Post by 1940svintage on Aug 28, 2015 12:23:49 GMT -5
It was held at Inglewood Cemetery, in southwestern L.A. I saw Eddie there, among the attendees, which, including many men and women- employees and executives, I guessed- was composed of mainly Toons I had never heard of before up until that point. Margaret named as many as she could. Then, who should show up but none other than R.K Maroon, who stepped out of a long black limo when Margaret and I arrived. Bluto, Popeye, Elmer Fudd, Herman the Mouse, Felix the Cat and Goofy unloaded the casket from the hearse, and Yosemite Sam bore the weight of the casket from below.
This odd procession walked towards the grave, and I noticed Felix the cat was fighting back tears.
I noticed Tom and Jerry, Catnip the Cat and Andy Panda directly across from me. Watching the Toons carrying the casket were Porky and Petunia Pig, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow, Jerky Turkey, Red Hot Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf (Tex Avery's zoot-suited one. Not Zeke the wolf) and Droopy.
My eyes traveled up a ways and I saw Junior and George, more of Tex Avery's hound dog characters, Practical Pig, Sylvester the cat, Fifer and Fiddler Pig also in that row.
This, to me was even more heartbreaking than Acme's funeral. Who today remembers these once beloved characters?
Goofy exclaimed, "Gawrsh! Pall bearin's shore hard work ain't it? A-hyuck!", which I found to be in really bad taste.
Popeye replied, jokingly, "We're bearing Paul? I thought we were bearing Acme."
"Ah hates funerals," groused Yosemite Sam from under the casket.
Elmer Fudd chastised him, "How can you kid awound at a time wike this?"
Bluto must have thought the same thing as me, because as soon as the casket was set down, he and Popeye immediately started to have a fistfight. The pall-bearers peeled away from the sides of the casket, leaving poor Yosemite Sam with the full weight of it
He pulled out his pistols and hollered "Hold it, ya varmints! I'll plant him myself!"and, with that, he unceremoniously dumped the coffin in the grave. He continued, hollering to Foghorn Leghorn, "Awright, you big-mouthed bantam….preach!"
Valiant turned his head, and I followed his gaze, where I noticed Maroon walking up to Jessica, taking her arm and saying something to her, and the two left to talk privately. Valiant followed them.
I didn't have time to think about what just happened when Foghorn cleared his throat and began his sermon.
He drawled, "Today we commit the body of Brother Acme into the cold, cold, I say, I say, the cold, cold ground. We say goodbye to a man who was more generous than a homely widow with Sunday supper. Why, when Toonkind was splattered forth upon this landscape, we wandered these hills without a home, that is, until Brother Acme painted up his backyard for us to live in, thereby creating the old, I say old neighborhood…Toontown."
He droned on like this, and my eyes wandered upon Casper the friendly ghost accidentally scaring away Donald Duck, daffy Duck, Baby Huey, Hippety Hopper, Dick Tracy and Tubby the Tuba when he asked if someone would be his friend. (The old "IT'S A G-G-G-G-HOSSTTT! AHHHHH!" bit. You know what I'm talking about, right?)
Eddie came back from wherever he had followed Jessica and Maroon to, when Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and human actors Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable came driving up the hill to play golf, heaven knows where. I couldn't hear the conversation very well, but this was the best I could make out.
Bugs stepped out of the car and turned to Valiant, chewing a carrot. "Pardon me, Doc," he said, " I hate to interrupt your bird watchin', but is this the right boneyard for the Acme funeral?"
Valiant glanced at the four of them, decked out in golf playing outfits. Bogart was about to say something, but Bugs cut him off, "I know, I know, Doc… tis a hill of beans in this crazy, mixed up world."
He turned to Gable and said "Don't it bother you that he's always sayin' the same thing?"
Foghorn wrapped up his sermon. "We shed no tears for we know that Marvin is going to a better place. That high, high, I say that high-larious place in the sky."
With that, the Harvey Toons jack-in-the-box logo springing out of Acme's casket to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel" with a giant funeral wreath attached. The dirt was filled in by several cartoon buzzards, and eventually, it was only Eddie, Margaret and I left at the gravesite.
I whispered to Margaret "Could you maybe wait in the car? I'd like a moment alone to say a prayer for Mr. Acme." She said of course, and waited in her car.
He glanced over at me, and said, "Oh. It's you. I thought it was Captain Cleaver. He's from T.P.D, in Homicide." A long and awkward pause followed. "You know, I hate this place, kid." He said, suddenly turning towards me. "I always hated this place. Come on," he waved over to me, heading towards the right, "I wanna show you something."
