The Last Hurrah by JF Chavoor

The Blue Mountains and the evergreen trees pointed like arrows at the clear morning
sky. The lake was still and bright as glass and the flag before us was listless.

“You didn’t say the pledge? How come?” Al asked as we headed to the dining hall for
breakfast.

“I don’t say it,” I replied.

“Ever?”

“Nope.”

“Since when?”

“Well, I would say somewhere after Kent State.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Even behind his sunglasses I knew he was rolling his eyes; the slight and slow shaking of the
head was a tell.

“The government shoots down college students. Didn’t that freak you out?” I said.

“Ok. But they were rioting.”

“Rocks, yelling stuff and flipping the bird versus rifles, huh?”

“That’s just one thing. You mean to say that one incident is gonna ruin everything?”

“It’s an example. We live in a great country, but we also do some pretty bad stuff. I don’t want
to give my pledge to the bad stuff.”

“I look at the pledge as a, like a goal. Like a measuring stick. Something to shoot for.”

“So to speak.”

“Ha-ha. But really. That’s what I think about when I say it. See what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do. That’s a good way to look at it. I just, I don’t say it. It’s not like I got up one day
and said That’s it with the pledge. Well, sort of. I guess I did. But it was gradual. I don’t know.
We are free to choose, right? I just choose not to.”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged. The dining hall was jammed with campers, counselors and Hume Lake staffers.
We were there as counselors for the week with the high school kids from our church.  It was
our last hurrah as camp counselors; we had been with pretty much the same set of kids since
elementary school.

“Hey, there’s Larry,” I said, spotting our Youth Minister.

“Ask him if he says the pledge,” Al said, confidently.

We picked up our trays while Larry waved us over. We sat down and watched him rush
through his breakfast as if Jesus was outside waiting for him. He leaned so far forward I
thought the wooden cross he wore was going to skim the surface of his oatmeal.

“Hey boys,” he said jubilantly, “what’s up?”

“Not much.” Al said.

“You didn’t get waffles?” I asked.

“No way,” Larry replied. “First of all they’re cold. Second, Eggos don’t count for real waffles.
Or they shouldn’t.”

“You got a point there,” I said, “but if you’re hungry enough, they’re good enough.”

“Larry, did you know Jack doesn’t say the pledge?”

“Yep.”

“How’d you know?” Al said, disappointed.

“I was standing right behind him.”

“What do you think of that?” Al persisted.

“I don’t say it either.”

“What?”

“How come?” I said.

“It’s in the Bible.”

“What?” Al said again.

“Yeah,” I said, “it’s like an oath.”

“Right,” Larry said, circling the bowl with his spoon one last time.

“Huh,” Al said, looking like a heavily favored boxer who got knocked down in the first round.

“My allegiance is to God and my family,” I said.

“I wouldn’t say I disagree with that,” Larry said.

“Well, I don’t know what it is with you guys, but I say because it’s an ideal. Something you
keep working on.”

“And I wouldn’t say I disagree with that, either,” Larry replied.

“I’m just a little surprised, that’s all,” Al said.

“I gotta go,” Larry said abruptly and bounced up.

“You doing anything for the talent show?” I asked Larry.

“I’ll leave it to you two. Try-outs are today after lunch.”

“Try-outs?” Al exclaimed.

“This is camp, not Broadway. It’s supposed to be more like The Gong Show,” I said.

“Not my call. By the way Sheri was watching you not say the pledge this morning.”

“I haven’t said it all week. Who’s Sheri?”

“One of the lead counselors.”

“Well, she saw you too then,” Al said.

“I was behind her. She was right across from you,” Larry said, “and I’m not trying out for the
talent show. She’s in charge.”

“So what are supposed to do sing God Bless America?” I said.

“I like that song,” Al said.

“No,” Larry said, “just a heads up.”

At lunch Al and I talked about what we would do for the talent show. There was a song we
had done a few times over the years at various gatherings and it was always well received. I
knew this would be another opportunity to do it.

