The Story of Dardar
- THE STORY OF DADAR - A black ink and black color pencil drawing on an 11 x14 size coquille board. It appears in the book, "Tom O'Bedlam's Night Out and Other Strange Excursions," by Darrell Schweitzer, published by Paul Ganley in 1985.
This drawing is a tribute to "Charlie," a lab technician who worked at Simmonds Precision Products when I was there. He was occasionally assigned to do some work for me in the lab. The "Head" at the top of this drawing is Charlie. He had those goofy looking eyes, a short nose with a long road down to his upper lip, a small mouth and a small jaw. He was a "character".
He wanted to be a "Fire-Eater" in a circus some day so he decided to learn how to breathe fire. He came to work one day prepared to show us at lunchtime how it's done. But things went wrong, his mouth burst into flame. One of the guys nearby quickly placed his hand over Charlie's mouth to suffocate the flames, and was lucky that the burns to his hand were minor. Another guy rushed them to a local hospital. Charlie came back to work a month later, and drank his lunch through a straw for a while.
When some of the guys at work decided to go Kayaking down a river up north on the weekend, Charlie rented a Kayak and went with them. His kayak overturned with him stuck inside, upside down, and he would have drowned but one of the other guys dove in and rescued him.
Some time later he decided to do a stunt at a motorcycle jamboree near Montpelier, Vt. He sped his bike along a ramp and flew over a row of barrels. He crashed into the last barrel and broke a bunch of bones. He didn't come back to work for almost a year.
When he came back I said to him, "Charlie, I think it's time for you to settle down, get married, have some kids . . ." He laughed and said, "Are you kidding Man? I'm having too much fun to settle down now!"
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