He led me down a small hill where we stopped at a large marker labeled "Valiant". It bore three names. One read "Fredrick Valiant, Beloved Father and Husband, March 24th 1865-May 27th 1916". The second was, "Elizabeth Valiant, Beloved Wife and Mother, August 2nd 1869- March 15th 1926".
The final one read "Theodore J. Valiant, Brother, June 22nd 1895-August 13th 1942"
"Your family?" I guessed. I knew who Teddy was, but the first two must be his parents. Freddy and Betty, and their sons, Teddy and Eddie. Cute rhyme.
Eddie looked at me with a lost, distant look on his face. "Yeah… and Teddy was my brother. He was the brains behind our cases, and he did a lot of the detecting, while I did a lot of the legwork. He was a regular clothes-horse. Raked up high bills at Bullock's. He loved to dance, too. He loved Glenn Miller and all those Big Band leaders. We did almost everything together, even when we were kids, growing up in the circus with Ma and Pop. He was the one that brought Dolores and me together back when she was still our secretary. God, I remember back in Catalina like it was yesterday. It was August, back in '42; a few days before the accident that killed him. We goofed around, taking pictures and posing with sombreros and ukuleles… back when I still knew how to goof around. God damn it I miss him." His voice broke slightly. There was a silence for a few seconds. I really wished I could have met Teddy Valiant. He seemed like a truly great man. Without him, I truly think Eddie was…incomplete. It was Eddie and Teddy, Teddy and Eddie, Valiant and Valiant. Now…. it's just Valiant.
"Five years, yesterday." said Eddie, startling me. "Five years of staring down at the bottom of a bottle. You don't know what it's like, kid. You haven't lost someone you love."
"Mr. Valiant, there are many ways to lose someone you love. Right now, I'm stuck thousands of miles away from my family, and I have no idea if they even know where I am. I'm as lost to them as Teddy is to you, practically, and I can assure you, it hurts like crazy. We're both lost now, you and I. We're in the same boat."
I waited for him to say something, but he said nothing. "The only way we can find our way back is to let the past go already. It's dragging you down, and it's dragging me down."
He snorted derisively. "You gotta be what.. 18? What part of your past could you possibly regretting?"
"I did something incredibly stupid that wound me up here. I didn't even tell anyone I did it, and now my family's probably worried to death about me."
"Is that all? I'm practically responsible for Teddy's death. I was the one who wanted to go into a little dive down on Yukster Street in Toontown to chase this guy who'd stolen a zillion simoleons from the Toontown bank. He dropped a piano on us from 15 stories….. I can still see that last look on Teddy's face when I realized it wasn't a Toon piano. He was still laughing, thinking we could just walk it off. I can still hear the sound of that wood splintering as Teddy was crushed under it. It shoulda been me that was under there. I shoulda pushed him out of the way."
His voice was raw and harsh. This took a lot to open up to me like this. After all these years it was still a fresh wound.
"You're right, Mr. Valiant," I began, at first not knowing what to say (I'm usually bad at comforting people), but I found my voice and said, "I don't know what you went through, but I do know that you aren't defined by what you did or didn't do that day. You aren't the one to blame for that. If you keep looking backwards, you can't go forwards. The last thing you say Teddy was doing before the piano fell was laughing, right? Remember him like that. He'd want you to remember him like that. It's important to remember him like that. And it wouldn't hurt to crack a smile every now and then, you know. A wise rabbit once told me that a laugh can be a very powerful thing."
I turned to face him directly, "Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have." Okay, this was pushing it. Roger already said that to him, so I was waiting for a how-did-you-know-that look, but I got nothing.
Instead, he smiled bitterly and said "Do you expect me to go out there and fight my demons -or whatever you're trying to say I should do-with a laugh?" he asked, bitterly.
"No, but I do expect you to not give up." Remembering what Uncle George and I talked about, I said, "Laughter makes us human. That's what these Toons are really for. We need something to recapture that pure love, and joy when we were young, before the world royally screwed us up. Toons are the physical embodiment of that pure love and innocence and imagination, and if we lose that, if we lose those basic things that make us human. We might as well be nothing. Be thankful you're still alive. Don't sit there wallowing in alcohol and regret Teddy wouldn't want that, I'm sure. You're not a pickle, so don't brine like one. And God knows that you've probably consumed enough alcohol over the past few years to brine and preserve you for a century. But just…just don't give up. That's my point. You need to live again. You need to solve this case of yours. Go home, back to your office and solve this thing. You'll feel better when this is all over. Everything will be different then."
"How do you know?"
