Sqeezebox Elegy – Fiction

Sqeezebox Elegy

by Dave Liljengren
illustration by Greg Moutafis

F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby, wrote that Long Island, when first viewed by Dutch explorers, appeared as a “fresh green breast of the new world.” Dissipating his liver with the most sedated minds of his generation before meeting his own, cirrhotic end in West Hollywood, Honey Fitz was on to something. He saw that this sexy, fertile, once-wild land would lure third-born sons and washtub-bound sisters from endemic European poverty to rootless American grotesqueries long before Friday the XII or the development of the L.A. based porn industry.

Thus, if there is an earth goddess, I know she chortles when icons of humorless European patriarchy are undone, suckling from her no longer green, no longer fresh, west-hemispherical, bosom. Among others, she need only remember Teutonic conductor Otto Klemperer’s comeuppance when his boychild Werner, the one Otto raised to love fine music and to whom he taught the violin, found fame and fortune in the United States, but only as Colonel Klink on Hogan’s Heroes. Instead of lofting Wagner to Thor’s Valhalla as Papa would have liked, scion Werner is noted most for dropping monocles at the feet of Bob Crane.

If you can imagine shame at that level, you are ready for the Yankovic saga. A peerless virtuoso on his instrument, Frankie Yankovic, he of Frankie Yankovic’s Polka Party fame, was once both “King of Polka” and pride of Southern Wisconsin, two titles seldom given anyone removed from cheese production. Frankie did more to popularize the accordion than any musician save Lawrence Welk. He worked tirelessly to bring his proud two-stepping, old world dance to Legion Halls and television sets across Wisconsin and Illinois. He also shares the name with a guy named Al.

Al took off in his own direction, adding “Weird” to his name.

Al’s story is familiar to you. You’ve heard the songs – the crude, spunky “My Bologna,” the culinary showstopper, “Eat It,” and now, perhaps the cleverest of all, “Amish Paradise,” to the tune of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.” I leave you to judge the man and his craft.
But as “Weird Al” Yankovic takes off on his “Bad Hair Tour” this summer, I ask you to pause, remembering Frankie and how, before his recent death, ignored by a world no longer concerned with the King of Polka, he must have suffered in silence.