Elizabeth Hand - Chip Crockett's Xmas Carol.pdf

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Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol
by Elizabeth Hand
"This day we shut out Nothing!"
"Pause," says a low voice. "Nothing?
Think!"
"On Christmas Day, we will shut out
from our fireside, Nothing."
"Not the shadow of a vast City where the
withered leaves are lying deep?" the
voice replies. "Not the shadow that
darkens the whole globe? Not the
shadow of the City of the Dead?"
Not even that …
—Charles Dickens, "What Christmas Is as
We Grow Older"
Tony was the one who called him.
"Brendan, man. I got some bad news."
Brendan felt a slight hitch in his stomach. He leaned
back in his chair, nudging his office door closed so
his secretary wouldn't hear. "Oh yes?"
"Chip Crockett died."
"Chip Crockett?" Brendan frowned, staring at his
computer screen as though he was afraid Tony
might materialize there. "You mean, like, The Chip
Crockett Show?"
"Yeah, man." Tony sighed deeply. "My brother Jake,
he just faxed me the obituary from the Daily News.
He died over the weekend but they just announced
it today."
There was a clunk through the phone receiver, a
background clatter of shouting voices and footsteps.
Tony was working as a substitute teacher at Saint
Ignatius High School. Brendan was amazed he'd
been able to hang onto the job at all, but he
gathered that being a substitute at Saint Ignatius
was way below being sanitation engineer in terms of
salary, benefits, and respect. He heard a crackle of
 
static as Tony ran into the corridor, shouting.
"Whoa! Nelson Crane, man! Slow down, okay? Okay.
Yeah, I guess it was lung cancer. Did you know he
smoked?"
"You're talking about Chip Crockett the kiddie show
host. Right?" Brendan rubbed his forehead, feeling
the beginning of a headache. "No, Tony, I didn't
know he smoked, because I don't actually know Chip
Crockett. Do you?"
"No. Remember Ogden Orff? That time he got the
milk jug stuck on his nose? 'That's my boy, Ogden
Orff!' " Tony intoned, then giggled. "And that
puppet? Ooga Booga? The one with the nose?"
"Ogden Orff." Brendan leaned back in his chair.
Despite himself, he smiled. "God, yeah, I remember.
And the other one—that puppet who sang? He did
'Mister Bassman' and that witch doctor song. I loved
him.…"
"That wasn't a puppet. That was Captain
Dingbat—you know, the D.J. character."
"Are you sure? I thought it was a puppet."
"No way, man. I mean, yes! I am ab-so-lute-ly
sure—"
An earsplitting whistle echoed over the line. Brendan
winced and held the phone at arm's-length, drew it
back in time to hear Tony's voice fading.
"Hey man, that's the bell, I gotta go. I'll fax this to
you before I leave, okay? Oh, and hey, we're still on
for Thursday, right?"
Brendan nodded. "Right," he said, but Tony was
already gone.
Late that afternoon the fax arrived. Brendan's
secretary gave it to him, the curling cover sheet
covered with Tony's nearly illegible scrawl.
OGDEN ORFF LIVES! SEE YA THURS. AT
CHILDE ROLAND.
TONY
 
Brendan tossed this and turned to the Daily News
obituary, two long columns complete with photo.
The faxed image was fragmented but still
recognizable—a boyishly handsome man in suit and
skinny tie, grinning at a puppet with a huge nose.
Above him was the headline:
AU REVOIR, OOGA BOOGA
Brendan shook his head. "Poor Ooga Booga," he
murmured, then smoothed the paper on his desk.
Iconic kiddie show host Chip Crockett
died yesterday at his home in Manhasset,
after a long and valiant battle with lung
cancer. While never achieving the
recognition accorded peers like Soupy
Sales or Captain Kangaroo's Bob
Keeshan, Chip Crockett's legend may be
greater, because it lives solely in the
memories of viewers. Like other shows
from the late 1950s and early 1960s, The
Chip Crockett Show was either
performed live or videotaped; if the
latter, the tapes were immediately erased
so they could be reused. And, as though
Fate conspired to leave no trace of
Crockett's comic genius, a 1966
warehouse fire destroyed the few
remaining traces of his work.
For years, rumors of "lost" episodes
raced among baby boomer fans, but alas,
none have ever been found. The show's
final episode, the last of the popular Chip
Crockett Christmas specials, aired on
December 23rd, 1965.
The gentle Crockett was noted for a
surreal sense of humor that rivaled Ernie
Kovacs'. His cast consisted of a dozen
puppets—all created by Crockett—and a
rogue's gallery of over-the-top human
characters, also given life by the versatile
performer. Every weekday morning and
again in the afternoon, Chip Crockett's
jouncy theme would sound and the fun
began, as potato-nosed Ooga Booga, sly
Ratty Mouse, and the lovable
knucklehead Ogden Orff appeared on
WNEW-TV, reaching a broadcast
 
