex -- maybe one of her new squeezes? Maybe my rather eccentric brother (who died in 2005)? Beyond those obvious possibilities, I poured over the smallest details of each and every personal relationship.

As a theater manager, my movie detective training told me it had to be someone with a powerful grudge, so I created a list of prime suspects.

Misunderstandings with disgruntled former employees were combed through, rivals from various battles I’d fought over the years were considered. And, there were people I had hurt, out of just being careless. It became my habit to question the motives of those around me at every turn. In sly ways, they were all tested.

As I examined my history, searching through any details that could have set a grudge in motion, a new picture of Terry Rea began to emerge. I found reasons for guilt that had never occurred to me before. When I looked in the mirror, I began to see a different man, a self-centered phony.

It was as if I had discovered a secret, grotesque portrait of what was left of my soul, hanging in the attic, like Oscar Wilde’s character -- Dorian Gray.

Then my old yellow Volvo wagon was rifled. A few personal things were taken but they didn’t touch the stereo. When my office at the theater was burglarized, my glasses and a photograph of me were stolen. Of course, I saw those crimes as connected to the phone calls.

Tired of the ordeal and frustrated with me, Tana had been imploring me to have the calls traced. In late September, I finally agreed to do it. A woman who worked for the telephone company told me I had to keep a precise record of the times of all the calls, and I had to agree to prosecute the guilty party if he was discovered. Although it had been nearly a year, I was still holding the mystery close to me and hadn’t mentioned it to anyone at the theater.

As the telephone company’s pin register gadgetry soon revealed, there was good reason for that.

One way or another, I managed to get information out of the telephone company lady without actually getting on board with the police part of it. The bottom line was this -- there were two numbers on the list of traced calls that coincided with nearly all the calls on my record. One was a pay phone in Goochland County, the other was the Biograph’s number.

Several of those calls were placed from the theater, well after it had closed. After looking at the record of the work schedule from the previous weeks, one employee had worked the late shift on each night a call came from the building after hours. Not coincidentally, this same man was the only person who lived in Goochland, twenty miles away.

Most importantly, it was the same man revealed by my original hunch -- he was the projectionist at the Biograph. Now I refer to the culprit only as the “jellypig.”

Why jellypig?

Let’s just say he had a porcine, yet gelatinous way about him. I prefer to avoid using his real name because it suits me. People who are familiar with the cast of characters in this tangled story still know his name. That’s enough for me.

Nonetheless, while all the circumstantial evidence pointed at only one man the thought of wrongfully accusing a person of such a terrible thing was still unbearable to me.

So, I continued to stew in my own juices.

In November, I decided to move, to flee Grace Street for a new pad further downtown on Franklin Street. At a staff meeting, I revealed aspects of the stalking I had been enduring. I explained that for a while, I would not get a new home telephone. They were also told I had proof of who was actually behind the calls, but I said nothing about any of the calls having been made from the theater. Most importantly, I left them to guess at the villain’s identity.

Why?

Truth is, I don’t remember. Perhaps I was hoping to scare the jellypig and make him slink away.

Although the calls at my home ceased to be a problem, a week or so later a weird note was left in my car. Why that became the last straw I don’t know ... but it was.

The following afternoon, when no one else was in the building, I called the jellypig into my office. Sitting at my desk, I looked him in the eye and calmly lowered the boom. It was like living in a black and white B movie. None of it seemed real.

He looked scared and flatly denied it. So, I told him about the traced phone calls. That news deflated him; he collapsed into himself. The bulbous jellypig stared blankly at the floor. Then he insisted that someone ... somebody had to be framing him.

I was flabbergasted!

It hadn’t even occurred to me that he would simply lie in the face of such a strong case. To get him out of my sight I told him he had one day to come up with a better story, or the owners of the theater would be told and he’d be turned over to the cops. I can’t remember what I said would happen if he came clean. Most likely, I was still hoping he’d just go away.

Maybe I didn’t have a plan.

The problem with just firing the jellypig right on the spot was that replacing him wouldn’t be so easy. Since late-1980, the Biograph had been operating as a non-union house. Because of an ongoing dispute with the local operators union, I was hiring our projectionists directly off the street.

