Schultz's Lie (revised)

While its name has that slightly creepy sacchrine ring that housing developers can't seem to resist, Pleasant Bay Estates, where I grew up, was in fact a fairly pleasant place to live. Kids wandered from house to house to play with their friends during the day, games of Kick The Can and Bloody Murder were regularly organized at night, and doors generally remained unlocked, except during long vacations. Most of the homes were ranch designs, with two car garages, good-sized lawns and small gardens. And, as it was built around an inlet of Pleasant Lake, the name itself, like most of the people living there, was actually quite straightforward and unpretentious.

Ours was the last house in the subdivision. A short, nameless dirt road marked the end of our property, and the Northern border of the development. On the far side of the dirt road, for its full length, ran an earthen wall about five feet high, overgrown with weeds and brush. On top of the wall was a long line of mature oaks, maples and hickories, standing tall and tightly together like giant sentinels. Over the wall and through the trees, was a place called Indian Trails.

Nothing scared me more as a kid than Indian Trials. Maybe it was because the entire area was perpetually shrouded in the shadows of those tall trees, or because the few houses I could see were shabby and lifeless. No Christmas lights ever went up, and the windows stayed dark at night. Whatever the reason, I tried not to get too close to that wall, and I never once went over it. There was only one thin path running between two trees and into the shadows. I didn't know anyone who had ever used that path, and I had a primal understanding that it led directly to the gates of Hell.

Avoiding being dragged helplessly into Indian Trials to suffer a slow torturous death was my top childhood priority. But not too far down that list was making sure I never missed a single episode of Hogan's Heroes. I was a hardcore television addict, and Hogan's Heroes was my favorite fix. The military drum introduction and playful trumpet melody were the cue for the prisoners of Stalag 13 to file out of the barracks to be counted by the bumbling Schultz, and my cue to plant my skinny ass in front of the T.V. and not move for 1/2 an hour. Bob Crane, Richard Dawson, Ivan Dixon, and Robert Clary played the main prisoners. Werner Klemperer played the ever-clueless Colonel Klink, and John Banner was the good-hearted Sargeant Schultz.

My personal heroes were Bob Crane and Richard Dawson. They were so cool and carefree, smoothly talking their way out of every jam. They never panicked, never faltered, and always got the job done. I also loved the nifty gadgets Robert Clary could make out of playing cards, chunks of wood, bed sheets and stolen kitchen utensils. These guys could have escaped any time they wanted, but stayed in that prison camp because they were just having too damn much fun to leave.

Looking back on Hogan's Heroes as an adult, it's hard not to find it offensive. It is not overly P.C. to say that nothing even remotely related to the Holocaust should have a laugh-track. And while I learned that German soldiers were utterly inept at keeping Hogan and his gang in line, what I never learned from the show was that the Nazis were, in fact, extremely adept at exterminating Jews. This stunning omission makes Hogan's Heroes seem as absurd as, say, an NBC Manson Family Christmas Special, or a sitcom set in the killing fields of Cambodia, following the madcap antics of Pol Pot and his whacky Khmer Rouge.

John Banner, a Jew who grew up in Vienna, Austria, was imprisoned in a concentration camp during the Nazi occupation. Perhaps Banner's background was the reason for Schultz's willful blindness to, and winking complicity in, Hogan's perpetual schemes to assist the Allied war effort. Whether Banner realized it or not, Schultz's familiar refrain--"I know nah-tink!"--was more than just a running gag, it hinted at the show's central, but unspoken message: in order to laugh and feel safe in this world, you must pretend that what we all know happened, didn't really happen at all.

Bob Crane was savagely murdered in 1978. Five years after Hogan’s Heroes was cancelled, Crane was found laying in a fetal position on the floor of his home. His skull had been bashed in with a camera tripod. The friend who found the body said the wall next to which he was laying was "covered in blood, from one end to the other." This man, who made his career starring in a television comedy that staunchly refused to acknowledge the horrors behind its context, ended up a real victim of such horrors. This is not to say that Bob Crane deserved to meet such a bloody end. But maybe Evil thought it deserved the starring role in Hogan’s Heroes, and when it was denied the part, it took gruesome revenge on the man who did.