The first time I heard the song when it was originally released in 1972 it threw me into a
manic frenzy of joy. Someone was alive out there, someone was looking askance at the world
and nodding and winking and smiling and laughing. I felt as though he was rescuing pop
music by breaking its rules. I was on my way to church that night for Bible study and I was
only a minute into the song and I was already singing along to the chorus. At the top of my
lungs. Pounding the steering wheel. I pulled into the parking lot, hastily parked the car almost
perpendicular to the lines of the parking spaces, and jumped out shouting, “I heard the
greatest song! I heard the greatest song!” I was running in small circles like Curly Howard
shouting the chorus and soon enough my friends—without even really knowing what I was
shouting—were likewise running in small circles. It may have been just a novelty song but its
humor had a contagious, life-affirming lilt to it.

“Let’s do Dead Skunk,” I said to Al.

“We’ve done that so many times.”

“So?”

“So let’s do something different.”

“Why? We have a fresh audience. No one outside of our group has heard it.”

So Al got his guitar and we walked toward the multipurpose room for the audition. The room
was full of those hoping to do hokey skits or heartfelt praises to the Lord—nothing wrong
with that—but we believed we would be something different.

“Who’s next?” Sheri shouted from the back.

“Hi,” Al said after we got up on the stage.

“What’s the name of your act?”

“We’re going to do a song,” I said.

“But do you have a name?”

“No…” Al started.

“Ah, we’re the Voor Brothers.”

A few of our kids started laughing.

“The what? What’s that?”

“Voor Brothers. It’s Armenian,” I said.

“It’s nothing,” Al said.

“What’s it mean?”

“It's part of life. Part of our culture!” I said.

“He’s kidding, it means butt,” Al said.

“Butt?”

“So it would be Butt Brothers,” I said and started to turn around.

“That’s not very Christian.”

“Not Christian?” I said, startled.

“That’s fine. Al and Jack, then.” Al said.

Al gave me one of those cool it looks.

“Ok, Al and Jack,” she said.

She wrote it down on a clipboard.

“Can we make that Jack and Al?” I said.

“What?”

“He’s kidding.”

“So what’s your act?”

“We’re gonna sing a great song,” I said.

She didn’t look at us. She was looking down on the clipboard.

“It’s uh, Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road,” Al said.

She had us sing it, and then stopped us before we finished the first verse.

“That’s fine,” she said.

“Are we in?” I said to Al.

“Yeah, come on. Let’s go.”

While we practiced we wondered if she really meant “Butt Brothers” wasn’t very Christian.
We decided that she did. We found out that Marina, one of our campers had on her own gone
to bat for us and told Sheri that the word Voor wasn’t like ass or buttocks, it was a child’s
word or a word like tush. We didn’t want her to do all that, to go into the etymology of it, and
I didn’t like the word tush very much. But it was funny anyway. We ran into Sheri later and
she said she was just kidding. We weren’t sure whether we believed her or not but we told
her one of our campers might have taken it all too seriously.

The next night we were ready to go. Al had recruited his brother, Gary, to play the piano. Al
had his guitar and I was the vocalist. We started with a slow, spoken introduction and I        
ad-libbed about man being in conflict with nature. It was quiet. We got to the verse first and I
sang slow and mournfully, “Crossing the highway late last night. He didn’t look left and he
didn’t look right. He didn’t see the station wagon car...” Then we stopped altogether for a
second and then I shouted “THE SKUNK GOT SQUASHED AND THERE YOU ARE!” From that
point we tore through the song full barrel and the place went nuts. The original song is a
plunka–plunka folk song with a banjo and a fiddle, but we revved it up and Gary did a great
Elton John turn, standing at the piano, and then kicking his legs back so that for a moment his
body was parallel to the stage. The crowd got crazier. I had never felt or experienced
anything quite like it. When we finished there was an explosion of cheers. It was like a high.

We were waving at the crowd when one of the staffers jumped up onstage, faced the crowd,
raised one hand and drew the other quickly across his throat for the cutoff sign. The kids
abruptly stopped.

“For our next act…”

Like I’ve always said, you should never be funnier or more entertaining than the staffers.
They don’t like it. They generally keep strict accounts on the pecking order of things. We   
didn’t care though. We were the Armenian Blues Brothers; we were on a mission, maybe not
from God but a mission nevertheless, to bring some fun to the proceedings.

It was our last time as camp counselors together, and it was the last time we sang, “Dead
Skunk.” We had never sung the song harder, faster or more successfully. I had asked a
camper to sit in the front row and take a snapshot of us for a souvenir, but he forgot. The
snapshot though, lives on inside us as one of those funny, amazing moments that never really
leave.

© JF Chavoor


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