Fighting Fascist Wolverines in Dreams

            On Friday morning doing yoga was about half as painful as the day before and I had about half my normal flexibility back compared to Thursday. 

            It was strikingly colder than the day before and I kept the windows shut all day. I also closed the door to the deck, which I’d opened on Thursday.        

            During my siesta I was fighting fascism and was trying to get to a building in a deep, thick wooded area. The building was surrounded by very large and vicious raccoons and wolverines that weren’t frightened by my attempts to shout and charge to scare them away. One snarling raccoon was moving to attack me when I woke up.

            I read a lot of Wordsworth and made files of all the different Wordsworth material we are covering in my Romantic Literature course.

            I fiddled around with my essay about the representation of children in Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven” for a while, mostly editing what I’d already written, but I did add an idea that I found interesting:

            In verse eleven the girl refers to three activities that she performs at the graves of her siblings: knitting, hemming and singing. Knitting and hemming are both practical acts of binding. Yarn is bound together in an intricate way during knitting and hemming prevents a garment from unravelling. The child’s singing to her dead siblings also serves as an act of metaphorical binding, analogous to hemming. Her singing binds her to her siblings to keep the family from unravelling.

            That night I watched another episode of Perry Mason. The story begins with a burglar riding up to the Callendar ranch on a horse. He’s caught trying open a safe by the security guard, leaves the house and escapes on the horse as the guard shoots after him.

            Mason and Della are returning from a road trip and five hours from LA when they see an antique car driven off the road and turned over. Mason pulls the old woman out but she doesn’t speak English. A man that speaks Spanish stops and takes her to a doctor before Mason can give her the package that was in her car. It contains a pair of dyed ostrich feathers with the initials “LF” and a pair of high heels. When he gets home Mason places an ad for the owner of the items to pick them up but he doesn’t publish what the items are. A man named Callendar comes to see Mason, thinking that what he has found is a horse. At the same time a man named Sheldon came to Mason’s receptionist to also ask about the horse, says that it belongs to the real Lois Fenton and that Mason must not give the horse to Callendar. Sheldon gives the receptionist a piece of paper but runs as soon as he sees Callendar. Mason finds out that the two men are staying across the hall from one another in the same hotel. On the paper is Lois Fenton’s pseudonym, Sherry Chi-Chi. Mason locates the club where she is fan dancing and goes to see her. Sherry also thinks at first that Mason has the horse but she figures out quickly that he has the feathers and the shoes. She kisses him on the mouth and this is the closest thing to any kind of sexual encounter I’ve seen Perry Mason involved in. He’s never on a date and never has a girlfriend. I know that Raymond Burr was gay but that has nothing to do with his character. Mason goes to see Sheldon who asks Mason to represent Lois. Lois is Callendar’s ex-wife but he is trying to blackmail her to go back to him with some forged cheques. Mason knows that Lois is hiding in the bathroom but just tells Sheldon he won’t help Lois unless he moves out of that room and brings her to his office. Mason calls Paul Drake and asks him to put a man in Sheldon’s room to watch Callendar and to put a tail on Sheldon. He also wants him to find the horse. The next day Mason knocks on Callendar’s door. He doesn’t answer and so Mason goes in to find him dead. Paul’s detective says he saw a woman go into Callendar’s room with a violin case for ten minutes and leave. Then a young man goes in for ten seconds. Mason goes to the rooming house that Sheldon was tailed to and asks the manager if a woman also rented a room. She takes him to the most recently rented room where he finds a piece of ostrich feather drenched in blood. Mason goes to see Sherry and asks her why she went to see Callendar. She says she took him the fans. He asks why she took the name of Lois Fenton. She explains that she asked her after she married calendar if she could take over her act and she said okay. Mason goes to meet the real Lois in a record store. He asks her what she did when she left. She says she went to Callendar’s room and warned him that she’d get him if he made trouble for her brother Jasper. Callendar laughed at her and she left, going down the stairs. Mason has found her horse and tells her to rent a motel room down the road from the stable. He asks her why she rented a room where Sheldon was staying. It was because he’d found an ostrich feather soaked in blood. She tried to wash out the stains there. Mason says he’s taking her to the police but when he’s asked to sign something at the stable Lois drives away in his car. She is stopped by the police and arrested for murder. She was identified in a police shadow box by witnesses from the hotel where Callendar was murdered. It is revealed in court that she appeared in the shadow box twice because the first time she had been sulky and uncooperative. Court is adjourned for the day. Mason finds out that Sherry is in police custody as a witness for the prosecution. Mason wants the DA to promise that he will put Sherry on the stand. Burger is so confident that he does so. Sherry arrives in court wearing the exact same dress as Lois. The judge has them stand together and is shocked at how much they look alike. Mason insists that Sherry take the witness stand and tells the court that Sherry had been arrested previously as Lois and placed in the shadow box at the same time. It's rare that Mason doesn't prove who the murderer really was in court but his intention is only to prove that it wasn't his client. Sherry is the one that was seen leaving Callendar’s room closest to his death and so Lois is acquitted. It is only mentioned at the end in passing that it had been Jasper that had killed Callendar.
            Lois was played by Bavarian born actor Susan Cummings, who appeared in the classic Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man” and was the one that shouted out “It’s a cookbook!" after she figured out what the manifesto of the space aliens really was.

            Sherry Chi-Chi was played by Judy Tyler who co-starred with Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock but died in a car crash 16 days after filming was completed, three months before the film appeared in theatres and six months before this Perry Mason episode aired. Something tells me she would have been a big star.