Thirty years later, people still come up and tell me they remember “Buster the Show Dog,” a radio serial I wrote in the early Eighties, with Timmy the Sad Rich Teenage Boy and Father Finian and Sheilah the Christian Jungle Girl. “Earl Grey” was meant to be another serial but then I left the country for Denmark and forgot about radio and set out to be a great novelist, so when I picked up Earl a couple years later, I made him into a novel, howbeit a very short one.
Earl Grey flew to San Francisco to speak to the Tea Congress (“A Toast to Tea”) and stayed overnight at a four-star hotel and was awakened at three a.m. by some jerk singing Gershwin and looked for the phone to call the front desk and tripped in the dark and fell and broke his arm and was taken to the hospital where surgeons mistakenly removed his left lung, thinking he was a man named Ray, a very bad outcome indeed, but not so surprising to Earl. He was a middle child, the third of five kids, so he was accustomed to being misunderstood. His older brother, Vern, was prone to weeping and his older sister, Vivian, was a pyromaniac and his two younger siblings were bed wetters and teeth grinders and cat torturers, so his parents had a handful of trouble. Earl was sociable and polite and bright as a penny and because he required no special attention whatsoever, he was ignored by his parents. Once he was toilet trained (at age two) he was on his own. His dad, Bob Grey, was a conservative congressman from Georgia, the minority whip, and Earl grew up in Washington, a city of broad streets and granite plazas, full of curiosities, such as the Monument to Horses of the Civil War and the Museum of Ideas and the national headquarters of the Federated Organization of Associations. The Greys loved Washington and lived in dread of the next election, afraid that they might lose and have to leave their comfy home in Georgetown and go back home to Macon, Georgia, where Daddy’s daddy owned a pancake house. Daddy was a conservative Republican and his seat should have been safe, but he was something of a bon vivant and loved black-tie dinners and dancing the tango and drinking espresso in a little French café over the Post and the Times. He belonged to a madrigal ensemble. He read Proust. He was a civilized man and it was hard for him to get ginned up for campaigns and do what he had to do to get reelected, ranting and raving against Washington.
“Daddy’s got to say some mean things, children,” said Mrs. Grey, “otherwise we’ll have to live in Georgia and attend church and have clunky furniture and no art on the walls.”
For the campaign, they rode around in the back of a pickup truck, dressed in Sears outfits, and Daddy spoke out for the American flag, the American family, the American family dog, and railed against the State Department for selling out our country’s vital interests abroad, mopping his brow with a red bandanna, sipping from a Dixie cup. And in November, Daddy got reelected and the Greys made a final appearance at the victory rally and the next morning they took off the dumpy clothes and made a beeline back to Washington, glad to be done with the filthy business for another two years. They put on their nice clothes, and talked normally, and Daddy resumed his lovely life of grace and elegance. And young Earl resumed his life as an invisible middle child. Sometimes Daddy called him Timmy. His mother hardly knew he existed.
INTERESTING FACT: TODAY EARL GREY TRAVELS MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND MILES A YEAR, SEEING TO HIS FAR-FLUNG TEA BUSINESS, APPEARING AT CHARITABLE FUNCTIONS, AND WHEREVER HE GOES, PEOPLE GET HIS NAME WRONG OR MISTAKE HIM FOR SOMEONE ELSE.
In 1956, Daddy had a real stinker of an opponent, a bullet-headed, red-necked, carpet-chewing radio preacher named C. J. Buzzhardt, who accused Daddy of losing touch with the common man and being part of the Washington establishment. He crisscrossed the district in a cheap, wrinkly suit yelling, “Where’s Grey, the big phony? Why’s he afraid to show his face in Georgia?”
Mrs. Grey told Daddy to get down to Georgia and rip into the State Department, but Daddy had a tennis tournament to play in, and early September was when his madrigal group gave its big recital at the Folger Library, so it wasn’t until October that the Greys trooped down to Georgia to do their business.
They forgot to bring Earl. He was standing by the car, about to climb in, and his mother said to him, “You be sure and mow the lawn every week, Hector, that’s what we pay you for.” Earl’s eyes filled with tears, he turned to blow his nose, and away they went without him.
So he spent the next six weeks with the housekeeper, Anna Tin, a nice Sumatran lady who took excellent care of him. In Sumatra, a middle child is treasured as a living keystone, a bridge, a bond, a fulcrum, a vital link.
