¿Til Death do us Part

THE SHOW MUST GO ON... 

I was a soldier stationed on the Japanese island of Okinawa in the early 1970's.  While there, I became involved with and spent most of my spare time in an army-sponsored theater, organizing and acting in amateur theater productions with my friend Tim, an incredibly talented musician and actor who had also gravitated to the theater as a creative escape from the mundane world of the military.  The experience was what later prompted me to begin (although I ended up going through various courses of study before finally getting a degree) my college studies in Theater Design at Penn State University.  This is an edited (yes EDITED, my kind proof readers Maureen and Sherry!) version of just one of the stories from that long ago time.  

Opening night for the amateur production of “Born Yesterday” was just two days away.  The set was only half-finished and although most of the wall and door flats were up and the tattered pieces of furniture and props had been brought over from the theater warehouse, the whole thing had to be painted.   That morning (a Saturday), the entire island had gone on yellow alert for an impending Typhoon that was building in the Pacific Ocean.  As the storm intensified, military personnel were advised to report back to their bases prior to the warning system going to red and travel on the roads restricted.  Tim and I conveniently arranged to get stuck at the theater in the late afternoon as the winds became intense and the final red alert was broadcast.  We would get this set done and the play open on Monday or else – nature and the military be damned.   As the rains burst from the sky and winds began to roar against the solid cinder block walls of the windowless theater, we continued to secure the flats in their places and paint a somewhat acceptable imitation of late 40’s wallpaper, placing empty paint cans around the room as catch basins when rain began to filter through the asphalt roof of the aging building.

It was about 8:00 in the evening and the winds of the Typhoon had intensified to a constant high-pitched roar.  We were taking a break from our painting when Tim came up with the idea that we should go outside and see what the typhoon was REALLY like.  “You mean, OUTSIDE where it’s like one of those experimental wind tunnels where they test super-sonic fighter planes??”  “SURE!”  “Are you serious??”  “Actually, yes.”  “Oh, what the hell…”

The force of the Typhoon was blowing against the back and to the sides of the building.    Overhead and on either side it was like a scene out of the apocalypse.  The branches of the larger trees were whipping back and forth in the rain-filled sky.  Smaller palm trees were bent to the ground from the force of the wind.  Loose branches, pieces of wood, cloth and sundry items tumbled and blew past the wall to disappear out of sight in the eerily lit, early evening gloom.  We were protected from the brunt of the winds by the building.  Tim then decided that we had to feel this force of nature for ourselves and suggested that we step out directly into the wind,  just for a second.  “Are you nuts?!?”  We’ll end up in the ocean!  They’ll find us buried under some piece of tin roof, crabs munching on our water-soaked bodies!”  “Yeah, it’s nuts, but when are we ever going to have another chance at something like this?  Think about it!!”

Tim stepped out first and immediately had to wrap his arms around a concrete light pole to keep from blowing away down the road.  He became soaked in seconds, his hair and clothes flapping behind him.  I stepped out beside him and almost stumbled to the ground from the force of the wind.  Tim opened his mouth to say something to me, but the sound of his words soared incomprehensibly past me in the howling anger of the Typhoon.  We jumped back to the shelter of the cinder block wall, collapsing on the porch as we gasped for breath, laughing hysterically.  “That was AMAZING!”

Once back inside the building, we dried off and dressed in varied pieces of left-over theatrical clothing that were lying around and continued on with our painting and set-building chores.  Things were proceeding along nicely until…we ran out of paint.

The Typhoon winds had diminished to a slightly more subdued but still constant roar.   “What are we going to do?  No paint and we really should finish this tonight.”  “Isn’t there paint in the Quonset storage hut over on the other side of the base?”  “Yeah, but...”  “Hell, the car’s right outside.” (Car being a subjective word for the tiny, two-cylinder Fiat that I had bought cheap months earlier.)  “Yeah, but the typhoon….”  “We could probably get there and back in 15 or 20 minutes.”  “Yeah, but the wind…and the red alert…and…”  

“C’MON!  LET’S DO IT!”

We ran to the Fiat in the pouring rain.  I started the engine and pulled away from the sheltering protection of the theater building into the gale-force winds blowing down the side street.  As the Typhoon tried its best to slide us off the road, I physically had to turn the steering wheel at a 45 degree angle into the left-to-right buffeting wind in order to make the car go straight ahead.  There was no need for the windshield wipers because the wind blew the rain right off the glass as soon as it hit.  To either side of the narrow road, trees whipped back and forth like frenzied go-go dancers.  I had to swerve occasionally on the deserted streets to avoid blowing pieces of debris, gathering puddles and overflowing gutters.  I drove at around 5 miles an hour, at one point passing about 200 meters from the concrete, man-made coastal reef that was being battered by infuriated ten and twenty-foot high ocean waves.  We finally pulled up to the front of the corrugated tin, worm-shaped Quonset hut where old furniture and other theater supplies were kept.  Unlocking the padlock on the door, Tim reached over and flipped an electrical switch just to the right, mildly lighting the interior with a row of ceiling-hung, wire protected bulbs.

“Holy Crap!  Do you see what I see?”  This wasn't here before!” “Oh, Man-n-n-n, we must have died on the way over here and gone straight to heaven!”

Just inside the door of the Quonset hut stood a magnificent, vintage, double keyboard Hammond organ with a full set of foot pedals - just waiting for the confluence of this night, this Typhoon and these two crazed, overly-theatrical, slightly insane semi-musicians.

We had to move a bunch of stuff around to find an outlet.  The organ slowly lit up, its internal motors warming with a slight hissing sound.  We pulled out as many stops as possible to get the full orchestral effect, cranked up the volume switch as far as it would go and placed ourselves in front of the keyboards – Tim in his accustomed place on the left, fingers poised over the lower register keys, me to the right for the higher notes.  We stood still for a few moments, letting the howling melody of the typhoon winds seep into our bodies, ears and minds. 

The sound that came from the organ when we pressed down on the first un-orchestrated but near-perfect combination of keys was sublime.  A swelling and magnificent chord rose out of the bowels of the Hammond organ, engulfed the pieces of furniture and stage props stored haphazardly in the hut, bounced off the inner wall of tin and swirled out the open door to be swept up and combined with the raging winds of the typhoon.  Should any other person have been crazy enough to be out of their home and braving the tropical storm at that moment, they would have thought that the world was coming to an end and that a celestial orchestra was announcing the rapture.  Tim and I let our improvisational fingering of chords combine with the elements, fading to a perfectly timed end as we slowly came back from the throes of inspiration to the tin walls and concrete floor of the dimly lit Quonset hut set in the middle of a military base on a small Pacific island.

We gathered what paint there was and drove once again through the grasping wind and battering rain to the theater.  We finished our painting and gazed contentedly upon what would be the final setting for the following day’s opening night.  It was just before dawn.  The Typhoon had subsided, leaving only an occasional burst of sprinkling rain.  Tim and I decided that we should probably take final advantage of our exhausted and slightly tingly state to drive over to the eastern side of the island to catch the sunrise.  We drove by wind-battered homes and trees as the sky became gradually lighter.  We hurried to catch the first rays of sunrise on the ocean.  We weren't sure of the best route to take, but simply continued on in a generally eastern direction.  Just as we topped a steep hill and began a descent toward the distant ocean shore, the sun broke the horizon, rising off the ocean from a reddish sliver to a yellow half-globe, as two rainbows shot from either side, curving outward toward the island and a point to the left and right of where we stood, leaning on the car by the side of the road, in the fresh new, storm-cleansed morning.