As it happened, our original projectionist developed a problem with the local union over some internal politics. Later, his rivals took over. They fought. He got steamed and walked out. Which prompted the union to tell me to bar him from the booth. Although I was uncomfortable going against the union, politically, I felt standing by the individual I had worked with for eight years was the right thing to do.

The union’s reaction was to pull its men off the job. This eventually led to me hiring the man who became the jellypig to be a back-up projectionist. For reasons I can’t recall, he was then at odds with the union, too, so he was willing to work at the Biograph in spite of the official boycott.

Subsequently, our full-time projectionist -- whose squabble had created the problem -- left to take a job with another theater that had also broken with the union. Which made it look like the whole town might follow our example and go non-union. Naturally, that put me in an even worse light with the union brass, who blamed me personally.

The jellypig seemed qualified to run the booth, so the easiest thing to do was promote him to full-time when the opening came about. Although I ’d never really checked up on him, like I usually did when I hired people, I put him in charge of the two projection booths.

So, if I fired the jellypig -- summarily and on the spot -- the Biograph didn’t have as many options as it should have, owing to the fact there was a very limited pool of qualified projectionists readily available to a non-union house. We had trained an usher to be backup, but he wasn’t ready to run the whole operation.

It seemed I had little choice but to get in touch with the union for a replacement. Since the theater was in a slump, it was a bad time for operating expenses to go up, and I expected the union bosses would go for some payback with a new contract.

The jellypig rushed into my office the next day with the big news -- he had solved the mystery! In a flurry, he claimed the person responsible for the calls was an old nemesis of his. It was an evil genius who was an electronics expert. He could fool the phone company’s machinery.

It seemed the jellypig's comic book villain had a long history of playing terrible dirty tricks on him, going back to their tortured childhood at the orphanage in Pittsburgh.

Oh brother!

Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the jellypig told me the guilty one was doing it all for two reasons: One was simply to heap trouble onto the house of the jellypig, who had a wife and kids to support. The other was to hurt your narrator, directly ... since the evil genius knew all.

At this point the jellypig coughed up the breaking news that he had long been harboring a powerful carnal lust for me. Caught up in the moment, the jellypig began to sob, admitting it was all his fault -- he had foolishly shared the vital particulars of his secret craving with the evil one, himself.

OK. I know it makes no sense now, but as I listened to jellypig, along with disgust I began to feel something akin to pity. The selling jellypig assured me that he would do whatever it took to stop the evil genius from bothering me ever again. He begged me, literally on his knees, not to tell his wife or the theater’s owners about any of it.

My mind was reeling and my stomach had turned.

As I told the jellypig to leave the office and let me think, there's no doubt that I should have wondered which one of us was the craziest.

Not surprisingly, the tailspin the Biograph had gone into had become wilder. The theater was loosing money like it hadn’t in several years. As the winter came and went, my spirits sank steadily. It was like being paralyzed so slowly it was almost imperceptible.

During the spring, the two managing partners frequently brought up the subject of selling the Richmond Biograph, which scared me to no end.

In the meantime, the owners told me expenses had to be slashed drastically, meaning I had to let some people go. Who and how many was up to me, but salaries had to come in under a certain figure. So I was given a few days to come up with a new plan that had to eliminate at least one of the two guys who had been there the longest.

Shortly thereafter, I was at my desk talking on the phone to a close friend about how I was putting out feelers for another job, because the Biograph was for sale. Without thinking, I gave him my new, unlisted home phone number, which had been put in Tana’s name. When I hung up, it struck me the damned jellypig might have heard me, if his ear had been up to the common drywall between the booth and my office.

My home telephone rang several times that night.

That very night! It was pure hell. Mustering the coldblooded attitude to fire friends to cut costs wasn't within me.

Then there was this -- if I bowed out of the picture it would eliminate the biggest salary burden the theater had. By this point I had developed a couple of mysterious health problems. I literally lost my voice, due to a vocal cord problem.

Plus, the Biograph’s ability to negotiate with the local union would be less encumbered without me around. Good reasons for me to run away from 814 West Grace Street seemed everywhere I looked. With no plan of where I would end up, I suddenly decided to walk away from what I had once seen as the best job in the Fan District.

So I called the owners to tell them of my decision to leave; they also heard about the jellypig business for the first time. The boys in DeeCee were shocked and urged me to reconsider, to take a month off. They had hired me to manage the theater months before it opened it opened in 1972. We’d been through a lot together.