Meanwhile, down in Georgia, Mr. Buzzhardt ran circles around Daddy on the stump, campaigning on the slogan “Honor America and Send a Real Man to Washington,” and he flew hundreds of flags at every appearance, outflagging Daddy by a ten-to-one margin. He spread rumors that Daddy had only one testicle, smaller than a dried lentil, and he found photos of Daddy singing in his madrigal group, wearing a foofy shirt with chin ruffles, his mouth open in a prim oval for a falalalala.
One hot night, in Marietta, at a debate on a flag-draped platform in the courthouse square, when Congressman Grey was waxing hot and heavy about the pinheads in the State Department and how, if elected, he’d clean them out of there and replace them with God-fearing folks with a farm background, it was not going over well with the crowd. The congressman was pretending to be stupid, but Buzzhardt was genuinely stupid and voters prefer what’s genuine. And suddenly Buzzhardt jumped up and strode to the podium and hollered, “What you got in that Dixie cup theah?” And he snatched it from Daddy and sniffed it and yelled, “Tea. And not sweet tea, no suh, but oolong.”
“Oolong?” the crowd murmured.
“Oolong!” yelled Gerald K. “This peckerwood is standing up here sippin at tea from a foreign country. Not American tea. Oolong!!!! Well, la-di-da. Ain’t we fine?”
Everyone laughed and laughed, and Daddy was dead.
Georgia men didn’t drink oolong tea, it was strictly for fruitcakes, pantywaists, college perfessers, and hermaphrodites. Buzzhardt held up the picture of Congressman Grey falalaing and said, “You folks intendin to vote for a poof and a priss and a pansy? I say ole oolong has been in Congress toolong!” and that was that, the election was over. Daddy was swamped by a large margin, and the family slunk back to Georgetown, heartsick and bitter.
There was Earl, dazed with pleasure, having been adored all the long summer. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“We got our butt kicked,” said his mom. “And it’s your fault. Why weren’t you there?”
TEA FACTS: BELIEVE IT OR NOT, EARL GREY TEA IS NOW THE MOST POPULAR TEA IN GEORGIA. IT OUTRANKS BOURBON AMONG MALES BETWEEN TWENTY-FIVE AND SIXTY AND IS STEADILY GAINING ON COCA-COLA. IT IS THE FASTEST-GROWING BEVERAGE IN THE ATLANTA AREA.
The Greys did not return to Georgia. They spent a last Christmas in Washington and in January, Daddy took his remaining hundred thousand in campaign funds and they motored west to California, where Daddy would have a job at the Hoover Institution, thinking about great issues. They stopped in Minneapolis, where he delivered a speech on campaign reform at the Stassen Institute, and the following afternoon they stopped at the Lucky Spud restaurant in Platt, North Dakota, for lunch, and half an hour later they went off and left Earl there.
The Spud specialized in mashed potatoes: there were twenty-four varieties on the menu, including the Big Cheesie, White Cloud, Land O’Gravy, Tuna Whip, and the Elvis Parsley. Earl, a slow eater, ordered a Big Cheesie and a White Cloud and sat and savored every bite, while Daddy paid the check and went to the car with Vance and Vince, and Mom, who had been in a sour mood for months, said, “Hurry up, Earl. I mean it,” and disappeared with Vivian and Vera. Earl finished up the last four bites in a big hurry, but when he ran out the door, the car was gone.
The waitress tried to comfort him. “They’ll be back in a jiffy, snuggums, just you wait and see. Here. Have some more spuds.” But the family never returned. Never called, never wrote, never filed a missing-child report.
They cruised on to Palo Alto, enjoying the scenery, without a peep out of his brothers and sisters as to the empty spot in the backseat. He had taken up so little room in their lives, being polite and quiet and considerate, so why should they notice his absence?
And if they had reported him missing to the police, the police would’ve asked, “What does the boy look like?” and the Greys would’ve looked at each other and said, “Now, what did he look like? He was medium height, wasn’t he? Didn’t he have brown hair? I seem to remember that it was brown.”
TEA FACTS. EARL GREY TEA HAS BEEN USED AS A WATERCOLOR WASH BY NUMEROUS PROMINENT ARTISTS TO LEND A RICH BUT SUBTLE BROWN TONE TO THEIR WORK, BUT EARL’S HAIR IS, AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN, STRAWBERRY BLOND.
So Earl grew up in Platt from the age of fifteen. He was raised by Sandy, the waitress at the Lucky Spud, who lived with her boyfriend, Butch, in a trailer behind the café. It was crowded and Earl slept on the sofa and was often awakened by Sandy and Butch arguing. They drank quite a bit and she’d yell, “Get your hands off me. I’m not in the mood.” And Butch’d say, “You used to like it when I did that,” and it was nothing that Earl cared to hear. He attended Platt High and did his homework sitting at the café counter among old guys grousing about the government, the weather, fishing, farming, and their wives, who sat and chain-smoked, eyes straight ahead, saying nothing.
