(This is another in a series of old radio scripts that I dug out of an old file cabinet the other day. This one dates to the far reaches of the last decade, 1994.)


The Life He Led


Gender list:

Males: 6

Females: 3

Either: 2


Cast list:

1. Tambourine Cadenza (male)

2. Preacher

3. Melmac Decanter (female)

4. Narrator

5. Pa

6. T. Bone Scraps

7. Man

8. Tour guide (female)

9. Journalist

10. Senatorial Voice

11. President Smith (female)


Preacher:

Do you, Tambourine Cadenza, take this woman, Melmac Decanter, to be your lawfully wedded wife?


Tanbourine:


Hey! I thought we were just pairing off for the hayride!


Preacher:

In this county, that's how we do it.


Tambourine:

Let me out of here!


Melmac:

Oh, darling, darling, isn't it worth it for a roll in the hay with me?



Tambourine:
How many people do we have to share the wagon with?



Melmac:

Weell, you naughty boy, for five dollars extra we get the wagon to ourselves.


Tambourine:
Ah, well, if it doesn't work out, we can always have it annulled, can't we?


Melmac:

Oh, silly, don't you know anything? There's an annullment ceremony just after the ride.


Tambourine:
Ah, I see.


Preacher:
Do you, Tambourine Cadenza, take this woman, Melmac Decanter, to be your lawfully wedded wife?


Tambourine:
What if I want to stay married to you?


Melmac:
The Justice of the Peace who performs the annullment ceremony would should you.


Tambourine:
Why?


Melmac:

He's my father, he gets ten dollars per ceremony and he doesn't want me spending the rest of my life with just anyone.


Tambourine:

Anyone could see that with just a bit of reflection.


Melmac:

Well, what are you going to do? I haven't got all night to roll with you. I've got five other fellers on my roll card. You do or you don't.



Tambourine:

I don't.


Preacher:

That'll be twenty bucks, please. For the money me and the JP are bein' cheated outa. Cough up or I'LL shoot ya.


Tambourine:

Dear me, I'm naked. I don't have a single cent on me...


Preacher:(SFX OF PISTOL HAMMER COCKING)
Well, then...


Tambourine:
Ooooh, if this were only a nightmare!


Narr:
Ah, but it is. Here is what is REALLY GOING ON:


Preacher:
Do you, Tambourine Cadenza, solemnly swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America and to carry out the duties of the office of husband of the President of the United States?



Tambourine:
Huh?


Preacher:
I'll take that as an affirmative.


Melmac:
Now, dear, just sit over there for the next eight years and try to stay out of the way, okay, honeeey?


Tambourine:
Huh?


Melmac:
That's a dear. Go get you a book from the library and I'll get you a nice comfortable chair, an IV, and a catheter.


Tambourine:
Surely, this is another nightmare.


Narr:
But it isn't. It is the culmination of a very long story that began a short while ago on the banks of the irridescent Cuyahoga River in darkest Ohio.


SFX:
'GREENSLEEVES' PLAYED ON AN OUT OF TUNE PIANO: TEN SECS


Narr:
We find a young Tambourine waxing apples in the back of a small cigar store in the tiny hamlet of Xenia, home of the world's largest ball of used spearmint chewing gum, collected by a seminary of Baptist nuns during a hiatus of the shooting of "Happy Days" in 1977.


Tambourine:
Why am I waxing apples when I would rather be out playing dodgeball wtih a wrecking crane like all the other fellows from my neighborhood?


Pa:

Because, my son, you must learn a skill. Without a skill, you will go nowhere.


Tambourine:
But, Pa, where can you go as an apple polisher?


Pa:
Ah, my son, you can go many places. You can go to Hades, North Dakota, South Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas, Chronic Cough, Texas, and, and, and, dare I say it?


Tambourine:
I double dare you.


Pa:
Washington, D.C.!


Tambourine:
NO!


Pa:
Yes!


Tambourine:
Anything but that!


Pa:
Why do you say that, my son?


Tambourine:
Well, you might disown me, shoot my mother, sue the school system and refuse to watch the Rose Bowl parade ever again, but, Pa, my fondest dream is to go to...


Pa:
After that buildup, this better be good. Where, my son?


Tambourine:

Six Flags over Ohio.


Pa:

Oh, horror's! Never has any member of our family with correct configuration of chromosomes ever expressed a wish outside of a fever delirium to go there! Ma! Call the deprogrammer! Our son is possessed with a heresy! I know we shouldn't have allowed you to swim to fifteen feet from a chemical plant disposal pipe!


Narr:

Days later, we find Tambourine in the offices of T. Bone Scraps, the inventor and purveyor of Patent Bacon and the founder of the Scraps Car Pool and Psychobabble Polytechnic Institute of Counter-Culture Procedures. Mr. Scraps speaks.