The year that Bob Crane was murdered, I was 9. On one hot summer Saturday morning of that year, I found myself at home alone, in the basement, watching cartoons. Sitting cross-legged in front of the T.V., happily immersed in animated mayhem, I heard the doorbell ring. I went upstairs, hoping to see my neighbor Penny. Instead, through the beveled glass window next to the front door, I saw a teenage boy standing on our front deck. He was skinny and shirtless, with long black scraggily hair. I could see his silver bike lying on the white rocks of our driveway. When I opened the door, he said, “hey kid, can I get a drink?” He nodded toward a tangle of green hose lying in the grass. I responded with a childish non sequitur: “nobody’s here.”

He thought for a minute, then said, "Well, can't you just get me a drink? You got a Coke or something?" I didn't want to get him anything, so I said nothing. I just stood there holding the door open. "Go on," he said, "just grab me something." The icy tone of his demand made me suddenly, desperately want him to go away. We had a small refrigerator in the basement that was always stocked with soda and beer. I ran down the stairs, threw open the refrigerator and grabbed a can of ginger ale. I ran back up the stairs and found the boy standing inside the door, looking around. I held the can out to him. He looked at it disapprovingly.

"You got anything else?"

“No. There's just beer."

“Are you sure? Let me see." He walked casually into the house and down the stairs. I stood on the landing, shocked. Then I could hear him moving through the basement, shuffling, stopping, mumbling. Not being able to see him just increased my anxiety. My imagination took off, and he began transforming into his true monsterous self down there, growing claws, fangs and huge muscles and sprouting extra limbs (I was a comic book junkie. Those sorts of things happened all the time). Exhaustion and nausea crashed over me. I had a nearly overwhelming urge to go to my bedroom, close the door and lay down. But I didn't. I summoned up the courage to walk down the stairs.

I found the boy leaning against the wall next to the little refrigerator, holding an opened can of Bud. "Hey, you were right. Just beer." He took a long drink, emptying the can. Then he leaned over and opened the fridge. "I'm just going to have one more. No one will notice." I stood watching him drink for what was, without question, the longest two minutes of my short life. When he finally put the empty can down on top of the little refrigerator he took a few steps toward the stairs, but stumbled and then stopped. His clumsiness seemed to confuse him. He turned and looked at me, as if for the first time noticing I was there. Then he started to move back toward me, staggering. I wanted to cry. Why wouldn't he just go away? How was I going to escape? But the boy brushed past me and grabbed a bottle of whiskey from a shelf near the refrigerator.

“I'm going to have a little of this. Your parents won't even know it's missing." He took the top off and drank deeply. I could hear the cartoon noises coming from the T.V., a world away. "My brother will be coming home soon," I lied. The boy looked at me suspiciously, then put the bottle back and walked, with a determined confidence this time, toward the stairs. "You're alright, kid. I'll come over again. What's your name?" I told him. "Well, you're okay. Don't tell anyone I was here."

I followed him up the stairs and watched him get on his bike and ride unsteadily to the end of our driveway. As soon as he was out of sight, I ran out the door, through the yard and hid behind our big willow tree. From there, I watched as he peddled down the dirt road, up the thin trail in the dirt wall, and disappeared in the shadows of Indian Trails. I stood there a while, staring at the spot where I had last seen him until I was sure that he wasn't coming back.

And he never did come back, despite his promise. Because soon after leaving my house and entering Indian Trails, he was struck by a car on his bike. But I didn't learn about that until much later.

At the time, after I was sure the boy was gone for good, I walked back inside the house and down into the basement. I sat inches from the television screen and turned up the volume, trying to get lost in my cartoons. Trying to pretend that what just happened, never really happened at all.