Speak, Memory

Yesterday I had lunch with an office mate from my first job out of college -- or rather, my first workplace; by the time we shared an office, I was on my third job title there. (And I'm back working at the same place, with yet another title; she left ten years ago.)

Something she said at lunch reminded me of a day in about 1985, when we all came into work to find a note on our desks from a woman in another department. It read: "I have a surprise for everyone today! This afternoon around 2 we'll have a special visitor to the office -- Spanky McFarland from The Little Rascals!"

Almost everyone else was "like" Wha . . . ? and went back to their work. I and one other coworker -- a guy about ten years older than me -- were "like" Wha . . . ? Spanky from the Little Rascals is going to be HERE? In person???

I adored The Little Rascals (a.k.a. Our Gang) as a kid. Are those shows run anywhere on TV anymore? Back in the '60s and early '70s, Washington's Channel 20 ran several of them every weekday. (More than one short fit into a half-hour slot.) I now think part of the attraction for me was that these antique comedies connected me with my parents' childhood, four decades before my own -- Depression days of castor oil and "you're darn tootin'!"

In the same way, I think I Love Lucy connected me to the time of the first years of their marriage and my older siblings' early childhood in the 1950s, and reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show connected me to the era of my own infancy and toddlerhood before memory fully took hold. (The original broadcast of that show premiered 12 days after my birth and ended the month I started kindergarten.)

These three shows are without question the most influential pop-cultural touchstones of my childhood.

Anyway, at the appointed time, my coworker and I, along with a few other curious people, walked back to another part of the office and met Spanky McFarland himself. It turned out he was a business associate of the husband of the woman who had distributed the note about him and he'd stopped by the office as a favor.

In his late fifties by then, he was overweight and lumpy and had a blasé air tinged with mild cordiality. He'd clearly been doing this kind of appearance for many years -- though perhaps not usually at a spare desk in an office in downtown DC on a Tuesday afternoon.

We asked him a few questions about what his fellow Rascals Darla and Alfalfa were like. Isn't it terrible that I don't remember the answers when I'm portraying this encounter as such a big deal? My coworker asked if the rumor was true that Petey the Dog had been stuffed for posterity. "No!" Spanky said. That I remember -- and that "capiche?" was part of his answer. That's the kind of guy the middle-aged Spanky was -- the kind who says "capiche?"

I tore off a sheet of paper from a pad of letterhead, and he gave me his autograph: "To [Billy]," it says, "from your Little Rascal 'Spanky' McFarland."

That's it. That's the end of my story. Spanky died in 1993 of a heart attack. I still have his autograph somewhere, but I can't put my finger on it right now.

It's just like the other day: I was looking for the cufflinks I bought for my sister's wedding five years ago -- at the reception, I had to step to my 80-year-old father's side at the microphone when he was giving his toast, prompting him like a stagehand as he struggled to read a poem he'd copied out himself and that I knew by heart at that point -- and I couldn't remember where they were, either.

But I know I have them. They'll resurface, I'm sure, at the most unexpected time.