However, I’m sure they were actually quite torn with what to do with their floundering friend. Clearly, at that time I was not the resourceful problem solver I had been for many years. Beyond that, we could all see fashion was turning sharply against what had been a darling of the ‘70s popular culture -- repertory cinemas.

The future for the Biograph looked dicey no matter what I did. The owners agreed with me that the jellypig had to go ... as soon as possible. I remember mentioning that I had gotten him to promise to get psychiatric help in exchange for me not calling the police.

Without much of an explanation to anyone else, I announced to whoever cared that I was moving on and looking forward to a life of new adventures. Movie critic Carole Kass wrote a small article for the Richmond Times-Dispatch noting that I had “retired.”

Over lunch at Stella’s on Harrison St., soon after my barely explained departure from the Biograph, I told a former Biograph co-worker that maybe I had it all coming to me. Maybe the jellypig had just been an agent of karma. I speculated that perhaps my hubris and nonchalance had all but invited ruin.

She got so angry she walked out of the restaurant. At the time I couldn’t grasp what her reaction meant.

What I couldn’t explain to anyone, because I didn’t understand it myself, was that I just had no confidence. I didn’t know what to do next at any given moment. My gift of gab, such as it had been, was kaput. I stammered. In the middle of a sentence, I would lose my place ... questioning how to end it.

As the summer wore on it turned out the jellypig wasn’t quickly replaced in the Biograph’s booth, which galled me to no end. Apparently the owners were struggling with the union over a new contract.

That’s when I came up with the name “jellypig.” A few weeks after dropping my job like a hot potato I went by the theater to leave off a little drawing for him on the staff message board. It featured a cartoon character I created for the occasion -- the jellypig.

The character was a simple line drawing of a pig-like creature. He was depicted in a scene under a water line, chained to an anchor. He had little x’s for eyes. There were small bubbles coming from his head and drifting toward the water’s surface. The jellypig was almost smiling, he seemed unconcerned with his fate.

The caption read something like, “The jellypig takes a swim,” or “The jellypig’s day at the beach.” That began a short series of similar cartoons, all left off at the Biograph. The others portrayed a suffering jellypig in that same droll tone.

Yes, I did it to get into his head -- let him be scared, for a change.

Although I was no longer in charge of the theater, it was habit for me to have a say in it’s affairs. Which made for some awkward moments, because the jellypig cartoons weren’t funny to anybody but me. It put the new manager, Mike, who had been my assistant manager for five years, in an awkward position.

For about a year I had been doing a Thursday afternoon show on a semi-underground radio station called Color Radio. As a record played, from the studio I spoke on the phone with the jellypig. He was at work. I don’t recall what precipitated the conversation. Anyway, he told me he had blown off the notion of professional counseling. I warned him that he was breaking his bargain. He went on to say that he didn’t need any help, but that maybe I did.

The jellypig revealed to me that he resented the way I had treated him for a long time -- deliberately excluding him from much of the social scene at the theater. He complained bitterly, saying I had stood in the way of his advancement. But in spite of the way I had tried to poison the owners’ minds against him ... eventually, he would convince them to let him manage the Biograph to save money.

For the first time it hit me -- the scheming jellypig’s entire effort had been a “Gaslight” treatment. All that time I’d been playing Ingrid Bergman to his Charles Boyer.

The anger from what I had allowed to happen welled up in that moment. I told the jellypig that after my radio shift ended, I was coming directly to the theater. If he was still there, I’d break both of his legs with a softball bat.

On my way to the Biograph I wondered again who, if anyone, on the staff might have known more about the jellypig's game than they had let on. When I got to the theater the jellypig had called in a replacement and vamoosed. We'll never know what would have happened had he been there.

Maybe I would have broken only one leg.

The terrified jellypig worked a couple more shifts in the booth after that day. Taking no chances, he brought in his children to be there with him, as human shields. Then, wisely, he split ... for good.

Which meant no more jellypig cartoons.

It took my run for a seat on City Council in the spring of 1984 to wrench loose from that unprecedented spell of melancholia. Blowing off my hunch on that first call probably bought me more trouble than any other single mistake I’ve ever made. Tana and I split up in the fall.

