Part 3: Chapter 45
It’s New Year’s Eve, and 1978 is almost history. Dennis needs to convince himself that he and Leigh are on the right track and are doing the right thing. (Hanky-panky notwithstanding.) To do this, Dennis calls up Arnie to see if he is interested in continuing their tradition of spending 31 December together. Before Arnie gets on the line, Regina (ecstatic to hear from Dennis — my, how times have changed) tells Dennis that both she and Michael are afraid to talk to their son. His anger explodes at the drop of a hat. She fears she may be losing him somehow.
Once on the phone, Arnie sounds like a different person. Dennis barely recognizes his friend’s voice. The two old friends (and one new one) make plans to see 1979 across the threshold.
Dennis goes to Arnie’s house and is met by someone he doesn’t know. It is an old man in a young man’s body. It is LeBay. Dennis and Arnie drink beers, eat popcorn and see in the New Year. After, Arnie drives Dennis home. On the way they make a few stops… into the past…
Before we officially begin our dive into Chapter 45, we here at LARP Co. just want to take this opportunity to wish everyone who celebrates it a Happy Silver Shamrock Day.
As you well know, 23 October is the day that the action begins in Tommy Lee Wallace’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982). It is a blood-red-letter day for fans of the science-fiction/horror genre, the writing of Nigel Kneale, the sexy antics of Pittsburgh’s own Tom Atkins, and the appeasement of ancient Irish gods with child sacrifice.
That’s one helluva Venn diagram!
Okay, with that bit of housekeeping out of the way, where should we begin? Well, how’s about with Guy Lombardo and Dick Clark?
Who and who?
Sadly, both Guy Lombardo and Dick Clark are probably names lost in the mists of time to many of you younger Blog-o-weeners. So it goes. To Americans of certain vintages, when New Year’s Eve is mentioned both/either Lombardo and/or Clark spring to mind. For some, Ol’ Guy and Dick were the only dates they had on 31 December.
Born in London, Ontario, in 1902, Gaetano Alberto “Guy” Lombardo formed the Royal Canadians in 1924 with his brothers Carmen, Lebert and Victor, and some other cats from his hometown. Lombardo and the Royal Canadians recorded music for a number of labels, including Columbia, Brunswick, Decca, and RCA Victor. All in all, it is estimated that they sold anywhere from 100 to 300 million records.
Lombardo is perhaps best-remembered for his New Year’s Eve broadcasts with his band. Beginning in 1929, the Royal Canadians played live over the airwaves from the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. These yearly programs were immensely popular. In 1956, their first television special was aired on CBS. In 1959, the show was moved to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel where it remained until Lombardo’s death in 1977. Every program was ended with the song that became synonymous with both the holiday and the bandleader: “Auld Lang Syne.”
Richard Wagstaff Clark (Wagstaff? Wagstaff?!) — better known as Dick Clark — was born in Bronxville, New York, in 1929. Working his way up from the mailroom (literally!) of a local AM radio station, Clark would take the reins of a local Philadelphia television show in 1956 after the original host was arrested for drunk driving. That show — later renamed American Bandstand — would go national in 1957, and Dick Clark’s fame was cemented as “America’s Oldest Teenager.” American Bandstand would run for 37 seasons in different forms and on different networks.
Not only was Dick Clark’s name synonymous with rock’n roll, but, beginning in 1972, it became associated with New Year’s Eve, too. New Year’s Rockin’ Eve started out on NBC, but soon moved to ABC. Clark, as both producer and host of the show, looked to differentiate his show from Lombardo’s. By focusing on rock’n roll he tapped into the youth market and ratings soared. With Lombardo’s death, Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve took over as the end-of-the-year program people wanted to watch.
I’m all for parents being kinda cool about their underaged sons and daughters tipping one or two beers back for New Year’s, but all the adults in Christine talk like they’ve been slamming oat sodas with kids (and not even their own kids) ever since they were weened off the nipple. Sheesh!
Post-Prohibition (1933), the drinking age fluctuated state-by-state in the United States. In Stephen King’s home state of Maine, the age went from 21 to 20 in 1969, then down to 18 in 1972, then up to 20 in 1977 after the passage of the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which established a nationally standardized minimum age of 18 for participation in state and federal elections), then up again to 21 with the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984.
Whew! I could use a drink trying to follow that road.
In Pennsylvania, things are a bit easier to understand. The drinking age is 21. Always has been. The end.
Not only is Arnie putting the beer away like a second Prohibition is coming with the new year, but he is smoking Tiparillos.
Say what now?
The name Tiparillo is a mash-up of the words “tip” (as in the plastic tip you stick in your mouth) and “cigarillo” (a short, narrow cancer stick that sits somewhere between a cigar and a cigarette). The name was trademarked by the Pinkerton Tobacco Company (any relation to the Pinkerton Detective Agency?). Cigar makers hoped that the Tiparillo would attract younger smokers and women.
