The Parade

His ears are still ringing when Johnny Carson finally sees that longed-for pictogram without a line!

He swings open the door with relief.

Only to discover that someone had apparently found it amusing to change the signs on the doors. 

He is reasonably sure he hears someone say:  “Caught one!” as he enters.

He is sitting on a reviewing stand.  The Little League type with peeling green pain, loose and bent nails.  Rope reinforcement at the corners.

Far too unsteady for a man who’s holding too much water.

But the mic with its red light is on in front of him.

Trumpets blare.

Burfies on sticks sway like cattails along the avenue. A banner stretches across the street: The First Annual Parade of Famous Sons of Liberty — Sponsored by O’Liargram Bedding and Pillows, a Division of Big Beautiful Government.

And there appears to be an oncoming float. 

A flatbed with a man dressed in a khaki uniform and a red–headed little boy are strolling hand in hand on a treadmill through trees down a well–worn path.  The boy is whistling and the father is singing:

Well, now, take down your fishin’ pole and meet me at The Fishin’ Hole,

We may not get a bite all day,

but don’t you rush away.

What a great place to rest your bones and mighty fine for skippin’ stones,

You’ll feel fresh as a lemonade,

a–settin’ in the shade.

Whether it’s hot, whether it’s cool,

oh what a spot

for whistlin’ like a fool!

Hangin’ around, takin’ our ease,

watchin’ that hound a–scratchin’ at his fleas.

Come on, take down your fishin’ pole

and meet me at The Fishin’ Hole,

I can’t think of a better way

to pass the time o’ day.

As they reach the fishing hole, Andy Griffith bends down to ruffle Opie’s hair, and the boy looks up to his father with adoration. 

Words flash across the screen.

 The Andy Griffith Show —
Sundays at 8 a.m..
***Authority you can trust***

And Andy Griffith says:  “I can’t think of a better way to pass the time o’ day.”

Does he have any idea what 10 seconds costs? thinks Johnny Carson.  No one has time for anything like this.  Only in a sleepy old town like Sleepy Hollow.  

Now they would flash subliminally:  “Authority you can trust.” 

That will get everyone’s attention. 

And it would have to be a comedy.

He doesn’t look anything like Darth Vader.

“I hope he got a fishing permit,” Johnny Carson says into the mic. 

The next float rattles into view. A boy on a stage at the Elks club doing magic and saying with earnestness and belief he would soon lose: 

“Every illusion begins with a goal. Every truth begins with a question.”

Johnny Carson himself!  Age about 9 or 10. 

He had said that.  And he thought he understood it. 

But now he thinks illusions end with goals and truths end with answers and that is not progress.

Johnny Carson notes:  A little fast on the entry, and slow on the exit… 

But still at the head of the line!

Beside him on the rickety wooden viewing tower is Reverend Dr. John Rodgers to protect the souls of the people. 

And Washington Irving to keep everyone honest.  

John Rodgers says:

Every illusion begins with pride. Every truth begins with humility.

Then he adds: 

But, what is wrong with illusions? 

And what is wrong with pride?

When pride is the willingness to rise up for something more important than yourself, it is a virtue and not a sin.

Who would go before God without pride?  Only a man whose life has been wasted in self-aggrandizement.

A man who has useless to his fellows — regardless of his value to himself.

Washington Irving flops back like a rag doll dropped in shock. 

I may have mistook the man but I do believe it is possible he said something with which I can agree….

Johnny Carson, with great relief, sees that float has passed and turns to introduce the next one. 

“The head of the horseman!” shouts Washington Irving as he leaps into  the air. 

Someone unplugs him and he deflates immediately.

“A brain.” Johnny Carson says. Did he say that out loud? 

It looks like an oversized human brain.  With a little bit of peach glaze.  Pocked with wires and Burfie buttons… 

Playing with the wires is a child with hair sticking from his skull and his tongue protruding from his mouth and his fingers waving from his ears. 

He says:  “They said I was slow because I would not accept the easy answers.  But:

Every truth begins with a question. And another question. And another.

“Albert Einstein, ladies and gentlemen,” says Johnny Carson, his tongue clicking a little.

A brief flash in his mind of his neck against a wall and he feels an unexpected jolt inside him.

Nice truth he gives us. 

Just keep asking another question….  Tactic of the Darth Vader  and bureaucrats alike.  They call strangulation by regulation…. 

The bitterness surprises him and he scrambles inside to think of something funny.

John Rodgers beside him leans forward. 

No truth is undug without questions; no sweet fruit is tasted without the peeling of the skin;  no singularity can be discovered without the study of the whole…

Johnny Carson looks at John Rodgers and shakes his head as if awakening.  His eyebrows raised.  His silly face.  He looks at the audience. 

“I knew that!” he says. 

And then he turns to the camera.  “What he said,” he says, pointing.

John Rodgers continues: “It is in the exploration and discovery that truth is chiseled…”

He misses the pulpit, thinks Johnny Carson with mounting dread.  An up-stager. Scene-stealer.  Mic-hog…

Johnny Carson says in his commanding voice:  “And, here is another float, Doctor Reverend Doctor…” 

This is the voice every cameraman on the set knew.  It meant:  Put the camera on me.