All these years later, I wonder if I heard something in that first call. Maybe it was a sound so faint I didn’t know I heard it; almost like subliminal suggestion. Perhaps it was the churning sound of the projection equipment. Although I don’t remember hearing it, it’s the best explanation -- short of parapsychology -- that makes any sense.

My dear grandmother’s advice to trust six-sense hunches now seems like good medicine. Put another way, it simply meant -- trust your own judgment. Believe in yourself. Which might be the best advice I could ever give my own grandchildren.

*

Note from Rebus: By the time the Biograph's pair of screens went dark in December of 1987 many art houses had already closed all over the country. The golden age for repertory cinemas was a fading memory. Months behind on the rent, Richmond's Biograph was seized by its landlord and closed down forever. It was two months shy of its 16th anniversary. The building that housed it is still there; now it's the oldest building on the block.

All rights reserved by the author.

Heaving Expectations Overboard

 
Oct.21, 2019: The Associated Press preseason Top 25 Poll ranked the Virginia Commonwealth University men’s basketball team as No. 25 in the nation. Thus, before a single game had been played, the expectations of the Rams’ most faithful followers were riding high.

In the interest of full disclosure, I confess that back in the early part of the season, I totally bought into the notion that the AP’s perception of the senior-laden 2019-20 VCU squad was spot on. When the Rams chugged through their first five games of the new season without a loss, the Nov. 25th AP Poll ranked them at No. 20, which only goosed the aforementioned expectations even higher.

Mar. 3, 2020: During my walk to the Siegel Center, I sighed to think the slumping Rams might be in for another tough night. VCU’s opponent, Duquesne, had won five of its last eight games. VCU had lost six of its last eight.

It was Senior Night, meaning there would be a ceremony honoring the five VCU seniors on the basketball team playing their last home game. Just before the tip-off. each of the five would walk onto the court with family members. Each would receive a framed jersey bearing their number.

As the game started, surveying the packed arena -- it was VCU's 152nd consecutive sellout crowd --  I hardly anticipated that only nine days later the entire NCAA national championship tournament would be called off. No deciding game in Atlanta on April 6th. Poof!

Looking back on VCU’s last home game, which VCU lost in overtime, 80-77, now it seems to have all taken place years ago. It certainly didn't occur to me as I watched that game that it might be the last college basketball game I would see live for a long time ... maybe the last ever.

* 

Nobody knows when Americans will be allowed to, or even want to, pack into grandstands by the thousands, shoulder-to-shoulder, to watch college basketball games. Obviously, the future of all forms of live entertainment, staged before large crowds, is as uncertain as can be. 

In the realm of what matters most, way more than six feet away from sports, some of us are learning a lot more about what’s truly essential and what’s merely a comfort, or a convenience. Like it, or not, we’re also getting lessons about what actually holds a society together, in general, and especially to get through a crisis.

Even proud government-haters are getting schooled. Americans interested in the truth are learning more about authentic bravery and how different it is from the tiresome bravado of poseurs.

Of course, courage-wise, first I’m thinking about the heroics of people who have been doing their duty, doing what must be done, to keep the USA as safe from harm as possible. A lot of them work for local, state and federal governments. Others are working in the medical field, in spite of the danger. Then, I’m thinking about the children and grandchildren of suddenly vulnerable geezers, like me, those who have been doing our essential shopping and getting only virtual hugs in return.

*

Alas, specifically what went wrong for VCU’s star-crossed 2019-20 season is a matter I’ll leave for others to analyze. However, I will add that even though VCU had plenty of good players, as the season wore on the team itself appeared to trip a few times over its once lofty expectations. Eventually it stumbled and fell.

Fell flat. Once the spell was broken, the Rams confidence, as a team, was kaput.

The immediate challenge for Mike Rhoades, who’s now looking forward to his fourth season as VCU’s head coach, is to discover new ways to restore the program’s confidence in itself during a social distancing ordeal no basketball coach ever expected to face. During this interregnum Rhoades must improvise to be effective, just as the best teachers all over the country are doing.

Meanwhile, we are all living day-to-day, breath-to-breath, trapped for now in what seems like an old black and white episode of the Twilight Zone.

Bottom line: Most of us Americans will be traveling somewhat lighter from here on, given the expectations we’ve had to heave overboard, just to keep from sinking during the blighted spring of 2020. The authentic confidence we gain from here on, by improvising and adapting, will serve us all well for dealing with what comes next.    

-- 30 --