ow I got started as a hotshot in TV was a complete fluke. It developed like a time-lapse photo sequence, hardly recognizable as anything at first, a mere bud of an idea, then unfolding in clearer and broader form until finally there it was, in full bloom, no one more amazed than myself. What a marvelous phenomenon! To find oneself in television! Who, other than a few Mafia dons and maybe some bank robbers on the lam, wouldn’t give their souls (an apt metaphor perhaps) to be in television,. All those gleeful folks on confessional talk shows, game show contestants, reality show adventurers, even excited witnesses to disasters, and just plain work-a-day professional actors, actresses, stage directors, producers, writers, cameramen, gofers. All competing for their space in the sun. Or TV lights.

Me, Bill Brock, I got in as a writer, even though for the past ten years I had written nothing more edifying than a pot full of press releases extolling the virtues of artificial appendages, gynecological enhancements and latex condoms. It was not exactly a gratifying career choice, (Actually, it could be embarrassing), but there I was, Communications Manager for a company called Pro-Tec GmbH, headquartered in Cologne, Germany, its U.S.subsidiary located in Stamford, Connecticut, where I had a small office with a window looking out on the parking lot. It was certainly not the kind of career I had once dreamed of, (especially during the year I spent in Paris smoking weed and drinking wine), but I had a family to support now, and out of laziness, or self-doubt, or a dead-end aridity of ideas, and very likely a combination of all three, I soldiered on at my place of employment which was generally known in the industry somewhat facetiously as the rubber factory.

My wife Annie and I, and our two children, Peter, aged eight, and Laura, aged seven (Annie and I went at it pretty regularly right after we were married) were living in Manhattan, and I was commuting every day to Pro-Tec’s Stamford offices, (about an hour’s reverse commute). We had a nice rent-controlled four-room apartment in Greenwich Village, which we swore we would never give up, but as the kids were growing and beginning to become restless and adventuresome, it began to be a bit crowded in our confined quarters. Also, we had an eye on the need for good public schools. It was time to move to the suburbs (the Bronx being definitely ruled out).

Perusing the Classified ads in the Times, Annie came across what looked like a promising prospect. At least, it was worth investigating, advertised as a “handyman special,” (something we could afford) located in the Sylvan glades of Fairfield County, not far, in fact, from Stamford where my office was. And so, thus it was, one sunny day in early mid-October we found ourselves in a Mercedes sedan being driven by a handsome, upbeat and immaculately groomed Real Estate lady (blonde, trim and probably in her early forties, name of Sissy Sweatland) along a lovely bucolic winding road lined by gnarly old maples and overhung with lush leaves that had turned to a glorious red, yellow and orange.

“It’s an adorable house,” Sissy Sweatland chirped at us. “It needs a little work, but nothing I’m sure you can’t handle.” She gave me a confident sideways wink which came across, in fact, like a warning.

And then, shortly, it came into view, a white Colonial turn of the century (last century) farmhouse behind a low picket fence, and situated on 4.5 acres of woodland sloping down to a private little duck pond. I turned in the seat to look back at Annie, and our eyes met, and there was that instantaneous moment when two hearts leap up and embrace and beat as one.

Yes, on close inspection it was clear that the place needed a little work. As we trolled the exterior we could see that the white paint was peeling from the clapboard and flaking onto the lawn, presenting a somewhat dirty gray appearance. The cute picket fence was tilting a bit, the support posts long ago having rotted and now moldering in the ground. There were four downstairs rooms, our canny Realtor carefully guiding us around a couple of places where it appeared that the original wide-board flooring was unstable. The wallpaper, whatever color it had once been, possibly brown, was peeling here and there, hanging down in sheets like a flayed deerskin.

“The previous tenant must have left a window open during a rainstorm,” Sissy Sweatland volunteered airily, turning us quickly to the kitchen to show off the appliances. A flick of a knob on the electric stove, and a shower of sparks exploded in her face. “Don’t touch it!” she shrieked, temporarily losing some of her composure. “Pull the plug. I’ll see about getting a replacement.”

There were three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, although the forced air heating ducts had been deliberately blocked off, as a result of squirrels having obstinately and repeatedly built nests inside, creating a fire hazard. “Heat will rise up the stairs,” our guide assured us.

