[Davis Square comic Jimmy Tingle, whose theater Jimmy Tingle’s Off-Broadway is the home of The Somerville News Writers Festival, will contribute a regular column in the Style editions of the paper. Tingle’s Web site is: jimmytingle.com.]

My First Road Trip

by Jimmy Tingle

As a stand up comic I have worked "the road" on and off for 25 years including shows in Europe, Canada, Australia, South America and just about every state in America.   

Now I’m  back  where I first started performing – on the Red Line-  with a  theater in  Davis Square  and a column  for The Somerville News. Who says life is not fair?

Growing up in Cambridge, my first road trip was not to a comedy club in another state, it was to the subway station of another planet: Harvard Square, Cambridge, at the time the last stop on the Red Line.

This was before the Red Line extension turned Davis Square, Somerville into "the Paris of the West" according to People magazine. Last week after one of my shows, I visited the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower in between stops at Red Bones, Johnny D’s and The Burren.

Harvard Square of the 1970’s and 1980’s was a lot like Davis Square is today. It was a sort of big beautiful urban stew seasoned with people from all over the world, then spiked with the townies of the surrounding neighborhoods.

My early performing days are known to family and friends as the Blue Period.

Most of my gigs consisted of gong shows, family outings, happy hours, house parties, the waiting lines outside a bar or concert venue, folk music and comedy club open mike nights, and street performing.

Now, I admit there is a fine line between street performing, and simply being a "under the influence" in public.

I had been writing song parodies for about a year and I was convinced I had a good 45 minutes to an hour. Because the open mike scene was limited to only 5 minutes spots, I took my act to the streets.

Harvard Square was the logical choice.

It was an off beat and outrageous collection of intellectuals and immigrants, old hippies and punk rockers , street corner philosophers, blue collar workers, war protesters, jugglers, clowns, cops, cab drivers, street people, students and competing agendas.

It seemed every other person was handing out flyers, pushing a petition, or asking for money.

It was March 1981 and Ronald Reagan had just taken office.

The term "homeless" had not yet been introduced into the American lexicon. Although the traditional street people – the unemployed and unemployable, along with those  looking for work, adventure, new lives and pportunities  – were as prevalent  then as they are now.

Just like Davis Square today it was  thousands of people in a 10-block radius sharing the narrow red brick sidewalks with conversations, accents and attire from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Japan; Filenes Basement and the Gap.

Harvard Square probably had the highest IQ level per pedestrian on Earth, which produced this ant like energy as people with  brains 500 times the weight of their own bodies created a hectic sort of harmony as they competed for parking spaces, seats on the bus, a rung on the bike rack, or counter
space at the dinner. Yet there was an uncommon sense of contentment and optimism in the crowded bars, coffee shops and bookstores in this the coolest of all places the "Athens of the East."

It was in the subway below the square, in the bowels of the Ivy League, I chose to perform.

I loved using the echo of the tunnel for a sound system; and an audience that changed every time left the station.

It was attention, creativity, approval, and the most valuable element for any aspiring performer – stage time.

I loved to surprise the audience, or commuters, as they liked to call themselves with stories of going to a nude beach for the first time and what
happens to the male genitalia in terms of shrinkage when one emerges from the cold ocean water.

I loved to engage them with my song parodies about life in America. My material was the thesis I never wrote, the homework I never finished, and the high school game I could never replay.

It was a chance at redemption. It was a reflection of who I was, what I thought, ideas personified and crystallized to crack the faces of the unsuspecting subway riders to a smile, a grin, a chuckle, a scowl of disapproval or occasionally an outright laugh.

Ah, to make the stranger laugh. Is there a better feeling? A higher calling? A nobler endeavor?

Yes there are: doctors, lawyers, statesman, teachers, members of the clergy.

But not to me, not at that time in my life, not in self obsessed world of the stand up comic and subway performer; the man in the comedy cocoon.

I loved the sound of my harmonica rolling off the subway walls – punctuated in the quite time before the next train arrived – with an untrained voice and Boston accent.

How I loved breaking into song as the commuters innocently waited for their ride to work.

To watch their faces as I passed the hat, collected their coins, and absorb their comments.

One told me, "I think what you do is interesting but I don’t think you should subject everyone to it."

Ah, how I love that line.

I had four basic songs at the time all designed to comment in a specific and twisted way, the world according to me.

"The Test Tube Baby Blues"

I am a test tube baby/That why I got the blues/Was a man made mutation scientifically abused/I was the miracle of the laboratory/How come I never made 60 Minutes/Or even the news?

"Thank God, I’m a City Boy"

I was raised in the city where I learned how to fight/You jab with your left/Then hit’em with your right/If that doesn’t work get a gun or get a knife/If you still can’t win/don’t be an idiot run for your life/Thank God, I’m a city boy!

"Thank God, I’m a Burbite"

Well, we moved to the burbs/We followed white flight/The neighborhood’s great/And all the houses look alike/And everyone is happy with their neighbor’s wife/Thank God, I’m a Burbite!

My favorite was "The Pooper Scooper Blues," a protest song was written in 1978 in response to the newly enacted pooper-scooper legislation. The law mandated that people pick up the poop of their dogs.

I was opposed to it in relation to the greater environmental evils and injustices we faced. What about Oil spills, nuclear waste, DDT, polluted rivers and streams, filthy air and insecticides.

"No pooper scooper legislation," I bellowed off the subway walls to the bemusement of those without cars.

As I write this now, I realize I was actually advocating for poop on the sidewalk. I’m sorry.

It was more than just a song, it was poetry in motion.  After I sang the line, "Let my doggie do/What he’s got to do/Ah, do-do-doo," I would get onto all fours. Then, in the canine position emulating and in solidarity with the beasts I was defending, I let out a howl that was part Warren Zevon and part German Shepard. "Ahooooooooooooooooooo! Auh-Auh Auhoooooooooooooooooo!

It was at this point that a friend from high school arrived on the platform.

He heard the sound of a man barking and howling on all fours, and when he saw me he said, "Jim? Is that you?"

"Oahooooo!" I barked sheepishly glancing up from my Rin Tin Tin position. "Aho Ahoo!"

"What are you doing?"

"I’m becoming a comedian," I said, as if it was a stupid question. "This is my new calling in life."

"A comedian?"

"What are you crazy? President Reagan just got shot!"

"Don’t look at me; I’ve been here all afternoon!"