Scraps:
Woof!


Tambourine:
Why are you doing that?


Scraps:
What's the first word that comes to mind?


Tambourine:
Escape.


Scraps:
Ah, so, very interesting. Now, react to this: Meeeeooow!


Tambourine:
Why are you doing this?


Scraps:
Because your parents are paying me to. I must do something for the next half hour they are paying me six hundred dollars for.


Tambourine:
So you have no intention of helping me?


Scraps:
Oh, yes, I am. What sort of kickback would you find suitable?


Tambourine:
I can't believe this. You're offering me a bribe so I'll keep quiet while you fleece my parents of my college money?


Scraps:
Would you rather be polishing apples?


Tambourine:
You've got a point, there. Okay, a hundred dollars.


Scraps:
Ulp! Well... that is a bit much. You see, I've got overhead...


Tambourine:
I wondered what that was. I thought it was a chandelier. One hundred and fifty, now.


Scraps:
I've got back taxes to pay.


Tambourine:
Two hundred.


Narr:
Melmac enters the room.


Melmac:
Uncle, in which cookie jar do we keep the 'running-around' money? I need to rent a LearJet to go shopping in Cleveland.


Tambourine:
Ulp! I feel my knees trembling, my heart skips a 6/8 beat and I feel a stirring in my loins.


Scraps:
Ah, Melmac, my wonderful niece, have you met my new patient, Tambourine?


Melmac:
Pleased to meet you, sir.


Scraps:
Tambourine, say hello to my niece.

Tambourine:
I love you.


Melmac:
Oh, you're such a silly boy.


Scraps:
Hmm. C'mere, my boy.


Tambourine:
Huh?


Scraps:(stage whisper)
Tell you what, you forget all about money and I'll let you hang around with my niece in lieu of sessions with me, okay?


Tambourine:
Huh?


Scraps:
Pleasure doing business with you, my boy.


Narr:
And so a relationship that would go down in history as one of the strangest began to take its course.


Tambourine:

See, if you take a small bit of Turtle Wax, put it on a rag, rub it slowly on the apple, add a bit of spit, rub some more.. and Voila! You have it. Now you try.


Melamc:
I wonder when "I Love Lucy" comes on?


Narr:
And on, through the years, as Melmac goes to college and earns a Fulbright, Tambourine sticks by her side.


Man:
Ere, mate, try a bit of eel sauce on that there parsnip.


Tambourine:
Ok, okay, but it just isn't that much like an apple. Why aren't there any apples in Scotland?


Man:
Oh, they're around, mate, but you can't see them.


Tambourine:
Why?


Man:
Because according to an obscure lease agreement between the Imam of Palestine and the Meterreader of Glasgow in 1522, all apples are to be made into edible tea cozies the moment they fall from the tree.


Tambourine:
You can't pick them?


Man:
Oh, no. Only the twelf nephew of the third son of the direct descendants of the Imam of Palestine's second assistant sheelherder can pick apples in Scotland during the last fifteen months before he comes of age.


Tambourine:
That makes no sense at all.


Man:
Doesn't it, though. But we Scots have a long-standing tradition of honoring agreements until we can find a loophole that allows us to circumvent them with honor.


Tambourine:
We don't have that tradition in Ohio.


Man:
So I've heard.


Narr:
On through time, through Melmac's six terms of representing her district in Congress, Tambourine maintained his standard of excellence.


Tambourine:
Well, Dad, I made it to Washington, D.C.


Pa:
Um, yeah, my son, but when is she going to marry you?


Tambourine:
You mean she hasn't? That time we exchanged bubble gum cigar bands on the mezzanine of the Southern Cross Mall in Athens, Georgia didn't count?


Pa:
No, son, it don't. But, according to the blue laws of Virginia, where you have resided for eight years, you have had a 'common law' marriage for two years if you have consummated the relationship.


Tambourine:
Oh, sure, Pa, we've made broth together.


Pa:
Either that's a euphemism I ain't heard before or you're the stupidest thing I've seen since Geraldo opened Capone's vault.


Tambourine:
Aw, Pa, why would you say such a thing? Ain't I your son? Ain't I done what you told me to? Hasn't the skill you taught me gotten me far and wide?


Pa:
No.


Tambourine:
To which?


Pa:
The second and the third question. You are not my son.


SFX:
DRAMATIC CHORD


Tambourine:
I've always felt a certain distance from you, Pa, but I never thought...


Pa:
Yes, you are really teh twelf nephew of the third son of a direct descendant of the Imam of Palestine's second assistant sheepherder.


SFX:
ANOTHER DRAMATIC CHORD


Tambourine:
That might explain my name. And what about the third question?


