Randolph Caldecott: A dainty dish. (Undated)

"Me, eternally ThePotWizard …"

Everyone stumbles into and back out of different personas as they proceed through life. After I left The Old Home Place, I began to think of myself as David, the single acoustical performer, complete with an agent who would book me into inappropriate venues. There might not be any better way to master any skill than to attempt to deploy it in inappropriate venues, places where the audience is not particularly predisposed toward acceptance. Most would rise no further than indifference, reinforcing that nagging sense that I was an imposter pretending to mimic myself, a common notion among any budding creative class member. I persisted so that when my to-be first wife, Betsy, finished her university studies, completed her mandatory three-month practicums, and found her first professional job—In Northeast Pennsylvania—, I had convinced myself that I was a songwriter of some prominence. I hadn't hit it big yet, but success tends to be elusive in those contexts and should not be confused with anything other than ordinary. I accompanied her backward toward an Eastern Eden at the other end of our Oregon Trail.

After years of living in shared apartments in Sleezeattle, finding and renting our own apartment back east seemed terribly grown up. We landed in a small college town, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. In June of 1974, it was a place so quaint that it seemed to us as if we'd traveled backward in time to the early nineteen-fifties. We rented the main floor of a stone foundation three-story with a Dutch front door, a porch swing, and eighteen-inch thick walls. The farmer we rented from wasn't interested in renting to unmarried couples, so we pretended to be married, which rendered us a little paranoid. Betsy started her job and I worked casual labor helping to remodel a store on the edge of town and writing songs through the evenings. An old roommate came to visit and stayed. He worked as a cook through college and easily found a job at a local hotel. I followed shortly after, agreeing to take the lowly job of pot washer because I didn't want or need any more career-minded distractions. I was a songwriter and performer, and I feared any experience that might threaten my ability to practice or perform. I faced no danger of burning my guitar fingers as a pot washer and I could spend most days in my head ruminating on my latest lyrics.

It turned out that I had a gift for lifting cooked-on goop off of cooking vessels. I insisted upon wearing rubber gloves, a concession the management quickly agreed to, so I could work in much hotter water than had my predecessors or the poor devil that worked the night shift. Hotter water made the messes mostly clean up themselves. My to-be mother-in-law held a master’s degree in Home Economics and she had always insisted that one should always let water work for them when washing pots and dishes, and I took her advice to heart. I could work faster, too, so I would have already replenished the supply of clean pots and pans well before any of the chefs needed replacements. I became a bit of a legend in that kitchen. I declared myself ThePotWizard.

As I've gone through my life, I've frequently wondered if I was living up to my heritage. Have I been a worthy successor to a world my ancestors so deeply influenced or have I proven to be a disappointment? I believed then and am still convinced today that stumbling into my PotWizard persona was one of the greatest gifts ever brought into this world. It didn't change the world but it sure changed me. I proved to myself that I could conjure up nobility out of even the most demeaning circumstances and that my successes needn't prove contingent upon achieving anyone else's notion of success. I could be the best if I set my head toward it.

I continued playing gigs on weekends after I found an agent back there. He booked me to open a show in Allentown for a sadomasochistic rock group from Glasgow. The audience was not pleased when I sat on that high stool in the middle of an otherwise open stage and set to singing a set of original songs accompanied only by a distinctly other-than-head-banging acoustic Martin. They roared their disapproval. My experience performing in inappropriate venues reached a new apex that evening and I began seriously considering getting out of the music business as I quietly drove back to Bloomsburg. Nobody at the hotel needed to know their PotWizard's sense of humiliation as he returned to his steaming sinks and set to work doing what he did best in the world. The hotel manager passed me side gigs, recognizing perhaps leadership potential in my work style. I would be charged to drive the salad chef to hotel shows in New York City, Portland, Maine, and Washington, DC, and I would become a part of the hotel's catering crew where they'd dress me up in a black bow tie, tuck my long hair into my shirt collar, and set me on the raw table opening clams and oysters, and making small talk with all takers.

It would be a few more years before I managed to leave the music business behind me. By then, Betsy and I would have married and returned to Oregon, her insisting upon living nearer to Fambly. I would spend the first year back performing more than I ever had before, but the spell had been broken in Allentown that night. I'd reached a pinnacle only to wonder what might be next. Betsy's baby alarm had been ringing and there was no snooze alarm on it. I (finally) found the means to enroll in University where I frantically studied so I could stop going to University as quickly as I could and find a job capable of supporting a Fambly. We became Urban Pioneers, buying a run-down home in a transitioning neighborhood, settling in much as my ancestors had. Me, by then, eternally ThePotWizard in other contexts.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz