by Walter Agnew Moore II
8 March 2002, Amiens, France

—————

PART ONE: ATTEMPTED ORBIT

The places we call plazas, they call places in France.

You got your Place de la Concorde in Paris, famous for I know not what, and you got your Place Kleber in Strasbourg where my old girlfriend once marched in an anti-fascist parade that got attacked by real Nazis, then it was reported by some idiot American network back in the states as a "Nazi parade", which bewildered her friends when she called home bragging that she had taken part.

Here in Amiens, well, I don't have to tell you because you already know: We have Place Gambetta.

It's a human-scaled little truncated wedge, with thick green grass in the middle and tan flagstones everywhere else. It is clean, not just because this isn't Paris, but also because every night a water-truck creeps along, spraying dissolved dog-squat down into the narrow gutters that crisscross the square.

These gutters are covered by thick metal plates that sit flush with the flagstones, so people can walk around without slipping in and breaking their necks or ankles. There's always a crowd of people going to and fro, or sitting at the half-dozen cafes.

These metal plates have various decorative slots cut into them, so that water can actually drain into the gutters under them.

Some of these slots are about a foot long, and straight, and exactly the width of a bicycle tire. I am picking up speed on my modified 5-speed Motobecane, T'chiot Bleu, sweating with concentration: I have to get this exactly right, or else I will miss the slot. Here it is, here it is...

BLAM! The front tire drops down perfectly and bangs the bike to a halt at the same time that the front end drops about 8 inches. My body keeps going forward, and I vault the handlebars and land hard on my left knee and hip, just as I had planned. Also, just as I had desired, the maximum number of people see me skidding off the flagstones and onto the bricks by a bench.

Now, I had also wanted my bag-lunch to scatter everywhere, sandwich squunching under someone's shoe, Coke exploding, but unfortunately it stays intact, and I pick up the bag and sit down on the bench to eat.

Tap tap tap the can, munch the sandwich, leg feels fine. What's bugging me now is what I am going to teach my English classes tomorrow. I am flat out of ideas, and I have got to get an idea or it's going to be a long day.

French university students are rather hard on the teacher who thinks he's going to improvise something half-way into class. French people like plans, detailed plans. Even if only to reject them and then do it off the cuff. But you must start with a plan, or the class will defeat you and you will not be teaching, you will be doing time in a classroom.

There are two types of classes I teach, the Good Kids and the Hoodlums.

The Good Kids sit quietly, timidly rigid. If told exactly what to do, they may do it, or they may not. If they do not, it is not defiance; they did not understand the directions, and rather than do the wrong thing, they will freeze in place.

Asking you to explain anything would be outside their thought patterns. It would be another opportunity to make a dreaded mistake.

It can be a long long day in front of a trembling group of Good Kids here. I wonder what kinds of teachers they had before, to have the spark so totally beaten out of them. I resist urges to give them homework assignments like: "Everybody go home, take a shot of whiskey, then lick your finger and stick it in an electrical outlet." There's gotta be some way to reach them.

Now, the Hoodlums.

France is the Land of Opposites, so each Good Kid has a doppelganger Evil Twin. The Hoodlums will troll in 20 minutes late, laugh and talk about other things all through class, and when they talk to you, half the time they just try to jerk you around.

It doesn't seem to be malice. It is more like a total lack of inhibition, and to hell with any consequences. I have had students tell me, while taking a test, that they were still drunk from the night before. Once a girl was discussing some grammar question with me in the classroom, and midway through the conversation she decided her jeans were itchy, so she pulled them down a few inches and stood there talking like a human while scratching her ass like an ape.

I rather like the Hoodlums. They have a pulse.

Sandwich is gone. Still no class ideas. Plan B: Forget about it.

I go in a record store and buy Tom Waits' "Mule Variations" and Manu Chao's "Clandestino". Then I go to the pub for a beer. Cousin Michael puts on the Waits album, and as Tom croaks his crazy songs in the background, we reminisce about winos we have met.

"I remember this convenience store I worked in," I say, "I was 20, looked 14, just me and these old winos comin' in all day and night, they'd bark out 'HEY BWAH, YOU WUIKIN HAHD, OR HAHDLY WUIKIN?' I'd always tell 'em 'Hardly workin'!'. They loved that, they'd be like 'HAH! I bet you TAKE a drank, don'tcha bwah? HAH!'"

Michael busts out laughing. He does a good wino bark imitation: "HAH! Hahdly wuikin!"

"Yeah... and these guys... these guys would pay with a handful of pennies. Always exactly 153 pennies, cuz that's what we charged for a bottle of Thunderbird..."

"HAH! Thundabuid!"

