Freddogg Off The Chain

I’ve been the helium tanks shut down Hindenburg parked deep inside the hanger of melancholia the last week because of flu like symptoms where nothing struck me funny sans my own hanging testicles.

Yesterday George Bush brought me back as I witnessed footage of him in Budapest laying a wreath in commemoration of the failed 1956 Hungarian uprising to throw off the yoke of Soviet Communism and oppression which the Russians considered the political yoke of the decade.

A wave of Hungarian refugees hit the United States many to the East Coast and they became known as the Fifty Sixers to be forever identified with the Chevy the year before fins.

I had two people in my life who were outfalls of that immigration, my good friend Chooch Barczy and my barber of last choice, Marion The Hungarian.

Marion was “the other guy” you got if you didn’t get Italian Pete the Barber. Pete had style, knew all the new stuff ,while Marion was the technician who thought everyone in the small town of Penndel should look like a Hungarian refugee. That to him was his idealized head and, in fact, whatever was happening on top of your head didn’t matter as long it all tapered to buzzed fuzz and was cut out around the ears like white wall tires on a 56 Bell Air.

I went through some hair stages in my life. There was “the box” just around the ears and straight across the back, The D.A. where the sides met in the back called the duck’s ass and the Hollywood which was a flattop on top and long on the sides meeting in a ducks ass in the back.

Once during a long haired phase my blacker than black haired friend Mike and I went into the bathroom and put lots of Brylcreem on our heads and combed our hair up and back. Mike’s jet black hair looked great while my brown hair looked like the stuff growing along the side of the sump pump in the basement.

I walked into the kitchen not knowing my burly grandfather Frank Frederick had dropped in for knockwurst. Poppy just started to roar with laughter. “Jesus what did you guys do stick your heads in the toilet bowl? Jesus Rose! Look at our grandson! He sticks his head in the toilet bowl to make himself look better and you know something? It worked! It didn’t work! There is no good answer! Toilet bowl head! And I thought our other grandchildren were the goofy ones!”

Paul Barczy was a tackle on our school football team and later played at Gilford College in North Carolina. He was Hungarian, a big strong bad bitch of a player and a super nice person and loyal friend. I don’t know who first started to call him Chooch which is Italian for Jackass. He was the son of Fifty Sixers in America with an Italian nickname.

I was simply dumb assed German guy, hair cut by Marion the Hungarian or Pete The Barber on a good visit who stuck his head in the toilet bowl to enhance his good looks. I remember I would call Chooch at home, his mother would always answer the phone and it would go like this.

“Hello”.

“Chooch Home?”

“Choochie telephone”!

That’s one of those double layered jokes like a tube of Brill Cream on a Marion haircut. The Hungarian Fifty Sixer calling her own son ‘Choochie’. It was just so cute.

Four years after high school I would fly to North Carolina to be best man in Cooche’s wedding. He married a southern bell, beautiful girl and absolute eating Planters Peanut from the cyrstal dish, cold blooded bitch.

The wedding was dry—sorry for their luck—my tux was gray- my shoes were brown—I didn’t know- my consciousness was in an altered state of Vanilla Fudge “Set Me Free Why Don’t You Babe” I didn’t mesh-Chooch and his parents realized I was an idiot with brown shoes and dumb haircut. They were blending but weren't counting on a German Chooch for Best Man. I think my toast over punchline may have been something like "Whoever dubbed Paul a Chooch can stick a wallet in his mouth before he swallows his tongue because look at the pretty girl he done snagged down here yaw"
I left the backyard reception and the state of Carolina a day early inside my own purple haze-shielded from the X-ray vision of the eternally sober.

Paul Barczy settled down and became a Carolina Chooch Cop and Marion a restorative artist—that’s right-Hungarian haircuts on dead people.

Yesterday President Chooch brought all those memories back to me. I think I will go stick my head in the toilet bowl!

Freddogg The Wetdogg