A cue never missed twice. 

Johnny Carson knows the screen is his without even looking.

He turns to introduce the next float but instead the parade hasn’t moved. 

“That said,” says John Rodgers.  “The minimum necessary of any restraint is always to be preferred.”

Johnny Carson nods with resignation. 

What is it about a collar that always trips him up?  Johnny Carson’s stumbling more during this amateur parade than when performing before ten million people.

He is about to say something pithy when the brain wobbles on its wheels, catches in a pothole, and looks like it is about to roll off… 

Didn’t they say they’d lost Einstein’s brain?  I think he took it with him, he thinks.

But then, the float rights itself and moves on.

Next is a giant face with giant jowls and no hair at all.  Round as a snowman.  Nose sharp as a carrot.  Limping along.  His voice oozes out slowly:

Every story begins with a promise.

And ends with a surprise.

“Prerequisite for employment by the Headless Horseman at the Big Beautiful Government,” says Carson.  “Never do what you promise to do…  The only surprise is:  if there is no surprise…”

And this float was:  Alfred Hitchcock, folks.”

 Johnny Carson says. “You might have thought – as did I—that it was Frosty the Snowman after a shave… Nope. Turns out it is Psycho himself…” 

Beside him John Rodgers is talking. 

Johnny Carson doesn’t know when he began talking.

There should be no agreements made with surprises anticipated. 

A man has nothing if he bears not his word with pride and honor. 

A promise to another man is as sacred as a promise to God and himself.

We are but flesh if we do not define ourselves by act and deed!

By now the man is standing on a chair — wobbling like Brother Mug in a saloon. 

Johnny Carson helps him down. 

John Rodgers offers Carson a quarter, which Carson refuses.

John Rodgers is still talking.

On the other hand, no story should ever be told that does not end with a surprise.

Thus, you see – what is true of all stories is not what should be true of life. 

Stories are the deviations from life. 

The unexpected consequences. 

The cars that veer off the road out of control, in control, or to test control…

Those are the stories. 

But not the muscle, the heart, or the meaning of our species.”

Johnny Carson stops.   Shakes his head.  Points his thumb at the Reverend. 

“Hey,” he says.  “That’s true….  And that’s my defense!  Surprise!”

“Perfect! Perfect!” shouts Irving, clapping off–beat. “The curtains are crooked — I love crooked curtains. Adds atmosphere!”

While they try to get the donkey to move the float, Johnny Carson says:  “Here’s what we have so far.  Supposedly there is a secret embedded in this message.  Not obscure if obvious once seen.”

We have:

Every illusion begins with a goal. Every truth begins with a question.  (Johnny Carson)

Every truth begins with a question. And another question. And another.  (Einstein.)

Every story begins with a promise.  And ends with a surprise.  (Alfred Hitchcock)

And here comes the next float!

Standing on top of an apple tree laden with cell phones, Isaac Newton doing handstands while juggling apples.  There’s a flashing light and a circle going around and around.

 Thinking.  Thinking.  Thinking.

The sign says:  “Every apple has a story to tell.”

“That’s dangerous,” says Johnny Carson.  “Tell it to call a lawyer before it says anything.”

“I’ll stand be — cider,” says the Reverend.

Johnny looks at him.  “That’s all?”

“Wasn’t clever enough?”

“Well, no… it was clever enough but look down there.  That parade is hardly moving.”

“Perhaps prayer would help.”

“Will God intervene?

“I don’t think God is the one who needs help.”

“It’s that collar!”  

Johnny Carson turns and says:

Oh, look, coming over the horizon, the next float… And it is:

A hunk of marble.  With a head and arms sticking out like one in stocks.  Michelangelo Buonarroti’s sign says:

Chisel with care. 

Find the life in the stone.

“That appears to be a misprint:  Chisel the life out of stone,” says John Rodgers. 

In blocks of marble, he found the David, La Pieta, and the Moses.  How could a single man have rescued so many souls without, first, there being the life already inside to link them.

“We chisel with Darth Vader and repeating rifles,” says Johnny Carson.  With a vague surprise to himself.  He felt a little like Lenny Bruce in those later days when his anger and hurt had overwhelmed his humor and what had been funny became bitter and sad. 

This was a new sound for Johnny Carson.  He wasn’t sure where it came from…

But there was a tightening in his chest.

It’s a parade.  Words disappear.  Only he will remember this moment.

The only red light is in his mind.

A black-and-white patrol car sputters down the avenue, dragging a papier-mâché fishing hole behind it. Sheriff Andy waves his hat, Opie trots beside him with a pole over his shoulder. The voice on the loudspeaker is warm, folksy, unhurried: “I can’t think of a better way to pass the time o’ day.”

The next float shows ladies dancing with light that blinks up and around and follows Picasso’s masterful strokes and men’s whose hands sparkle like magic and reds that hold the richness of a stained glass window.

All muted by fog.

“Pablo Picasso,” says Johnny Carson.

