Henry's Grapes of Wrath

I thought that everything that could happen to me for good or ill had already happened, but leave it to Henry to prove me wrong: for the first time in my life I have been serenaded on (faux) radio. From George Moneo's vast collection of crummy records (judging from this one), Henry has dedicated to his "minder" and "stenographer" Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me." If somebody is watching (or listening) to him, he should be grateful and I think it would be possible to serenade each and every listener to yesterday's 11:00 PM broadcast and still have a good chunk of time left for Henry's inanities and George's pontifications.

Val, who has a low attention span, has either talked himself out or tired of talking to a wall in expectation that the wall will answer. George Moneo, a more staid personality but just as vapid when in a serious mode or self-important mood, manages to keep Henry on point most of the time and prods him along without recourse to last week's symbolic cattle prod ("Don't Get Stuck on Stupid"). My having mentioned the cattle prod here caused it to be banished from the show. Any observation which I make about the show, however casual, becomes a matter of grave deliberation for the Hialeah Hill Boys and leads them into a frenzied scramble to plug every hole in the dike that I've pointed out.

I believe, however, that I may have unintentionally hurt Henry's feelings in my review of last week's show by pointing out his propensity to get stuck on certain words, not difficult words, just certain words. He has interpreted this as my making fun of his stammering. After observing that George Moneo has all his "neurons," Henry lamented that "unfortunately I have to stammer through the broadcast and be castigated for it." In fact, I was simply noting George's sadistic tendancy to do so. I believe now that stammering may have been a problem for Henry all his life, one which he has largely overcome except in moments of great excitement. If so, Henry is to be commended for having gained substantial command over his speech and even more so for not letting his limitations silence him. In any case, Henry's boyish voice, with its charming tendancy to "crack" at inappropriate moments, makes the occasional truncation sound more natural than it would in a man who had successfully completed puberty.