"It's just a feeling. You helped almost everyone in Toontown at some point or another, I hear. It's time to help yourself. Don't let the one bad thing that happened to you stop you from living again."
After what seemed like an eternity, he said, "You're right, kid. I don't know why I opened up to a total stranger, but you're right." He exhaled through his nose slowly, "I'll go. I don't know what I'm going to do, exactly, with what I got about Acme's murder, but you're right."
"Trust me. All the answers are waiting at your office. You just have to find out where they're hiding. I know it still hurts to talk about this, but the only person who can make it stop is you. So don't drink and feel sorry about yourself. Don't be a pickle. Be…. Be a cucumber."
He gave me an odd look, but flashed a small smile. "Thanks for that bit of…incredibly weird advice, kid. You're not half bad. If I need you for anything, I'll drop you a line. I still got your card."
"I think you had better just come and pay a call personally."
"I will"
"Oh…Mr. Valiant?" I called.
"Yeah, kid?"
"Good luck."
"Thanks, kid. Thank you for that."
With that, he left, headed to his car, while I headed towards Aunt Margret's car. Our trip back was mostly in silence, but I'm sure she heard much of what I said to Eddie. I guess I did ok, then.
Later that afternoon, I pulled Uncle George aside and asked him to drive me back to LA.
"Is it important? Does it have to do with the case?" he asked, urgently.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm going to be risking my neck spying on what'll happen next. If you don't hear from me- and I'll call when I'm done- I'll probably be Downtown. In Downtown Toontown, that is."
He said, concerned, "I certainly hope you aren't going to do anything illegal, young man," I felt like a kid getting scolded by his father. "But," he continued, "if you really feel you know what you're doing, I suppose I can't stop you. After all, my job, along with Toontown itself, hangs in the balance."He said as we got in his car.
"It's not nearly as dramatic as that."
"What's your plan, anyway?"
"My plan," I said, as we were on our way to LA, "is to spy on what I know will happen next." Briefly, I told him what you'll be reading shortly enough. "Probably, I'll grab a weapon- something heavy- and try to help Valiant. My goal is to be kidnapped by the weasels, and hopefully distract them long enough so Eddie can solve the case without them on his tail."
George said darkly, "I know what those weasels are capable of. Make your one phone call to me, and I'll be over there as soon as I can to get you out of there, if you need me to. Only if you need me to. They'll listen to what I have to say if you use my name. Toons have a lot of respect for their animators." We pulled up at the corner of South hope and 11th and I climbed out of the car. "Be safe, Adam. Please?"
"I will, Uncle George", I called as he drove back to Thousand Oaks. "I promise!"
"I hope..."
This odd procession walked towards the grave, and I noticed Felix the cat was fighting back tears.
I noticed Tom and Jerry, Catnip the Cat and Andy Panda directly across from me. Watching the Toons carrying the casket were Porky and Petunia Pig, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow, Jerky Turkey, Red Hot Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf (Tex Avery's zoot-suited one. Not Zeke the wolf) and Droopy.
My eyes traveled up a ways and I saw Junior and George, more of Tex Avery's hound dog characters, Practical Pig, Sylvester the cat, Fifer and Fiddler Pig also in that row.
This, to me was even more heartbreaking than Acme's funeral. Who today remembers these once beloved characters?
Goofy exclaimed, "Gawrsh! Pall bearin's shore hard work ain't it? A-hyuck!", which I found to be in really bad taste.
Popeye replied, jokingly, "We're bearing Paul? I thought we were bearing Acme."
"Ah hates funerals," groused Yosemite Sam from under the casket.
Elmer Fudd chastised him, "How can you kid awound at a time wike this?"
Bluto must have thought the same thing as me, because as soon as the casket was set down, he and Popeye immediately started to have a fistfight. The pall-bearers peeled away from the sides of the casket, leaving poor Yosemite Sam with the full weight of it
He pulled out his pistols and hollered "Hold it, ya varmints! I'll plant him myself!"and, with that, he unceremoniously dumped the coffin in the grave. He continued, hollering to Foghorn Leghorn, "Awright, you big-mouthed bantam….preach!"
Valiant turned his head, and I followed his gaze, where I noticed Maroon walking up to Jessica, taking her arm and saying something to her, and the two left to talk privately. Valiant followed them.
I didn't have time to think about what just happened when Foghorn cleared his throat and began his sermon.
He drawled, "Today we commit the body of Brother Acme into the cold, cold, I say, I say, the cold, cold ground. We say goodbye to a man who was more generous than a homely widow with Sunday supper. Why, when Toonkind was splattered forth upon this landscape, we wandered these hills without a home, that is, until Brother Acme painted up his backyard for us to live in, thereby creating the old, I say old neighborhood…Toontown."