What clinched it for us were the back-to-back working stone fireplaces downstairs. There was no hesitation. Mr. Blanding’s dream-house. And for only $250 a month! Right then and there on the hood of the Mercedes we signed a lease dated Nov. 15th which Sissy retrieved from a Mark Cross briefcase (stashed in the trunk next to her golf clubs). I wrote a check for $750 -- $250 for the first month’s rent, plus one month’s security, and another month’s rental payment in case we attempted to skip out without paying.

It was the total of our lifetime savings. We had a month to prepare for the move.

A junk dealer that a friend put us on to moved our stuff from Greenwich Village for another $750 (paid for with a credit card), and Handyman Bill with the enthusiastic assistance of the whole family immediately went to work ripping down the peeling wallpaper, pasting it over with a new bright and pretty pattern. In the living room Annie hung drapes brought along with us from our old apartment. Selecting some fabric from a local remnants store, she made new curtains for the dining room and for the children’s rooms upstairs and our own bedroom. The living room floor was a challenge. Testing the loose floorboards gingerly, I managed to insert myself into the crawl space in the dirt cellar and shore everything up with two-by-four studs. We decided to wait until spring to paint the exterior and fix the fence.

From a distance, (and squinting), we could believe our modest domicile, at the least, was not an embarrassment to the handsome multi-million dollar estates on either side and across from us set back from the road on beautifully landscaped lawns in austere privacy behind hedges and iron gates and long curving driveways, with lovely mature maple, oak and elm trees set about advantageously as if having been brought in on order from the nurseryman, which they probably were. There were glimpses in the distance of paddocks with steeplechase bars and handsome horses grazing and frisking about.

Owner of our place was a once famous flamingo dancer known to the world in another era as Señora Consuela, whose real name, we learned, was Lydia Hollingshead, now languishing with Alzheimer’s in a nearby nursing home. Since the Señora was more or less ga-ga, her estate was managed by an executor, one Irving Birnbaum, Esquire, to whom we addressed our monthly rental payment checks. In addition to depositing our checks in an account set up for the lady, it was Attorney Birnbaum’s task to withdraw sufficient funds for the lady’s care at the nursing home and to deduct for himself a certain fee for his exertions. It would be some time before we would meet Attorney Birnbaum face-to-face, but we did talk on the phone a few times, most immediately to ask for a new electric stove, a request which he willingly acceded to, apparently already having received an hysterical call and berating from Sissy Sweatland. Since it involved merely phoning Sears for a delivery and writing a check from the Señora’s dwindling savings account, Attorney Birnbaum did not find this unduly onerous. Apparently our rental fee was of some help in these matters, albeit not much.

With our new cheery wallpaper pasted, weakened flooring repaired, new drapes hung and a small fire crackling on a chilly evening in one of our two stone fireplaces, (We had been toasting hotdogs and hamburgs in it during our first week of residency before our new stove arrived), we were as happy and content as any little family of squirrels nesting in our heating ducts. Peter and Laura had been enrolled in the local public school (“schools that were second to none in the nation,” according to Sissy Sweatland). Being located only 30 minutes away from Stamford, I had cut at least 45 minutes from my commute from Manhattan, and thus was able to linger another half hour in bed each morning. Perhaps the greatest bonus of all.

If those who are still with me may be wondering what all this has to do with my hotshot career in television, I can only urge patience. Earlier it was made clear that the whole business began from a small bud of an idea, a mere nodule, if you like, and the move to our new house from Manhattan was the beginning of that adventure.

Running along beside our house, less than ten feet from our dining room windows, was a neighborhood dirt path right-of-way which sloped down to our duck pond and beyond into a network of horseback riding trails winding through a town nature preserve, (a preservation ordinance pushed through by our influential neighbors, and for all that, an agreeable good idea, adding another 55 acres adjoining our own modest estate). Near the duck pond there was an old faded red abandoned barn with a partially collapsed roof and close by a ramshackle guesthouse occupied by a single adult male. I made the acquaintance of this gentleman one Sunday afternoon soon after moving in as he approached from the horse trail and rapped on our door. (The doorbell was out of order).

I answered his knock and greeted him on the front doorstep.

“Hi,” I said, holding loosely in one hand the Sunday Times which I had been reading.

“Hi,” he answered. He did not appear to be a hermit (no beard), but neither was he an exemplar of Fairfield County landed gentry. Very nearly my own age, close to forty, he was fairly short, egg-shaped as Annie later described him, bald on top with a ring of hair around his scalp that grew down in a kind of mantle to his sloping shoulders. With half-lidded eyes that never quite looked up to meet mine, charitably it could be said he resembled a plump iguana. He was wearing light brown wide wale corduroy trousers that had mostly lost their wale and were somewhat spotted with stains of some sort (food, I think) and a lightweight navy, or black, windbreaker with a greasy sheen.