The sign says: 

Less is more. 

If it is done better.

John Rodgers nodded solemnly. 

Life is like a bag of coins.  You cannot know how much you have but you do not it will end. 

The question is:  how do you spend those precious moments?

Is this moment you are spending, right now:  worth the time you are investing.

“That’s a long way to say:  ‘Less is more.  If it is done better,’” Johnny Carson says.

“I waited for you.  You missed your beat,” Rodgers replies.

In the next float — like a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean, Shakespeare chases a barmaid around a barrel without stopping or pausing, carrying a sign that says: 

In thy bonds is thy truth.

“I don’t get that,” calls Johnny Carson to Shakespeare.

Without pausing or altering his speed – or getting any closer to the barmaid – Shakespeare says: 

A man is as true as the ties that bind him — love, loyalty, goals, and duty.  Desires trump truth.”

“Nay, Sir!” says Rodgers quickly. 

’Tis the opposite, in fact.  Truth is free.  Our integrity is our bind.  We are bound to the truth but truth has the reins.

Irving flops around,  pulls the microphone away from Rodgers, and says: 

Truth cannot be called this or thus. One man peering from horseback sees a Headless Horseman; another sees only a shadow; and still another sees his friend tormenting a young rival.  Is one more true than the other?  Nay, I tell you, one must conceive of truth as a cube with many faces.  And, thus, I tell you…

Carson pulls the mic back in front of himself and leans into it.  “Like dice!” he says. 

I just hope I don’t get snake–eyes! Or is that what I want?  I guess it depends upon the game…  In one game, snake–eyes is a win and in the other it is a loss.

“And, thus,” says Shakespeare without gasping at all, nor altering his speed, nor getting any closer to the barmaid:

Your desires bend the truth. Truth has no label nor a tint.  Yet we see it through lenses of good or bad, desired or lamented…. 

In fact, snake-eyes are just snake-eyes.

A rose is but a rose.

Irving pulls the mic out of Carson’s hand and speaks rapidly. 

Truth ‘tis  a cube of many faces. Looking at different panels, men see different things, true to themselves.  Truth is a thread of many dimensions.  Not a single place or a single shape.  Not stopped at all.  Truth is a lens.  A wide angle lens will gather a hundred truths into a single scene.  A microscope will find movement in still water.  Truth is a pursuit – not a destination.

Carson pulls the mic away, close to himself but Rodgers leans over and says: 

Yes – like God…

Irving also leans over Carson, so the two men are practically on top of him, and says: 

One man sees one side, another man a different side, yet both swear they have the whole. They quarrel not over truth itself, but over which face is showing.

“I’m afraid I have a Rubik’s cube,” Johnny Carson says, grabbing back the mic and pulling himself backwards.  “Chaos.”

Rodgers leans over and says loudly,

But truth, sir, is also a bond. A covenant. Speak it once, and thou art chained to it forever. Break it, and the chain breaks thee. Your promise must be your truth.

“Does my truth not become my promise?” asks Shakespeare, still running. 

My sworn oath becomes my truth.  Truth filtered by duty, love, loyalty, anger, frustration, and rage. 

Do you believe men capable of distinguishing their desired truth from what they actually see?

“Just like everything is blurred in warp speed,” says Carson, both hands on the mic. 

“Truth is as warped as the horizon,” Shakespeare says.  “It bends with the sun and the moon.”

Irving struggles to reach the microphone and prevails long enough to say: 

Not warped — refracted! As a prism reveals the colors in light, so truth can be multi-faceted. We are not changing truth, we are only seeing different elements of it.

Carson grabs the mic back, straightens his tie, turns his shoulders away from Irving,  and looks out at the audience.  

I tried that once. I told my wife:  ‘Honey, I didn’t lie — I just refracted the truth.’  Didn’t work very well.

Rodgers says, loud enough so he doesn’t need the mic: 

All of you are saying the same thing.  There is more than we can imagine and perspectives we cannot adopt. 

Thus, in the end – we do not have truth.  But trust. 

We don’t have knowledge.  But faith. 

We don’t believe.  But hope.

Carson, still hugging the mic, says, “I trust my truths!”

Shakespeare says:

So, thus, I say:  thy bond is thy truth.  If thy bond is to love, your truth is to see beauty.  If thy bond is hatred, your truth is ugly.  If thy bond is truth, you will see what no else can see and no one will ever believe you.

Johnny Carson, muffled by the two men fighting over the micrcophone says:

It is a little naïve to go through life defaulting to truth.  I’d be glad… well, if that were true. 

If you’re looking at just one side of the cube and someone else is looking from a different side, their truths are different and opposites and must collide.

Irving nearly climbs on Johnny Carson’s lap to say in the mic: 

And collide they must. Else there is no story.

A truth untold is a truth unseen. It must be turned. And turned again.  Until it is topsy turvy.

Johnny Carson turns off the mic.

The next float floats by with a deaf man at a piano.  Beethoven says: 

In silence is the loudest sound.

“Don’t ask. Don’t tell,” mutters Washington Irving. 

But no one hears him.