He droned on like this, and my eyes wandered upon Casper the friendly ghost accidentally scaring away Donald Duck, daffy Duck, Baby Huey, Hippety Hopper, Dick Tracy and Tubby the Tuba when he asked if someone would be his friend. (The old "IT'S A G-G-G-G-HOSSTTT! AHHHHH!" bit. You know what I'm talking about, right?)
Eddie came back from wherever he had followed Jessica and Maroon to, when Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and human actors Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable came driving up the hill to play golf, heaven knows where. I couldn't hear the conversation very well, but this was the best I could make out.
Bugs stepped out of the car and turned to Valiant, chewing a carrot. "Pardon me, Doc," he said, " I hate to interrupt your bird watchin', but is this the right boneyard for the Acme funeral?"
Valiant glanced at the four of them, decked out in golf playing outfits. Bogart was about to say something, but Bugs cut him off, "I know, I know, Doc… tis a hill of beans in this crazy, mixed up world."
He turned to Gable and said "Don't it bother you that he's always sayin' the same thing?"
Foghorn wrapped up his sermon. "We shed no tears for we know that Marvin is going to a better place. That high, high, I say that high-larious place in the sky."
With that, the Harvey Toons jack-in-the-box logo springing out of Acme's casket to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel" with a giant funeral wreath attached. The dirt was filled in by several cartoon buzzards, and eventually, it was only Eddie, Margaret and I left at the gravesite.
I whispered to Margaret "Could you maybe wait in the car? I'd like a moment alone to say a prayer for Mr. Acme." She said of course, and waited in her car.
He glanced over at me, and said, "Oh. It's you. I thought it was Captain Cleaver. He's from T.P.D, in Homicide." A long and awkward pause followed. "You know, I hate this place, kid." He said, suddenly turning towards me. "I always hated this place. Come on," he waved over to me, heading towards the right, "I wanna show you something."
He led me down a small hill where we stopped at a large marker labeled "Valiant". It bore three names. One read "Fredrick Valiant, Beloved Father and Husband, March 24th 1865-May 27th 1916". The second was, "Elizabeth Valiant, Beloved Wife and Mother, August 2nd 1869- March 15th 1926".
The final one read "Theodore J. Valiant, Brother, June 22nd 1895-August 13th 1942"
"Your family?" I guessed. I knew who Teddy was, but the first two must be his parents. Freddy and Betty, and their sons, Teddy and Eddie. Cute rhyme.
Eddie looked at me with a lost, distant look on his face. "Yeah… and Teddy was my brother. He was the brains behind our cases, and he did a lot of the detecting, while I did a lot of the legwork. He was a regular clothes-horse. Raked up high bills at Bullock's. He loved to dance, too. He loved Glenn Miller and all those Big Band leaders. We did almost everything together, even when we were kids, growing up in the circus with Ma and Pop. He was the one that brought Dolores and me together back when she was still our secretary. God, I remember back in Catalina like it was yesterday. It was August, back in '42; a few days before the accident that killed him. We goofed around, taking pictures and posing with sombreros and ukuleles… back when I still knew how to goof around. God damn it I miss him." His voice broke slightly. There was a silence for a few seconds. I really wished I could have met Teddy Valiant. He seemed like a truly great man. Without him, I truly think Eddie was…incomplete. It was Eddie and Teddy, Teddy and Eddie, Valiant and Valiant. Now…. it's just Valiant.
"Five years, yesterday." said Eddie, startling me. "Five years of staring down at the bottom of a bottle. You don't know what it's like, kid. You haven't lost someone you love."
"Mr. Valiant, there are many ways to lose someone you love. Right now, I'm stuck thousands of miles away from my family, and I have no idea if they even know where I am. I'm as lost to them as Teddy is to you, practically, and I can assure you, it hurts like crazy. We're both lost now, you and I. We're in the same boat."
I waited for him to say something, but he said nothing. "The only way we can find our way back is to let the past go already. It's dragging you down, and it's dragging me down."
He snorted derisively. "You gotta be what.. 18? What part of your past could you possibly regretting?"
"I did something incredibly stupid that wound me up here. I didn't even tell anyone I did it, and now my family's probably worried to death about me."
"Is that all? I'm practically responsible for Teddy's death. I was the one who wanted to go into a little dive down on Yukster Street in Toontown to chase this guy who'd stolen a zillion simoleons from the Toontown bank. He dropped a piano on us from 15 stories….. I can still see that last look on Teddy's face when I realized it wasn't a Toon piano. He was still laughing, thinking we could just walk it off. I can still hear the sound of that wood splintering as Teddy was crushed under it. It shoulda been me that was under there. I shoulda pushed him out of the way."
