Cornwall Bannister

To understand why I write what I write, you have to go back in time when I was a pre-teen, in the suburbs of America, where I lived in an idyllic, isolated setting with streams and ponds, woods, and large overhanging maples trees that created covered bridges along the roads and paths I walked.

 

My world was safe and uninvolved. Four seasons. Bicycles with cards attached to make motor sounds. Color television was still new. 3 networks. 3 channels. That was it. Sunday school was a must. Jesus was (is) real. And I would spend some of my time shopping with my mom (actually sitting and waiting) as she pursued items she needed or wanted. But one particular day, I walked around a store. There were things to see in that store more than just clothes. Women's clothes. My mom's clothes. Clothes that kept me sitting. Waiting.

 

In this five and dime store, as they were known, ( a store of inexpensive stuff), there were toys and there were games to observe. Observe, though, not buy. A limited family budget kept me and my siblings in check. (Not like today.) So, curiosity in tow, I wandered the aisles with anticipation. And I came upon a section devoted to models. Plastic model kits. I was familiar. Cars. Planes. Ships. But then something else caught my eye. I looked up and on top of a shelf stood a box with someone, not a person-- well, not completely a person -- looking down at me.

 

Keep in mind I knew nothing about monsters. Nothing except the murderer 'Injun Joe' from  Mark Twain's 'Tom Sawyer'. The 1930's movie seen on television gave me horrible nightmares, but that had been years ago. I was fine in the store and at home. I didn't see the scrawled name on the box, at first; I was so mesmerized by the picture on the cover. He definitely was a man, this figure on the cover, because he wore a shirt and pants which was a dead giveaway. More than that, he was completely covered in hair, fur, and he had claws. His head was round, like a cat's, and he had sharp teeth like a dog or a cat, but he was called Wolf Man which made me frown. He looked like a cat, not like a wolf. I loved wolves. They reminded me of my dog. And they were so beautiful in pictures in books. This... wolf... man did not at all remind me of any wolf. But he looked uncertain. Unsure. Standing like that behind a tree in a neighborhood like mine. Was he as unsure about everything as I was?

 

I was beginning to identify with this model in ways I had never identified before, not with anything else. In other words, I gave him value because his appearance of uncertainty reminded me of me. Minus the hair and the claws. So, I reached up, grabbed the box, and headed for my mom. She, of course, had no idea of the immediate identification I had taken with this wolf... man. When I showed her the box, all she saw was a monster -- in fact, most likely, familiar with that particular monster, she may have even seen him before, though she didn't tell me she had. Absolutely not, she said; I'll get nightmares. But I looked at the box and was assured once again that this was no monster at all. It was a ... cat... man. A fluffy cat man of distinct uncertainty and even a sense of pursuit, as it was hiding behind a tree. He was as uncertain as I was. I had to have him. And he was only 99 cents. Plus glue. Sighing, my mother acquiesced and soon I was home, in my room, with the box.

 

The next moment is why I write what I write. Years later, I would discover the artist who painted the cover for the model kit (James Bama) and the molder of the model inside (Jack Lemon)  knew nothing of one another. But one, Bama, gave a sense of warmth and camaraderie. The other was something else, altogether. No other model in the history of model cars, boats, ships, planes, jets, animals, birds, etc., even monsters themselves, did to me what this model inside the box did to me. I cut the cellophane, removed it, lifted the lid, and thought WHAT IS THIS?! THIS --THIS THING in the box was NOTHING like the cat person on the cover. NOTHING! NOTHING AT ALL! It was hideous! It was terrifying! It looked like a MONSTER! I had been lied to! Scammed! Duped! Fooled! Remember, remember, remember, this was before Marilyn Monroe had died. This was before John F. Kennedy's assassination. Life was the 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Leave It To Beaver'. Life was good. And then I chose to bring THIS THING into the house.

 

When I looked at the face on the model and the face on the box cover I realized that behind the presented, the fantasy, the offering, exists the unspeakable reality. Injun Joe, lurking, chasing children in the cave. Life is not what we believe it is. Decades later I would discover God again, and God understood and understands what we are doing: we are lying. All the time. Or we are presenting one thing but giving another. We are not what we think we are. We have not even begun to comprehend between our 'cover' and our 'real': the thing inside the box. I lifted out the lattice of pieces, and I began to pull off the segments of body parts. The creature on the cover looked so serene and majestic. The thing inside the box was all chest, muscles, raised claws, and ready to attack. No uncertainty. No caution. Pursuer, not pursued.

 

The story enclosed with the assembling instructions for the model was just as bad. The story of the Wolf Man. "... a fiendish creature conceived in madness to become a servant of Satan." And "the secreted fluids from the mysterious glands causes the facial muscles to twitch as the bone structure starts a complete change and the teeth become elongated with points like wolf fangs." I was eight years old. An innocent eight year old. The world of this thing was just outside. I did not know what Universal was in connection with this model. I did not know these things did not exist. It was a model, like a car, a plane, a ship. And I went into some sort of shocked numbness and put the thing together. There it stood then, ready to... "The wolfman will attack any living human, child or adult... to satiate his murderous, insane desire to kill." What kind of a world had I been born into? And I have been asking that question ever since. What kind of a world have I been born into?

 

My existence seems to have become a defiance of culture and to promote the expectations of God precisely because humanity, inspired by evil, lies, manipulates, and coerces. Deceives. I have read many, many books. I doubt I will ever write as well as John Steinbeck, John Updike, or T.C. Boyle. But I have abandoned Hollywood and New York as a personal commitment to a better mental, emotional, and spiritual existence. My childhood was full of fantasy from monster models, monster magazines, superhero comics, to the reality of pets and aquariums. The world was and is precisely the cover of the model and what was inside the box. A deception. A deception pushed by Hollywood and New York. Publishing and movie making the new wolf man model. Howling not at the moon but at the money. Money justifying everything. And pushing me to write.