"That's right. We had other fine wines too— Red Rooster 21, The Kickin' Chicken, Wine of the 21st Century ... Ripple ... Annie Green Springs ... Night Train Express ... MD 20/20 ... and even some vile spew called 'Bull's Head Scuppernong Wine', but T-bird was the wino wine o' choice..."

"HAH! Walta, you be HAVIN a drank, WONTCHA?"

"Ha-HAH, I TAKE a drank..."

One of Tom's songs is playing that has an occasional rooster crowing in it. The listener has the impression of being on a box-car moving at walking speed on a branch line.

"So there I was, only 20, but if I'd wanted to, I coulda hung out in the alley all day instead of workin', with all these 70-year-old winos."

"HAH! take a DRANK, bwah!"

"It's kinda funny, lookin' back," I say.

"Walter, it's only funny because you and I are still looking at it from this side of the alley."

"You got THAT right ... HAH!" I lay my plastic on the bar.

"HAH!" and Michael rings it up.

And that's when I decide that Tom Waits will teach my class tomorrow.

————

PART TWO: TOM TEACHES

So I scribble down a couple of lyrics, I xerox them at the Campus, and I haul my trusty Philips Tape/CD/Radio Gizmo into class.

The Philips Gizmo has survived a nasty fall the same as me, and we both still work. I wonder if the Gizmo still has bruises the way I do— the hip is especially tender. But hey, in the 5 months I have been here, I have been stomped, tackled, tripped, flipped, blistered, burned, car-bashed, slashed, and gassed, all by accident, and once I was punched by a guy on purpose that night the epileptic chick started thrashing all over the place.

France is trying to beat me up, and doing a fair job of it.

First class: Good Kids. They listen to Tom because they are supposed to. No questions. Weak smiles when they can tell by my tone of voice that something was a joke. Well, that's progress, facial expressions.

Second class: Hoodlums, and over-caffeinated hoodlums at that. They love Tom Waits. They already know him. Halfway through my tedious explanation of the lyrics of "Hold On", I just say, "Aw, hell with it. You just wanna listen to the song?" Yeah yeah we do. Beautiful song. They are singing to it. Those three guitar notes right after the line "Down by the Riverside motel..." still hit my heart like a hammer.

My hoodlums ignore me when the song is over, and I prepare to give a tedious explanation of "Cold Water"'s lyrics. They have gotten hold of the CD cover and are snatching it from each other, trying to see the photos, poring over the lyrics sheet. "We want to 'ear zese song, ze, uh, ze Chocolate Jesus!"

Don't fight the water. I spin up "Chocolate Jesus", there is that rooster again. Two girls in the front row grab the lyrics from the ones behind them and belt it out. Then "Georgia Lee" comes on, and the ones behind them grab the lyrics back.

One little guy in the back of the class is doing a respectable imitation of Waits, throwing back his head and crowing out a raspy:

"WHYYYYYYYYY wasn't God watchin, WHYYYYYYY wasn't God listenin, WHHYYYYY gagagga-somethin-or-other, for Georgia Leeeeeee"

Are these kids drunk? I mean, it's 11:30 am, but are these kids drunk? It's bigger than I am. I'm not driving this car, I'm just reading road-signs and suggesting turns.

I slap the Gizmo over to track one, "Big in Japan", and crank up the robot-gone-mad track. The entire Hoodlum class leaps onto the lyrics and starts bobbing in time, chanting out the song.

In English. For once, I feel I have earned my beer money. Hoodlums.

————

PART THREE: SAME OLD PLACE

I am pedalling back around the Place Gambetta, this time careful to cross all slotted metal plates by their short sides. Tom Waits' songs bring your mind into his edgy world of hobos and hookers and ridin' the rails.

All those people are here too, but even if they weren't, you could bring them here. This is how you do it:

Here is a formula for interpreting any real-life scene as a Tom Waits song. Include a train. Use outmoded womens' names from the 20's. Give every man a hyphenated nick-name. Take a shot of whiskey, and scream a little out behind the meat-packin' plant. Mention crows or other ominous animals.

Example: See that woman probably named Marie or Laure waiting while her little white terrier stands, a canine tripod, front legs together, back ones splayed, straining to give the only thing a dog can make, his gift to the soil of France?

Well, that's Zenabelle Lee, seen her from the train

Old Cross-Eye Willy he's squattin in pain

UP-town DOWN-town Buffalo Joe

Life too crooked, cain't fly like no crow

chorus: snake in the bathtub snake in the bathtub Zenabelle know they a snake in the bathtub

("HAH"!)

I owe Mr. Waits a few shots of Ricard. I have a feeling he likes Ricard. I've been told it smells like absinthe.