IF YOU CANNOT FIND OSAMA: BOMB IRAQ!

PART II of the Saga- continued

(*When the first installment of our story ended, our heroine, Connie Corcoran Wilson, intrepid reader to the blind and visually disabled on WVIK's public radio station at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, had just been told to stop singing the title song on the air. “Was it my singing? What?”)

She has left the station in shame, pursued to the parking lot by Mr. Pin-headed Engineer Person yapping at her heels, only to discover—(horror of horrors!)—that she has left her sweater in the broadcast booth! There is some concern for Connie's possible banishment to Cuba and Guantanamo Bay holding cells, potential tying to the nearby railroad tracks, or—God forbid—compulsory attendance at the Republican National Convention! (Connie is unsure that she could take any additional stand-up-and-wave appearances from Ozzie Osbourne in a neck-brace, nor singing by such golden oldies as Shirley Jones, who will, no doubt, be among the “hippest” of the Bush entertainment troupes come summer.)

We pick up the story of our vocal victim with her re-entrance to the hallowed halls of public radio station WVIK to reclaim her sweater…..

I drove back up the hill to retrieve my sweater, which I had left in the broadcast booth. There were now five engineers all huddled together outside the door of the studio.  They were all a-flutter-twit!  As I entered I said, “Gee! This must be the most excitement you guys have had in years!” 

My favorite engineer, Gary, quickly ducked his head and scurried down the hall, but Mr. Pinheaded Engineer-Person, again, pursued me (sweater now in hand) to the parking lot, practically apoplectic. It was all “FCC this” and “FCC that.” 

Interestingly enough, although I made several subsequent phone calls to various mucky mucks (most notably Don Wooten, the founder of WVIK's radio station), trying to find out exactly WHAT the FCC “rules and regulations” might be, and WHERE they might be housed, the FCC rules and regulations could never be located.  I probably would have to personally correspond with Colin Powell's son (the head of the FCC) to find out what horrible fate awaited someone like me, who dared to sing a satirical ditty on the air that was not P.C. (politically correct) at this moment in our nation's history, when we are all about marching into countries that are leaving us alone and taking them over.

About this time, various anti-war demonstrations were taking place around the Quad Cities area.  An old Berkeley student from the Mario Savio days of the sixties (more to come on that topic in future columns), I chose to join the one at the Writers' Studio, which I knew would (probably) be full of people who might, in turn, (probably) be very full of themselves, many of them pontificating on the subject of war in original verse. 

Original verse had been requested, as the price of admittance to this anti-war soiree. I had no “original” anti-war verse, but I did have “If You Cannot Find Osama: Bomb Iraq!” and I loved it!  GOTTA SING! GOTTA DANCE! (Well, no dancing, but you get the idea.)

During the poetry-reading part of the festivities, where various local college students who were getting “extra credit” points from their teachers for attending (many yawns and blank stares; some actual nodding-off, a là church-goers), only Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poems held my attention.  When I got out my accordion and invited the crowd to join me in a sing-along, let's just say that it got the attention of the crowd.

I had inherited the accordion from my cousin Lois's husband Larry on the Fourth of July, when we traveled to St. Louis to visit him for the last time, as he was terminally ill with liver cancer.  Larry and I had for years shared a secret hatred of the accordion, which both of us were forced to learn to play against our will.  We smuggled his old accordion down from the attic and in to the trunk of our car while my husband was in the bathroom.  Since then, I had been having a great deal of fun getting it out and thinking up devilish ways to use it. This was partially because my husband, upon discovering, back at the motel, that there was a very large accordion roughly the size of a small freezer completely filling the trunk of our car had said, “You'll never use that thing!” (Aù contraire, mon frêre!)

I also remember that each and every other participant at that night's event spent at least ten minutes introducing himself (or herself), going on about how he (or she) taught here (or there).  As I write this, there is no college or university in this area that I have not been affiliated with, in some capacity.  I, however, chose to remain anonymous. 

And so it was that, in the next morning's paper, as it wrote up the event, it said, “An anonymous woman with an accordion took the podium.” 

And the paper went on to recite the first couple of stanzas of “If You Cannot Find Osama: Bomb Iraq!”

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(*Don't miss out on the next exciting Installment, Number Three, of “If You Cannot Find Osama: Bomb Iraq”, in which our heroine, the vocally-challenged Connie Corcoran Wilson, returns home three hours late from what was supposed to have been “Wednesday night tacos with the girls,”  and  tries to make this excuse fly with the Republican in-house: “I was playing my accordion at an anti-war rally.” (His response: “Sure you were.”)

If you really cannot WAIT to find out what happens next (the excitement mounts!), order Connie's book in its entirety from her web-site:

www.ConnieCorcoranWilson.com. 

If in the Davenport, Iowa, area, hustle on over to Border's bookstore where it is on the shelves. And, failing that, you can write Connie herself at Einnoc10@Aol.com or order from Amazon.com and/or Barnes&Noble.

Copyright 2004 by Connie Corcoran Wilson.  All rights reserved.  Feel free to duplicate or distribute this file, as long as the content is not changed and this copyrighted notice is intact. Thank you.