Good news for once
ONE MINUTE you're busking at an intersection for small change, hoping not to feel on your shoulder the heavy hand of the law for vagrancy, being a public nuisance and all the other offences connected with being a hobo. The next you're an internet personality and a celebrity.
The story of Ted Williams, of Columbus, Ohio, is like an inversion of the O Henry story of the down-and-out. Williams was spotted by a reporter who filmed his act, recording his smooth baritone, then put a video on the internet.
The response has been startling. Williams has received a $10 000 offer of voice-over work for a baseball league and is being pursued by a sports film company and others. The video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
He has been reunited with his family, including his 92-year-old mother, after living for years in a makeshift tent at the roadside, having dropped out of a career in broadcasting due to alcohol, drugs "and a few other things."
"I feel like a million-dollar lottery winner or Susan Boyle - she must have felt the same."
He's like a mirror-image of O Henry's hobo who went the other way. Winter was approaching and he needed to be thrown in jail for shelter, warmth and food. But he just couldn't get himself arrested.
When he heaved a brick through a shop window in full view of a policeman, the cop set off after a fellow who was running for a bus. When he ordered a meal and a bottle of wine in a restaurant and couldn't pay for it, they just booted him out.
Then, as he passed a church, he heard the choir practising. It took him back to his childhood, Sunday school, innocence and the promise that life held. He resolved to mend his ways; to turn over a new leaf; to abandon his life of idleness and vagrancy. To become somebody again.
At which he felt the heavy hand of a cop on his shoulder and he was booked for vagrancy.
Lovely stuff. Ted Williams did it in reverse.
Sir Benjamin's Landing
A TRIP down memory lane. Tom Dennen, who has often contributed to this column, has returned to his native America (temporarily, I understand). From Maine, New England, he supplies an excerpt from his book, But the Flag Was Still There, describing one of Durban's most unusual pubs, owned by a musician named Smelly Fellows.
"To get to Sir Benjamin's Landing you had to go down Maydon Road and take a left by the Sugar Terminal. Then you veered left toward Wilson's Wharf. Just as you got to Wilson's, there was an alley off a right fork that led to a seldom-used slipway. This alley was littered with broken dinghies, spars, boat trailers and rusting chains.
"You walked along a path on the left side of the wall over that slipway for about 10m, careful not to fall into the water. You emerged between a brick wall and the slipway and found an old double-storey concrete bunker on a grass verge overlooking the harbour. This may or may not have been a gun emplacement or a look-out tower for the old flying boats.
"An iron staircase went up to the pub. In Smelly's day, the beer fridge was on the right of the door and you helped yourself as you walked in. As you left, Smelly would say: 'How many beers did you guys have?' and you paid for what you had helped yourself to – Smelly trusted you."
Yep, them were the days. Sir Benjamin's is no more. And it's not such a long trip down memory lane either. Smelly is still about, playing music gigs all over Durban.
Slough of despond
IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, captures the mood of national despondency over ODI cricket. The shrink didn't quite pull it off on Tuesday. May it go better tonight.
Our cricket team called The Proteas,
Has reduced the nation to tears;
Thinking like chimps,
And batting like wimps,
Requires a shrink to conquer their fears.
Tailpiece
"I slept with my wife before we were married. Did you?"
"Can't remember, old boy. What was her maiden name again?"
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
Last word
Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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