Malcolm Atterbury

            On Sunday morning I finished memorizing “Classée X” (Rated X) by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords online but no one has posted them and so it's up to me again. This song seems fairly simple so I might have the chords worked out on Monday morning. 

            I took a siesta from 11:25 until 12:55. I had a couple of slices of strawberry-rhubarb pie with frozen vanilla soy dessert for lunch. It's kind of an odd lunch but the pie is the last flour based thing I have left and I want to finish it before my fast.

            I wasn’t sure if I was going to take a bike ride because it had been raining. The puddles looked like they were being splashed by drops but when I stepped out on the deck seemed like they were probably being rippled by the wind. I got dressed and headed up Brock but just after college I noticed I had a flat tire. I walked back to the Brockton Cyclery at Dundas and bought a tube. I used their pump in hopes that I could get my tire firm enough to ride home but the air was coming out too fast and so I had to walk. 

           When I removed the old tube and pumped it up the puncture was fairly obvious without immersing it in water to check from where the bubbles were escaping, but I did that anyway. The hole was definitely on the outside. When I started checking the tire for what might have penetrated it I discovered a considerable hole in the tire itself and so it was obvious that I needed a new one. Fortunately the bike place next door was open. I bought a new Chaoyang Sprint Kevlar reinforced tire for $45. I asked for a receipt but was told I hadn’t been charged tax and if I wanted a receipt I would have to pay extra. The owner said he knew me by sight and if there was a problem I wouldn’t need a receipt, so I let it go. 

            I struggled with my derailleur as usual and with untangling the chain but I got the tire on. I decided to add a bit of oil to the chain and some other moving places before taking the bike for a test drive. It actually rode better than before, probably because of the oiling. 

            I read “Fra Lippo Lippi" by Robert Browning and "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti again.              I took an hour siesta and read the Browning poem again. The language is charming in the way he captures ordinary speech. 

            I had a couple more slices of pie with the rest of the soy dessert and had the last cup of coffee before my fast while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story farmers are having their cows stolen and since Andy has yet to catch the thief the mayor calls in a special investigator from the city. Detective Upchurch investigates the scene of the crime and takes plaster casts of the footprints that can be found in front of the barn. There seem to be three sets of footprints and the two men walking closely behind the leader are obviously very heavy men. Andy asks the important question, “Where are the cow’s footprints?” Andy notices that the homeless man and sometimes thief, Luke Jensen has been released from prison and is hanging around Mayberry with his dog Mack. The viewers see that Luke suddenly has money and later we are shown Luke stealing a cow after having put a man's boots on all four of its feet. Andy gets the idea that this is how the cattle are being stolen and he enlists one of the farmers to come to Mayberry and to talk with Andy in the street about his prize animal. That night Andy stakes out in the farmer’s house and calls in Upchurch and the mayor. But they think Andy’s idea is hair brained and leave. Barney however stays behind because he remembers another idea that Andy once had which the previous mayor had considered hair brained, which was to hire Barney as a deputy. Then they hear yelling as Luke trips the trap. Luke is very near sighted and doesn’t notice that the prize bovine that he's trying to put boots on is the farmer's very mean bull. 

            Luke was played by Malcolm Atterbury, who was born rich and didn’t need to act, but just felt the calling. He started out in vaudeville and first appeared in the film Dragnet. He gained a reputation as a character actor but his money didn’t hurt either as he owned two theatres in upstate New York. He appeared on Broadway in the original cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as Scanlon, the role played by Delvis V Smith in the film. I hadn’t realized that in that original production the lead role was played by Kirk Douglas. Kirk actually owned the film rights but couldn’t get a movie studio to produce it. He gave the rights to his son Michael who finally got it done but by that time Kirk was too old to play McMurphy.