wouldn’t know where to go
if didn’t have somebody
that knowed where to go
From the line “I thought I’d go and get something to eat some place, only I wouldn’t know where to go if I didn’t have somebody with me that knowed where to go.” from the play, June Moon, a play by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner. Based on the Lardner short story “Some Like Them Cold.”
Back when I was a kid growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan in a family of 11 kids, it was rare to find myself alone in the family room with the TV.
But that’s where I was one night when I was about 12 years old.
It was bedtime and I should have been in bed but I wanted to stay up, I always wanted to stay up, and watch TV.
My Mom came in and looked at the clock and looked at me and I played my secret card.
Can we just see what is on public television?
Educational or Public TV had just arrived in our area and my Mom would never deny access to something educational.
See I would watch anything if it was on TV and I would even watch educational television if it meant not going to bed.
And you never knew what you might see our the light local PBS station.
She rolled her eyes and said okay, just for a few minutes.
I turned the TV to UHF and then turned the dial the channel 35 and sat on the floor.
What ever was on had already started and we missed the introduction.
It seemed to be a television production of a play but it was just two people, a man and woman who had just met and where on a train and talking.
The dialogue was nothing and everything at the same time and the timing of the two actors was so quick that while nothing was really happening I got drawn into their conversation.
The odd thing was, so was my Mom.
First she turned to watch for a bit.
Then she sat on the edge of chair.
And then she sat back and just took in the play.
There was a quality to the writing, the words and the acting that you could not ignore and we watched the whole play WITHOUT COMMERICIALS.
We watched the entire play together and when it was done, we looked at the clock and it was past 11 p.m.
“Get to bed,” Mom said, “that was fun.”
And she gave me hug a off I went.
Years later I can still remember parts of the dialogue and the other day I started to try and search out the play based on what I could remember.
It turns out what we had watched was a special presentation of the play, June Moon, by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner and when I learned that so many lights clicked on.
The pacing the timing of Mr. Kaufman famous for his Broadway hits.
The dialogue and words of Mr. Lardner famous for his short stories.
Stories about the new kid from the small town arriving in the big city.
Stories where the kid would say, “I thought I’d go and get something to eat some place, only I wouldn’t know where to go if I didn’t have somebody with me that knowed where to go.”
If you haven’t read Mr. Lardner I encourage you to do so, especially the short story, Golden Honeymoon where Mr. Lardner writes, “After dinner we made them come up to our house and we all set in the parlor, which the young woman had give us the use of to entertain company. We begun talking over old times and Mother said she was a-scared Mrs. Hartsell would find it tiresome listening to we three talk over old times, but as it turned out they wasn’t much chance for nobody else to talk with Mrs. Hartsell in the company. I have heard lots of women that could go it, but Hartsell’s wife takes the cake of all the women I ever seen. She told us the family history of everybody in the State of Michigan and bragged for a half hour about her son, who she said is in the drug business in Grand Rapids, and a Rotarian.”
Its as if you have to read that paragraph in one breath.
Reading Lardner is like getting on a train and you can’t get off until the next station.
I thought I’d go and get something to eat some place, only I wouldn’t know where to go if I didn’t have somebody with me that knowed where to go.
Just something charming about those words as well as the memory of the first time I heard them.
