This
happened when I was teaching high school in Ann Arbor back in the 70s, and I
want to write it down so the story won’t be lost.
Half
of our school’s classroom windows looked out on a practice field where it had
snowed the night before. An enterprising student (we assume) had tromped out
the word “FUCK” in large letters, visible to all.
Our
school principal called in the Vice Principal, Al Gallup, and told him to “do
something about it.” Al put on his boots and headed for the field. He
immediately did some of his own tromping, changing the word “FUCK” to “BOOK.”
Problem solved. Our virtue was no longer in danger.
One
of my Creative Writing students, witnessing the restoration, was inspired by
what he witnessed. I have searched the piles of paperwork that accumulate after
a teaching career, but I have not been able to find “Four-letter Word Talkin’
Blues,” nor can I confirm my vague memory that a guy named Joe Welch was the
author. The style resembles “Alice’s Restaurant,” without the singing.
The
talkin’ blues narrates the story of a man who was troubled by all the immoral
graffiti that was appearing on buildings, bridges and sidewalks around the
country, so he got himself a supply of spray paint and traveled from coast to
coast, changing every “FUCK” he saw to “BOOK.” He was very thorough – so much
so that his mission led to an unintended consequence: the two words started to trade
meanings. The piece went on to give some examples. One I remember: Folks would
go to the library and request “an overnight fuck.” You can probably come up
with some other good ones on your own.
The
talkin’ blues ends with the spray-painter’s being arrested. He is taken to the
police station, where the officer says, “Fuck him.”
Now, this here being a moral story, there’s
gotta be a moral message at the end. Somethin’ to turn us into better people
than we were before we heard the story, and something easy to hang onto for
folks who weren’t payin’ good attention. Maybe I’m just not a moral enough
person, but I can’t quite figure out the moral of my own story. Mine or Joe
Welch’s, if that’s really who wrote the poem, though a friend of Joe’s says he
didn’t. So it’s up to you folks who have stayed with me this far to come up
with your own moral message. If you have one, I’d sure love to hear it.
"In the lavatory Caldwell is puzzled by the word BOOK gouged in square capitals in the wall above the urinal. Close examination reveals that this word has been laid over another; the F had been extended and closed to make a B, the U and C closed into O's, the K left as it was. Willing to learn, even by the last flash of light before annihilation, he absorbs the fact, totally new to him, that every FUCK could be made into a BOOK. But who would do such a thing? The psychology of the boy (it must have been a boy) who altered the original word, who desecrated the desecration, is a mystery to him. The mystery depresses him; leaving the lavatory, he tries to enter that mind, to picture that hand, and as he walks down the hall the heaviest weight yet seems laid upon his heart by that unimaginable boy's hand." - John Updike, The Centaur
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