“I’m David Harris,” he said in a squeaky voice that was uncannily appropriate to his appearance. He paused, apparently expecting some kind of recognition on my part. When he saw that I merely seemed confused, he added, “I live in the guest house at the foot of the hill.”

“Oh,” I said. “Glad to meet you, David. What can I do for you?” It occurred to me he might be in need of a handout.

“I’m a distant cousin of Mrs. Hollingshead.”

Ah hah. “The Señora.”

“Yes. I’m her sole heir. I was living here until recently before you moved in.”

Oh, oh. I sensed something like a cool breeze arising. “The fellow who left the windows open during a rainstorm,” I said, jollying.

He gave me a puzzled look, then went on. “There’s a pile of firewood out beside the garage.” David Harris definitely was not here simply to welcome us to the neighborhood.

“Yes. I noticed. We’ve been warming up hotdogs in the fireplace.”

“I’d like to retrieve the wood,” he said, his eyes on the porch floor now, racing about as if following the movements of a fly.

“Oh? I was under the impression that the wood went with the house, David.”

“No. The house is quite a separate matter. The wood belongs to me.”

“You cut it?”

“Well, no.” He hesitated. “That’s not the point.”

“Well,” I demurred. “I don’t know, David. Before you start removing any wood perhaps I should talk with Attorney Birnbaum.”

“Whoa! Wait a minute,” he piped up in a voice that turned to a soprano pitch when he became excited. “There’s no need for that.”

I was beginning to believe that I had him by the balls.

“I don’t want all of it,” he added quickly. He gave me an appealing look, although I couldn’t say that his eyes quite met my own. “Just some of it.”

“Well, let me get back to you on that, David.” If I had learned nothing else during my ten-year sojourn at Pro-Tec, I had learned how to stall. I twisted my head around to try to look into his eyes. When he had first introduced himself I felt that despite his unsavory appearance it would be polite to invite him inside. Now I decided to let him fret on the front porch step. There was a rotten board there, and with luck I was thinking he could step on it, and go through and break a leg. “If there’s nothing else, David – ”

“This is not the last of this,” he said in a tone that I couldn’t help but think was somewhat threatening.

“I’m sure it isn’t,” I said. And since he gave every indication of playing hardball, I added, “In the meantime, if you don’t mind, I think you’re trespassing.”

For the first time he raised his eyes to look at me. Sheer vitriol. Without another word, he turned and headed back down toward his shack at the foot of the hill, leaving me with an accelerated heartbeat and the distinct impression that we would be hearing more from David Harris, and not just about the woodpile, either.

“Who was that, darling?” Annie asked, coming up to me.

“Nobody,” I said. “Somebody wanting to talk about firewood.”

Monday morning first thing I put in a call to Attorney Birnbaum. He was waiting for another important call, he said, so he would be obliged if I would make it brief.

“David Harris wants to remove the woodpile from beside our garage,” I said, getting right to it.

“Forget it,” Attorney Birnbaum replied. “The wood goes with the house.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“He was living in there, you know. Rent-free. Trashed the place, near as I can make out. He was executor of Mrs. Hollingshead’s estate until it was learned he was dipping into her principal for whatever reasons I do not know. The court appointed me as executor, and I say the wood is yours.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“He’s the sole heir, but as long as she’s alive he has no claim on anything. He’s out in the cold.”

“So to speak.”

“Exactly. If she were to die –”

“He inherits, and I’m out in the cold.”

“You might put it that way.”

“Is it possible you might be willing to sell the place before she dies?” I heard myself saying. The thought popped up immediately, even as I wondered how in hell I could ever come up with enough money for a down payment on a mortgage should a deal be possible.

“We could talk about it. She may need the money. That no-good son of a bitch wiped out a lot of her savings.”

“Well, we’d be interested.” This without a word of discussion with Annie.

“Oh, oh. My call is coming in,” he said. “Let me know if you’re interested in making an offer.”

“I will,” I said, though it was doubtful if he heard me because I was holding in hand a dead phone line. Jesus Christ, we could buy the place, and kick that no good son of a bitch (Attorney Birnbaum’s characterization) out of the guesthouse. Assuming, of course, that the Señora lived long enough. On the other hand, her passing would mean that David Harris would be doing the kicking. Word was that she was in pretty bad shape. Annie and I would have to have a serious talk.

