Little Wooden Head

The trouble began when my friend Marybeth said she had a present for me. What kind of present? “Oh,” she said. “That’ll be the surprise.”

The surprise, I am sorry to say, was a ventriloquist’s dummy. Formerly, it had belonged to one of Marybeths’ children, and now, instead of giving it to Good Will, she’d got the clever idea of handing it over to me, while I was staying at her house in Washington D.C.

The dummy was half of the classic comedy duo of Laurel and Hardy. Unfortunately, it was Hardy, not Laurel: the fat one with the mustache whose catchphrase was, “Well, Stanley. It’s another fine mess you’ve got us in.”

My critical error that night—it seemed harmless enough at the time—was bringing the puppet to dinner at the Old Ebbitt Grill, a classic DC watering hole down by the mall. I thought my friends would think he was funny.

They didn’t. More than anything else they seemed deeply disturbed.

So after a few awkward moments, I propped my little friend on a chair, where for the most part he sat unremarked upon, except for one moment when a waiter came over, and unexpectedly said what for the life of me sounded like Heil Hitler!
But no, I thought. That would be impossible.

After dinner, we walked over to the Lincoln Memorial. I was truly wishing I didn’t have the dummy with me as we walked up the marble steps. People were giving me looks, as if I were trying to make some point.

Lincoln, as always, sat exhausted in his big throne, giving me that look. “I’m not angry,” he always seems to be thinking, as he considers the state of the Union. “I’m just terribly, terribly, disappointed.”

“Excuse me ma’am,” said the park ranger. “You’ll have to take that out of here.”

I didn’t think she was talking to me. “Ma’am?” she said again.

“What?” I said. “Why?” I was pretty sure my First Ammendment rights covered the right to stand in the Lincoln Memorial with a ventriloquist’s dummy.

“Please,” said the ranger. “This is no place for Nazi propaganda.”

I felt as if I’d been struck by lightening. “For—what?”

“Ma’am,” she said. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

Suddenly, it occurred to me. The park ranger. They waiter at dinner. They thought Hardy was Hitler.

You could see people might get it confused. The little schnurrbart mustache. The mop of black hair.

“But it’s Oliver Hardy,” I said. “You know, from Laurel and Hardy? It’s not Hitler! Seriously! Look how fat he is!”

She picked up her walkie-talkie. “I need backup,” she said.

“Oh for god’s sakes,” I said, and walked out. There, sitting on the steps, were my friends.

“Hitler,” I said to my friends. “She thinks he’s Hitler!”

My friend Chris, a NASA physicist, looked concerned. He was one of a group of former Marines who’d spent part of the day protesting the war. We’d had a big discussion about this over dinner, whether it was the right thing for a Marine to do.

“It’s not Hilter?” he said.

“It’s Oliver Hardy!” I said, wondering how many more times in my life I was going to have to explain this. “From Laurel and Hardy! Look at him! Look how much fatter he is than Hitler!”

Chris’ girlfriend, Amy, looked at me in confusion. “Who was Oliver Hardy?” she asked.

On the wall behind us, were the words from the second inaugural:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

I looked out at the capital, all the marble, at all the bright lights of the country.

“Well,” I said to no one in particular. “It’s another fine mess you’ve got us in.”