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the bottle for sustenance, courage in my hour of self-revelation. I knew then with a deadly certainty that guilt would pursue me the rest of my life.
    THE BASTARD HAD LAID A BIG BET ON MICHIGAN!
    Me, and Goldberg, and poor dumb Big Al Dagellio were just pawns, shills if you will, in Umbaugh’s sinister game. No wonder he had all that dough to pay for those postgraduate credit hours, that convertible, that vintage Beaujolais, those stupid imported Egyptian cigarettes. Oh, Lord, will perfidy never end?
    A line from Tennessee Williams’
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
came back to me in that moment of fevered illumination, Big Daddy bellowing, “Mendacity, my boy. Mendacity is what life is about!”
    I shook my head in rueful admiration, the kind of admiration that you feel for John Dean of Watergate fame, the little pimple pulling off the Big Steal and coming out of it rich. Umbaugh, you son of a bitch. Few people in the world know what your true talent is. The greatest Boomo-Lax hustler who ever lived. You hustled us, you talented horse’s ass!
    Once again I felt the terrible panging clutch in my vitalsknown to the trade as “Boomo-Lax Backlash.” I staggered toward the john, flipping off the TV just as Alistair Cooke said:
    “This has been a highly enlightening program. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Umbaugh for …”
    I gasped out, “Them dumb fuckers never learn!” as I barely made the blessed sanctuary.

 
    Sad but true, they don’t. Learn, that is. But did you note that the victim was heading for the right place to soothe his soul?
    So much of my best solid contemplation is done in the john. If venerated ancient thinkers hung around in ivory towers, it certainly follows that today’s pundits do a lot of serious work in tiled sanctuaries far from the madding throng. And no wonder, with the price of ivory
.
    Archimedes hollered out “Eureka!” in his bathtub. No mention of his study or library. How many cosmic concepts came to Benjamin Franklin while in the privacy of what passed for a john in his day? Come to think of it, they had outhouses, didn’t they? Two-holers. Somehow, it’s a little unnerving to picture George Washington heading out into the rain, carrying a corn cob, while contemplating various profundities that would affect free men for centuries
.
    Just where was Edison when the idea for the light bulb struck him? It would be easy to say, “The laboratory, stupid,” but is that true? Did he merely
execute
his idea in the laboratory?
    The fathead behind me gave out a loud blast on his air horns, jarring me out of my restless inner debate. That’s one of the things
I find myself doing more and more, debating with myself. George Washington contemplating democracy while in the outhouse? No, you fool. He sat in his eighteenth-century study, scratching away with a quill pen on parchment, while wearing a powdered wig. Come on, you dummy, you know better than that
.
    I noticed that the temperature gauge in my car was creeping up to around 200 degrees. Jesus Christ, overheating! Am I going to be the next yellow light? When was the last time I checked my radiator level?
    Ahead, the Rutgers crowd appeared to be singing. I glanced in the mirror. The Horn Creep was right on my rear bumper. Is that his tongue lolling out or is he sucking a popsicle? When will this ever end?
    My mind seized that thought like a rat terrier grabbing a chicken bone
.
    After all this torture in purgatory, you end up in Jersey. Jersey, for Chrissake!
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
    The moment that I peered out to sea through the unblinking eye of the magnificent Margate Elephant, I sensed that somehow I was in the spiritual heart of New Jersey. A gigantic wooden pachyderm of distinctly irritated mien, the Margate Elephant, constructed–if that is the proper word–about a century ago on a sandy remote beach, was an instant success among the stylish toffs of the period. New Jerseyites wearing beaver hats and