audience of millions of children—and,
occasionally, their unsuspecting parents.
Chip Crockett was born in 1923 in
Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. His broadcast
career began in 1949 with a radio show …
Brendan sighed and looked up. Outside a sky the
color of scorched nickel hung above Pennsylvania
Avenue. In the very corner of his window, you could
just make out the scaffolding that covered the
Capitol building, a steel trellis overgrown with
plywood and poured-concrete forms. When he and
Robert Flaherty, his law partner, had first taken this
office, Brendan had proudly pointed out the view to
everyone, including the Capitol police officers who
dropped in with paperwork and Congressional gossip
during their breaks. Now Rob was dead, killed four
years ago this Christmas Eve by a drunk driver,
though Brendan still hadn't taken his name from the
brass plate by the front door. The Capitol looked like
an image from war-torn Sarajevo, and the officers
Brendan had once known were unrecognizable
behind bulletproof jackets and wraparound
sunglasses.
"Mr. Keegan?" His secretary poked her head around
the door. "Okay if I leave a little early today? It's
Parent Conference week at Jessie's school—"
"Sure, sure, Ashley. You get that Labor Department
stuff over to Phil Lancaster?"
"I did." Ashley already had her coat on, rummaging
in a pocket for her farecard. "How's Peter these
days?"
Peter was Brendan's son. "Oh, he's great, just
great," he said, nodding. "Doing very well. Very, very
well."
This wasn't true and, in fact, never really had been.
Shortly after his second birthday, Peter Keegan had
been diagnosed as having Pervasive Developmental
Disorder, which as far as Brendan could figure was
just a more socially acceptable term for his son's
being (in the medical parlance) "somewhere within
the autism continuum." Batteries of tests had
followed—CAT scans, MRIs and PETs—and the
upshot of it all was yet another string of letters:
PDDNOS, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not
 
Otherwise Specified. In other words, Peter Xavier
Keegan, now four, had never spoken a word to
anyone. If you touched him he moved away,
deliberately but casually, with no more emotion than
if he'd brushed up against a thorny hedge. If you
tried to look him in the eye, he looked away; if
anyone tried to hold him, however gently, he would
scream, and hit, and bite, and eventually fall
screaming to the floor.
He had not always been like that. Brendan had to
remind himself every day, lest the fragmentary
images of eighteen-month-old Peter smiling in his lap
disappear forever. Once upon a time, Peter had been
okay. Brendan had to believe that, despite the
doctors who told him otherwise. That his son had
been born with this condition; that Peter's neural
wiring was defective; that the chances for reclaiming
that other child—the one who clung to his father and
babbled wordlessly but cheerfully, the one who
gazed at Brendan with clear blue eyes and held his
finger as he fell asleep—were slim or nil. Just last
week Brendan's ex-wife, Teri, had begun a new
regime of vitamin therapy for their son, the latest in
an endless series of efforts to reclaim the toddler
they had lost.
They were still waiting to see the results. And
Brendan's secretary Ashley would have known all
this because Teri had told her, during one of her
daily phone calls to Brendan to discuss the million
details of shared custody arrangements—pickup
times, doctors' appointments, changes in Peter's
medication, nightmares, biting incidents, bills for the
expensive Birchwood School, missing shoes, and
loose teeth. To his recollection, Brendan had never
volunteered a single word about his son or his
divorce to Ashley, but he had no doubt but that, if
called upon, his secretary could testify in District
Court about everything from his prior sexual
relationship with his ex-wife (satisfactory if
unremarkable) to his current attendance at AA
meetings (occasional).
"Peter's very well," he repeated one last time. He
made a tube of Tony's fax and eyed his secretary
through one end. "Good luck at school, Ashley."
He walked home that evening, his briefcase nudging
his leg as he made his way up Pennsylvania Avenue,
keeping his bare head down against the chill night
 

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