Before we were able to come to any decision about whether or not to bid on the house we were made increasingly aware of the considerable horseback traffic along the right-of-way passing beside our dining room. It was, in fact, a busy equine thoroughfare, especially on Sunday mornings when the local gentry (after church) paraded past astride their handsomely groomed thoroughbreds. Peter and Laura were awestruck by this spectacle, and would dash to the side of the trail to smile up and wave at the riders as they ambled by in their fine riding and hunt costumes. It was perhaps unfortunate that our new little dog Spot, a mixed breed black and white female that we had rescued from the gas chamber, took some exception to the appearance of these massive beasts passing by within a few feet of our house. With 4.5 acres of our own and an adjoining 55-acre protected nature preserve we allowed the dog to run free, and her life was one continuous adventure of barking at ducks, chasing crows, rabbits and squirrels and bullfrogs and snakes. She never caught anything, but her stout little spirit never faltered as she gleefully pursued her daily hunting expeditions, returning after a day’s activity happily wagging her tail and looking for any opportunity to lick the children’s faces. Once or twice at the local Supermarket Annie was asked by some of our well-heeled neighbors what breed Spot was and detecting possibly a note of condescension she replied cheerily without missing a beat, fille d’amour, which took her interrogators by surprise and invariably prompted approving nods. Spot was reasonably well-trained (by yours truly – sit, lie down, fetch and come) but at the distant clip clop sound of horses' hooves no restrainment was possible. Berserk, she would dash in circles around the approaching animals, harassing, sometimes provoking them to kick out behind or to rear up in front, and on a couple of occasions to bolt down the trail despite the panicked commands of their riders to whoa and steady down.

One particular equestrian who after the first incident with the dog did not intend to countenance further harassment was a retired cavalry colonel, one Colonel Slaughter, (no kidding), who paraded past the house at least three or four times a week. We always knew it was the colonel who was approaching, because as he rode he whistled either the theme from “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” or the cavalry’s hymn – “Over hill, over dale, we will hit the dusty trail –”. Colonel Slaughter was the quintessential picture of a retired cavalry officer, a ruddy-complexioned man with a large nose like an artillery piece overhanging a grenadier’s mustache whose wide ends fluttered in the melodic wind blowing from his pursed lips. He seated himself ramrod straight on his McClellan army issue saddle, gun gray eyes focused sharply ahead for sign of enemy troop movements. Starched whipcord jodhpurs flared out from the tops of his cordovan boots which were shined to a degree that reflected the passing scenery. He wore a Harris tweed double-vented jacket with a white scarf around his neck, and a jumper’s peaked black velvet riding helmet. Tucked under his arm was a leather riding crop with a loop on one end and a tassel on the other. Stylish as all this was, it could be disturbing on Sunday mornings as we sat at the dining room table for a brunch of bloody Marys followed by pancakes and sausages to observe the colonel’s stallion dropping juicy road apples directly outside our window.

After the very first engagement with our little dog, Colonel Slaughter on his next outing substituted for the riding crop a large coiled bullwhip. When Spot circled the stallion’s heels, the colonel uncoiled the whip and with a well-practiced eye landed a sharp lick across the dog’s backside, sending her howling toward the safety of the house. I witnessed this, it seeming to me to be an extreme form of attention to the problem, and I was tempted to confront the colonel on his way back from his ride, but I was by no means certain that he wouldn’t give me a touch of the same treatment. I had greeted him on one occasion as he had passed by, eliciting merely a slight swiveling of his neck and a frosty glare.

What galled me about the colonel was his air of absolute self-righteous propriety (After all, we could have discussed working out some kind of agreeable accommodation), and his apparent merry insouciance as he whipped our little dog. Along with my resentment, there was also mixed with it a certain amount of envy. More than what was reasonable or even healthy, I suppose, I fantasized about this free-and-easy equestrian. I had learned from someone that his wife was beautiful, rich beyond imagination, and here he was enjoying the bountiful fruits of early retirement from the army (no doubt with a pension), while I slaved day after day over the careful wording of press releases having to do with Rajah condoms (apple, raspberry or grape flavored, lubricated or dry, rippled or smooth, laced with fragrances of Chanel or My Sin, or tangy peppermint), and not even able to pay some guy to paint the outside of my house. My only consolation was the thought that the colonel couldn’t be very bright, or he would still be in the military, (there being plenty of opportunities for combat and advancement since there was a war raging in Vietnam). Possibly they cashiered him out with a gala send-off dinner, lots of congratulatory handshakes, and a good riddance. (I liked to think that by so doing they had saved a lot of American soldiers’ lives).