• • •
One day Earl saw a package of Sumatran tea on the shelf of the Platt Piggly Wiggly supermarket and bought it and back at the trailer he made a pot of tea for Sandy and himself and she was an instant convert. She was dizzy with pleasure.
“I feel like a new woman,” she said. “I have to wonder if the reason people here are so mean isn’t that they drink too much coffee. Coffee makes you want to go out and kick the dog and throw trash in the creek. Tea brings out the best in people.” North Dakotans, she said, prefer their coffee bitter with a rainbow of oil slick on top. That’s why they were the way they were, proud of their guns, owners of vicious dogs.
It wasn’t only tealessness that cursed the prairie, Earl thought. The land was bleak and windswept, and religion offered little comfort. Christianity taught that humanity is worthless and vile but that if we agree to hate ourselves God will forgive us. Earl longed to leave; he wrote numerous letters to his dad at the Hoover Institution, which were answered by an assistant who thanked him for his interest and passed along the congressman’s best wishes. Earl struggled through the Platt public school, where his love of tea made him a target for cruelty, and boys drew pictures of him wearing a dress, with snot pouring from his nose, and a petunia sticking out of his butt.
But Earl couldn’t survive a day without tea. To him, tea represented civilization and kindness. He found a book in the Platt Free Lending Library, Wild Teas of North America, and from it learned to make dandelion tea, sassafras, rhubarb tea—each one delicious and comforting. Sandy thrived on the teas he made, became lovelier and more self-assured. “They are even better than a high colonic,” she said. Her color improved. She let her hair hang loose and kicked Butch out of the trailer and made him sleep in the truck. When he begged to be allowed back, she told him to stick his head in the toilet and flush it.
Butch hung around the Spud for two days, groveling and begging, and Sandy wouldn’t give him the time of day. Butch told Earl, who was washing dishes after school, “You don’t get what you want in this world. Keep that in mind. People are no damn good for the most part.”
Earl said, “Butch, that is a coffee philosophy. I could make you a cup of tea that would change your way of thinking. This tea could turn on the porch light in your eyes. If you drank tea, Sandy would love you to pieces.” Paula, her back to them, snorted.
“Truck drivers do not drink tea,” said Butch. “It does not happen. Only thing that could put a light in these eyes would be if Sandy pulled up her dress and gave me the green light. And that’s not going to happen either.”
TEA BULLETIN. TWENTY-SEVEN PERCENT OF ALL LONG-HAUL TRUCK DRIVERS NOW DRINK TEA, EVEN GUYS HAULING STEEL BEAMS, CARS, EVEN HOGS AND STEERS. MORE AND MORE, THEY REQUEST TEA AT TRUCK STOPS AND TELL THE WAITRESS HOW TO MAKE IT CORRECTLY. THE TEA MUST ALWAYS BE PUT IMMEDIATELY INTO THE BUBBLING, BOILING WATER. FRESH LOOSE TEA, NOT A TEABAG.
For a few years, Earl kept checking the Personals section in the Platt Pilot, hoping to see: Lost: our beloved son Earl Grey, at a restaurant. Call home, honey, and we’ll come and fetch you. We love you so much. Mom and Dad.
But no such ad ever appeared, only ads from men seeking younger women: Married Guy, 57, seeks single woman, 18–19, must be a real looker; pert and perky, and have a thing about bulky fellas who don’t say too much. Send photos.
“Your folks’re sure missing a good thing, not watching you grow up, honey,” Sandy told Earl six years later, when he was twenty-one. It was January and the arctic winds swept the frozen tundra and moaned in the weather stripping around the front door of the Lucky Spud and whistled in the chimney. It was cold and dark and a heavy pallor hung in the air, the aroma of burnt coffee.
And then a beautiful thought occurred to him: I don’t have to stay. I can go. (Middle children often suffer from stationariness as a result of being crunched in the middle with siblings on either side, and many of them take years to realize that free choice is an option—that a person can, if he wishes, have a will of his own, decide things, and act.)
Earl withdrew his savings from the Platt State Bank, $420, and arranged a ride with Butch, who was hauling a load of soybeans to San Francisco.
“God bless you, Earl Grey, for making my life a lot less dingy,” said Sandy, and they had a last pot of tea together. It was delicious. So calm and good.
“I had no idea my life would turn out to be so rotten,” Butch told Earl as they cruised west in the big rig. “Back when she drank ten cups of java a day, she was the lovingest woman you ever met, and then she quit. If I ever meet the man who turned her on to tea, I’d knock his block off.” Earl dropped off to sleep, and when he awoke, the truck was in Palo Alto, parked in front of the Hoover Institution, a Spanish-mission edifice like a California bank.