His voice was raw and harsh. This took a lot to open up to me like this. After all these years it was still a fresh wound.
"You're right, Mr. Valiant," I began, at first not knowing what to say (I'm usually bad at comforting people), but I found my voice and said, "I don't know what you went through, but I do know that you aren't defined by what you did or didn't do that day. You aren't the one to blame for that. If you keep looking backwards, you can't go forwards. The last thing you say Teddy was doing before the piano fell was laughing, right? Remember him like that. He'd want you to remember him like that. It's important to remember him like that. And it wouldn't hurt to crack a smile every now and then, you know. A wise rabbit once told me that a laugh can be a very powerful thing."
I turned to face him directly, "Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have." Okay, this was pushing it. Roger already said that to him, so I was waiting for a how-did-you-know-that look, but I got nothing.
Instead, he smiled bitterly and said "Do you expect me to go out there and fight my demons -or whatever you're trying to say I should do-with a laugh?" he asked, bitterly.
"No, but I do expect you to not give up." Remembering what Uncle George and I talked about, I said, "Laughter makes us human. That's what these Toons are really for. We need something to recapture that pure love, and joy when we were young, before the world royally screwed us up. Toons are the physical embodiment of that pure love and innocence and imagination, and if we lose that, if we lose those basic things that make us human. We might as well be nothing. Be thankful you're still alive. Don't sit there wallowing in alcohol and regret Teddy wouldn't want that, I'm sure. You're not a pickle, so don't brine like one. And God knows that you've probably consumed enough alcohol over the past few years to brine and preserve you for a century. But just…just don't give up. That's my point. You need to live again. You need to solve this case of yours. Go home, back to your office and solve this thing. You'll feel better when this is all over. Everything will be different then."
"How do you know?"
"It's just a feeling. You helped almost everyone in Toontown at some point or another, I hear. It's time to help yourself. Don't let the one bad thing that happened to you stop you from living again."
After what seemed like an eternity, he said, "You're right, kid. I don't know why I opened up to a total stranger, but you're right." He exhaled through his nose slowly, "I'll go. I don't know what I'm going to do, exactly, with what I got about Acme's murder, but you're right."
"Trust me. All the answers are waiting at your office. You just have to find out where they're hiding. I know it still hurts to talk about this, but the only person who can make it stop is you. So don't drink and feel sorry about yourself. Don't be a pickle. Be…. Be a cucumber."
He gave me an odd look, but flashed a small smile. "Thanks for that bit of…incredibly weird advice, kid. You're not half bad. If I need you for anything, I'll drop you a line. I still got your card."
"I think you had better just come and pay a call personally."
"I will"
"Oh…Mr. Valiant?" I called.
"Yeah, kid?"
"Good luck."
"Thanks, kid. Thank you for that."
With that, he left, headed to his car, while I headed towards Aunt Margret's car. Our trip back was mostly in silence, but I'm sure she heard much of what I said to Eddie. I guess I did ok, then.
Later that afternoon, I pulled Uncle George aside and asked him to drive me back to LA.
"Is it important? Does it have to do with the case?" he asked, urgently.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm going to be risking my neck spying on what'll happen next. If you don't hear from me- and I'll call when I'm done- I'll probably be Downtown. In Downtown Toontown, that is."
He said, concerned, "I certainly hope you aren't going to do anything illegal, young man," I felt like a kid getting scolded by his father. "But," he continued, "if you really feel you know what you're doing, I suppose I can't stop you. After all, my job, along with Toontown itself, hangs in the balance."He said as we got in his car.
"It's not nearly as dramatic as that."
"What's your plan, anyway?"
"My plan," I said, as we were on our way to LA, "is to spy on what I know will happen next." Briefly, I told him what you'll be reading shortly enough. "Probably, I'll grab a weapon- something heavy- and try to help Valiant. My goal is to be kidnapped by the weasels, and hopefully distract them long enough so Eddie can solve the case without them on his tail."
George said darkly, "I know what those weasels are capable of. Make your one phone call to me, and I'll be over there as soon as I can to get you out of there, if you need me to. Only if you need me to. They'll listen to what I have to say if you use my name. Toons have a lot of respect for their animators." We pulled up at the corner of South hope and 11th and I climbed out of the car. "Be safe, Adam. Please?"
"I will, Uncle George", I called as he drove back to Thousand Oaks. "I promise!"
"I hope..."