That dumb son of a bitch. Happy dumb son of a bitch. In contrast to my own (extremely intelligent) weariness and ennui. Life was unfair. How could it be that that dumb son of a bitch down the street was happier than I was?

In a moment of pique one Sunday morning, after the stallion had dropped his customary load outside our window, and the colonel, whistling, had brandished his bullwhip again at Spot, in a grumpy tone I found myself saying to Annie, “How come that dumb son of a bitch down the street is happier than I am?”

Annie almost choked on a piece of sausage. “Oh, God, what a wonderful line,” she managed to get out. “Bill,” she said, “you’ve got to write something with that as the title.”

“Are you kidding?” I exclaimed. “What could I write? I’m busy writing about Rajah condoms.”

“A poem!” she enthused.

“A poem! You can’t write a poem with a title like that.” She was always trying to get me to go back to writing poetry again. Yes, okay, I’ll admit it, in Paris I had written some poems that all my friends and fellow weedheads thought were wonderful, but which had never elicited more than a handful of rejection slips from editors.

“I have walked the bridge at night

When wistful lights of a languid city

Blink in the wind across the bay –”

Those were the opening lines of my magnum opus, my love letter to Manhattan written by a homesick displaced person living in Paris. That line, “Blink in the wind across the bay,” I rather liked, depicting as it did a view of Manhattan office buildings at night seen from the Brooklyn Bridge.

Well, I had put all that aside.

The reason Annie was periodically urging me to get back to work on something of my own was that she saw perhaps more clearly than I the black hole in the center of my being that was sucking in every bit of creativity and energy and joy in my life, leaving me with the bleak prospect of another 25 years writing about condoms and then bowing out with a pancreatic cancer. It affected our marriage, no doubt. Not that we weren’t still close. Annie was my loving wife, and we had two lovely little children, (now entering the public school system second to none in the country), but there was a sadness about old Bill Brock, approaching the age of 40, (and beginning to find a lot of hair in the comb every morning), already a rusted out has-been, (or more accurately, a never-has-been) your quintessential loser. I went through the motions of being a perfectly contented middle management citizen and caring husband. But it was Annie who found the energy to keep up the spirits of the entire family, and that perhaps was the only thing in my life that kept me plugging along. Sometimes at night, unable to sleep, I would get up from bed, throw an overcoat over my pajamas, and standing barefoot (freezing toes) on the front stoop with the broken board look up at the night sky through the sere branches of the now denuded maples, and wonder what in hell was ever to become of me.

“You could write a play,” Annie persisted.

Well, all right, confession time. After giving up on poetry I had tried my hand, as they say, at writing plays. Well, at least one play. I won’t go into details, except to say that it was based loosely on characters I had known in my own family, and it was called, “Thanksgiving at Aunt Betty’s”. It was so savagely anti-everything that one producer I sent it to, instead of replying with the usual rejection form letter, wrote to suggest I might want to see a doctor. Fuck him. Another producer said the play showed signs of talent. I should have clung to that small word of encouragement rather than despairing after the other 50-odd rejection slips (over a period of five years; they don’t hurry to get back to you). By that time I had a new life back in New York.

Talent? Could I, in fact, write a play again? It was a thought. Maybe during these cold winter nights in the country (after work) I could dredge up from the gall of my being inspiration sufficient to write a play. I wouldn’t be occupied in painting the exterior of the house until next spring.

And so it was one cold November evening (inspired in part, too, by the approach of Thanksgiving, remembering Aunt Betty, now long ago having gone on to her maker), I set up a card table in our bedroom, and wrapped in my overcoat, and a scarf about my neck and wool cap pulled down over my ears, (The heat that was supposed to rise up the stairway never reached as far as the bedroom), I resurrected my old Underwood typewriter and sat down and typed “Why Is That Dumb Son of A Bitch Down the Street Happier than I Am?”

Little did I know then that it would be the beginning of a full-length play that the local playshop amateur group would deem worthy of a production, that in the audience, by the most unlikely chance, there would be sitting a big-time New York agent, (his wife having dragged him to the performance after dinner at a fancy local restaurant), that the agent would actually remain awake, and after contacting me on the Monday following the premiere, would ask to see a script, would read it, would agree to represent it, would send it to one of the TV network development offices, and I would be on my way to a hotshot career in television.

© Robert Riche