“Well, this is as far as you go, I guess. Hope you enjoy your family. See you around,” said Butch, anxious to get going. Earl climbed down from the cab and a moment later the big rig pulled away and disappeared over the hill.
TEA LORE: TEA IS A PART OF FAREWELL CEREMONIES IN MANY CULTURES MORE ADVANCED THAN OUR OWN. AMERICAN MEN DREAD EMOTIONAL GOODBYES AND WILL WALK AWAY FROM A MARRIAGE AS IF GOING TO THE CORNER STORE FOR A PACK OF SMOKES. IN OTHER CULTURES, PEOPLE SAY GOODBYE BY SITTING DOWN AND ENJOYING A LAST POT OF TEA TOGETHER, RELISHING THEIR COMMON HISTORY, NOT AFRAID TO SHED TEARS, EMBRACING, FACING THE FUTURE BRAVELY.
The Hoover Institution was locked. He pushed the buzzer and a voice came over the intercom: “State your name, your business, and whom you wish to see.”
“My name is Earl Grey, and I am here to be reunited with my father, Congressman Grey,” said Earl, looking into the intercom speaker as if it had eyes he could appeal to.
“The congressman is gone,” said the voice. Earl asked, “Where?” The voice said it did not know, nor did it know when he would return. Furthermore, it said, he had never mentioned a missing child.
Earl asked if he could leave a message for his dad. “Go ahead,” said the voice.
“Tell him,” said Earl, “to go and get stuffed.”
When he found out once and for all that he was abandoned, Earl Grey was free to go and make his own life. And he did, with one stroke of good fortune after another. He met Malene Monroe, who was then singing with the Tommy D’Orsay Orchestra, and he made her a pot of Earl Grey tea that cured her croup and enabled her to go on and record “Tea for Two.” His royalties from that paid for three years in Sumatra, where he perfected his tea blend. He set up shop in London, developed a nice accent, and when he arrived back in America in 1970, people assumed he was English nobility, and sales of his tea took off. He became a multimillionaire.
But success didn’t affect him. He knew that middleness is an inner quality and you carry it all your life, in all circumstances. A middle child can become a star, stand on a stage in a gold lamé suit with six spotlights trained on him, and people in the audience will be looking at the band, the third saxophonist from the right, and thinking, “He reminds me of somebody, but who? A guy who was at my wedding . . . But which marriage? The third, I think. Was he one of the caterers? Was he Barb’s brother?”—meanwhile, the middle child has performed the Sextet from Lucia, all six parts, but his essential middleness deflects the crowd’s attention to the decor, the candle in the lamp on the table, the waiter—doesn’t he remind you of someone who was in a movie once?
Earl and his folks were almost reunited on a cable TV show called Bringing It Home many years later. His mom and dad were living in Miami and the cable network flew them first class to New York City, where Earl’s headquarters were. Earl rode the subway to the studios, only to find out that his father had a headache and he and Mom were not feeling up to seeing Earl, and that rather than cancel the show, his parents would be portrayed by actors. The host of the show, a smiley man named Brant whose hair was as big as a breadbox, introduced the actors, who came out with tear-dimmed eyes and threw their arms around Earl, who hugged them back but only a little. He was forty-seven now and owned six homes and was in excellent health and his parents just didn’t matter that much, and besides the actors were nothing like his mother and dad. They wore wigs and they spoke in very fakey Southern accents.
Brant grinned like a house afire. “Earl Grey,” he cried, “today your tea business has made you a multimillionaire, your name known around the world. Wouldn’t you have to agree that maybe, just maybe, your being left behind in North Dakota may have been the best thing that ever happened to you?”
“No,” Earl said, “of course it wasn’t. Don’t be ridiculous. It is criminal for parents to abandon a child, and though I forgive them, I know that my parents deserve to be given long prison sentences.”
The actor playing his dad said, “What kind of a nutcase are you to say that about your own parents?”
“Narcissists make lousy parents and mine were two of the worst. They had children for one reason, personal vanity, and they used us as props, and hadn’t the faintest idea who we were.”
Brant did not blink. He looked at “Mrs. Grey” and said, “He’s quite a boy. You must be very proud of him.”
“Yes,” the actress said. “He has brought so much happiness into our lives.” And Earl realized that his accusations would be edited out of the program and that in the final cut he would appear to be a loyal and grateful son. He was a middle child, easily ignored, and there was nothing he could do about it.