Nice… but no cigar.
(I regret nothing!)
Dennis’s ride home in Christine is a doozy, ain’t it? It’s a great scene. Maybe my favorite in Christine? (Although… there’s an upcoming scene in the school parking lot that I love quite a bit.) Dennis refers to Christine as “a hellish haunted house that rolled on Goodyear rubber” (415), and that certainly sums up his trip back through time. It’s just another example of the “Return of the Repressed” in the book. Christine is the vehicle (pun intended) of the past’s dead hands reaching out to the present. LeBay’s fury — as well as his Plymouth Fury — may be seeking to teach the shitters of the world a lesson, but it’s no accident that it’s to the 1950s he and she wish to return.
At his home and in Christine, we get the sense that Arnie has gone bye-bye almost fully. He is entirely at LeBay’s mercy (of which the old man has none). Going back to the King’s idea of the myth-pool, we seem to be in Werewolf territory as exemplified by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Arnie (like the good Dr. Jekyll) cannot control when LeBay (the evil Mr. Hyde) comes to the fore. In Part Two, there were many instances where Arnie is still there, still the dominant personality, still able to sense the danger that he is in. Here, on New Year’s Eve, that no longer seems to be the case. LeBay, like an alcoholic’s bottle or a drug addict’s line of coke, has chipped away at Arnie’s resolve until, finally, all that remains is the gnawing need for more.
When Dennis hobbles his way out to Christine, he can no longer tell himself that what he and Leigh suspect is happening is not true:
“I got hold of the doorhandles with one gloved hand, and a hopeless feeling of dread and revulsion swept over me. It wasn’t until then that I really began to believe it, deep inside, where a person lives. Because that doorhandle felt alive under my hand, It felt like some living beast that was asleep. The doorhandles didn’t feel like chromed steel; dear Christ, it felt like skin. It seemed as if I could squeeze it and wake the beast up, roaring.” (414)
Dennis goes on to speculate about what Christine is deep down inside:
“What was it? Some sort of afreet? An ordinary car that had somehow become the dangerous, stinking dwelling-place of a demon? A weird manifestation of LeBay’s lingering personality, a hellish haunted house that rolled on Goodyear rubber?” (414-5)
We’ve talked quite a bit throughout the month about what is happening in Christine, the novel, and Christine, the car. This is the closest we get to an actual answer, though it isn’t much of one. (We’ll get a little more information once Dennis talks to George LeBay. You tell me if it answers our questions.)
Before we pull into the motel up ahead, let’s go back to a term that Dennis brings up briefly: afreet.
Say what now?
Afreet (aka ifrit, efreet, afrit) is a type of Jinn in Islamic culture. They are associated with the underworld and identified with the spirits of the dead. In Islamic folklore, the afreet are ruthless, wicked, and formed out of smoke and fire. If summoned, an afreet can be controlled by a sorcerer to carry out blood vengeance and avenging murder.
That certainly seems to be what we have here, but was LeBay smart enough or savvy enough to conjure a demon — and a demon closely associated with a religion he’d know nothing about?
We shall see…
All righty… there’s the hotel, and here is where we stop for the night. While I’m checking under the bed and in the closet for demons, why don’t you read Part 3: Chapter 46. Dennis finally gets a hold of George LeBay, and they don’t talk about Ezra Pound. Ol’ Rollie LeBay gets painted in a whole new light, though. Better make sure your shoes are double-knotted, because what Dennis learns is gonna knock your socks off.
I’ve never been much of a fan of going out and celebrating New Year’s Eve. Personally, the thought of being around that many drunk people fills me with a fear and loathing that would make Hunter S. Thompson proud. (Or sad, seeing as he was a bit of a drunk himself.) There is one New Year’s Eve tradition that I am proud to have participated in, however — the Pickle Drop in Dillsburg, PA.
Dillsburg has no known connection to the pickle industry outside of having the word “dill” in its name. That didn’t stop the town fathers and mothers from replacing the light-up ball most New Year’s Eve celebrations use to denote the passing of the old year with a giant, anthropomorphic pickle. When the tradition first began in 1992, it was meant as a celebration of Dillsburg’s Irish founders. They used to drop the pickle at 7 p.m. because that was midnight in Ireland.
Now that makes me very suspicious. I hope we don’t have another “Silver Shamrock” situation brewing in Western Pennsylvania. I’d hate to think that a Dillsburgian Conal Cochran has some sort of pickle-based, mass-sacrifice planned for Samhain. It’s like I always say: fool me into buying Halloween masks loaded with pieces of Stonehenge that will trigger an enormous child sacrifice — shame on you; fool me into congregating in the town square beneath the visage of a giant, smiling, green, hell demon in the shape of a pickle — shame on me.
But, dammit, those deep-fried pickles are so delicious! Ah, well, you’d think I’d know better by now since…
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