Pa:
You have not gotten far and wide on the skill I taught you. You have gotten far and wide on the skirts of destiny.


Tambourine:
Who's she?


Pa:
It's more of a what. Destiny is what guides our lives with a trembling hand.



Tambourine:
But what about Melmac, what about her destiny? Aren't I riding on the skirts of her destiny?


Pa:
No, my adopted son, I believe she is riding on the skirts of your destiny. A faithful male companion with no thoughts of his own is a powerful asset to the modern politically ambitious woman.


Tambourine:
Gee whiz, Pa, what am I going to do? Everything seems out of my hands.


Pa:
Here, have an apple and some wax.


Tambourine:
Huh?


Narr:
So, our hero, riding on the now-tattered skirts of his destiny with Melmac on his back, slides eventually into the White House.


Tour Guide:
And here, if you will follow me, not too closely, and stay behind the ropes, is the husband of the President, an expert practitioner of an old and respected American folk art.


Tambourine:
Wanny apple?


Tour Guide:
Sir, how many times do I have to tell you? You can't feed the tourists without a permit from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.


Tambourine:
I'm sorry. What am I supposed to do with them once I'm done with them?


Tour Guide:
I'm sorry, sir. I'm not really qualified to talk to you. As a matter of fact, every time I do converse with you I have to undergo a security debriefing for four hours after work on my own time, so I will not be speaking to you again.


Tambourine:
Huh?


Narr:
But among those who filed past the President's husband during those four lonely years, was a journalist posing as a tourist.



Journalist:
Well, you know, it was a slow day on the on the scandal desk, and I thought I'd get out and see a bit of the city. Saw this line of people. Got in line. Used to do celebrity news out of Stalingrad, y'know. But I saw this guy, sitting behind a rope in a rocking chair, with tubes going in him and out him and two bushel baskets of apples, one on either side of the chair, and this big old metal drum of wax with a pump on top of it off to the side and bag of what looked like baby diapers, the cloth kind, clean, of course. And there he was, beard and long hair, stinking to high heaven, try to give these apples he'd polished to someone and this tour guide told him he couldn't. Shameful. So, I found my scandal for the day.


Narr:
It hit the wire services within twenty-four hours. The President was called to account on "Meet The Press" and "Entertainment Tonight", before Parliament, the Otumwa Ladies Prayer Council and Bocci Ball Club, The United Nations Ad Hoc Panel on Human Rights Violations and the Executive Committee of the National Association of Rotational Physicians before Congress put the matter on it's agenda right after the vote on what kind of hypoallergenic furniture polish should be used in the Senate Chambers.



Melmac:
My name is Melmac Decanter. I presently am serving a term of no less than four years for being a national candidate for the highest office in the land.


Senatorial voice:
And, and, uh, President Decanter, what do you have to say for yourself?


Melmac:
About what?


Senatorial voice:
Your husband.


Melmac:
Well, he's never complained. If he'd asked for something, I would have listened.


Senatorial voice:
Madam, has it never occurred to you that your husband may be a little simple?


Melmac:
What do you think I am? Why do you think I never had any children?


Senatorial voice:
Ma'am, he's been sitting in that chair for four years!


Melmac:(tearfully)
"Sob", well, you know, I kinda forget about him. Y'know. I kinda got caught up in being the first female president, which is twice as hard as being a regular president, cause I keep getting shut up in these rooms with a lot of men, ONLY men, and I never know when they see me if they see the job or the woman or my slip showing, or that recurring cold sore right there below my left nostril, or...


Senatorial voice:
Let's see a show of hands, folks!


Narr:
Every hand in the building and half the city is raised.


Senatorial voice:
Okay, that's it, lady. You're out!


Melmac:
Huh?


Senatorial voice:
You-all has just been impeached, and that ain't not joke, gal. Now, git!


Narr:
When she approached the Supreme Court to appeal, they threw a pot from one of their chambers at her.


Melmac:
Oh, woe is me, what happened to my destiny?


Narr:
And Tambourine? Well, his destiny kept right on dragging him along. When the new president, a blind Jewish Negro Albino in a wheelchair, named Joan Smith, asked him:


Pres. Smith:
What would you like to be? Where would you like to go?


Narr:
He said:


Tambourine:
Well, I've thought about it.


Pres. Smith:
I'll bet you have.


Tambourine:
I'd like to spend a month at Six Flags over Ohio, have breakfast with Wilfred Brimley and become Ambassodor to Scotland.


Pres. Smith:
That's it?


Tambourine:
Yep.


Pres. Smith:
Huh?


Narr:
And that's how our story ends, folks, with a simple fellow acheiving his life's dreams through simple persistence.

this has been Insightful Public Radio, the folks who'll make you think whether you like it or not.