YOU DON'T GET ME, I'M PART OF THE UNION 
                          INTRODUCTION
     The earliest drafts of this story were begun about the time
my father died.  I'd begun a book called Burnout in the Dog-Yummy
Factory; the title refers to me being tortured by Sister Mary
Demon, for the sin of creativity, for the sin of schizophrenia.
     The nuns at St. Mary Sophia's Catholic School could tell that
something was amiss with my mind, but they attributed it to "sin"
and "rebelliousness."  For this reason, my first-grade nun had
stuck me in the Nasturtiums.  In every grade school, there's the
"slow" group and the "fast" one; they were using names of flowers
to try to hide which was which, but they didn't fool us kids for
a moment.
     And I was a Nasturtium, in spite of the fact that the
standardized tests they gave us showed that I had a Sixth grade
reading level in first grade.  Part of my problem was simply
boredom:  see Dick.  See Dick run.  Run, Dick, run!  Who wants to
get stuck with this drivel, when the whole world is available?  I'd
sit in the back where I'd been banished for "naughtiness," and read
the sixth-grade book, ignore what was going on in the class.
     That was first grade.  Second grade, I was out on the
playground; recess.  All the little boyz and girlz were teasing me,
saying, "You're a puppy dog!"  Tears in my eyes, I raced for Sister
Mary Demon.
     "Sister!  Sister!  Make them stop calling me a puppy dog!"
     She smiled a coy dominatrix smile (probably would've looked
nicer in lipstick and leather than a black habit; black, the color
of mourning).  Then, she said, "Oh, but little Lead:  you are a
little puppy dog, and from now on, you hafta sit in the back and
chow down on Dog-Yummies."
     Lunchtime came, the walk home for yummies yummier than dog-
yummies, then back to Saint Sophia's.
     And there was the darksome demon, holding a bag of mutt
treats, for me to eat.
     Slyly, when she wasn't looking, I slid all the dog chow into
my pocket, neat-pressed white shirt, black pants, skinny little kid
wondering, Why am I being punished?
     I probably asked, How do we know there's a God? too often.
     Father Valley came in to give a class in religion, as kinky
as any pretzel, and probably doing it with the Demon Sister.  Black
habit, white collar, angel-wings:  Reverend Valley was a penguin.
     "Oh--I see we have a little fellah in the back!  What's your
name, boy?"
     Thus spake Sister Mary Demon:  "That's our little puppy dog!"
     Fear.
     Shame.
     Savage dread.
     On the way home, fearing that whatever reason the Demon had
for punishing me, Ma would also agree and punish me, too, I threw
the evidence away.
     I never told her what'd actually happened until I was in
college.  Then, she said, "If I would've known they were doing
that, I would've taken you out of that school right away."
     So, in Burnout in the Dog-Yummy Factory, I worked my usual
symbolic transformations of what'd happened.
     The first draft was done in the months that preceded my
father's death.  When I dredged up the manuscript months after the
funeral, I noticed that the writing became increasingly worse as
my depression had worsened.  I threw away the last dozen pages,
started to work on a revised version.
     When I got to the point where my brother and I saved Pops from
the scabs when the Union was trying to shut down the Dog-Yummy
Factory, I realized it was totally hilarious--and at the same time,
very sad.
     I cried bitter salt tears, laughing at the same time.
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     "Is the Machine ready yet?" I asked Kid Strange as he
puttered around with the soldering gun. 
     Kid Strange replied, "Just one more capacitor and then it'll
be ready:  our mind-reading machine."   
     He looked at the printed circuit board from an old radio we
had hot-wired.  From it jutted an incredible array of spare
parts:  resistors, transistors, capacitors, vacuum  tubes,
transformers--all scrounged from all over Pop's garage.
     Kid Strange held up the completed contraption.  "There.  
Put on the headphones.  We're going to try and see if we can 
read any minds!"  
     I asked, "Whose mind are we going to read?" thinking of 
Toni McDonald; boy howdy, I'd like to pull on her rubber! 
     "Why not try Daddy Doder Doodyman?  It's his parts that 
made the machine, so the machine by its magnetic power should be
able to contact Pop's mind," Kid Strange said, 
You could tell Kid Strange knew a lot about science; Pop'd take
him out into the shop for hours at a time and show him how
electrical things worked while Mommy would make me stay in and
babysit the little kids--you're too little to be playing with
electricity! she'd say, so I'd have to play superhero with the
Grim Reaper, Taco Brains, and Biggolith.  And Bup.  Bup had just
been born.  We called him Freddie Buppa Cootis, which meant Baby
Cutest. 
     I put on the headphones, real old clunkers with tight
ear-cushions that pinched, while Kid Strange fiddled with a dial
and a couple of knobs.  
     Suddenly I heard voices:   
     "...won't stop us, you pug-ugly!"   
     "We're going into that plant!" 
"We're going into the Dog-Yummy Factory if we have to kill you!
Get oudda our way!" 
     "Bunch of filthy scabs!!  Union-busters!"   
     The last one was Pop's voice.  Pops was in danger!  I 
closed my eyes; I could see Pops on the picket line of local 
#1776 while a bunch of burly thugs were trying to push past
him--into the Dog-Yummy Factory.  Where Hitler ground up little
boys and girls to turn their bones into dog biscuits...! 
     Pop was a little guy, but he was tough.  He used to ride 
his bicycle to work every day, all the way up the two mile-long
hill at the edge of town.  In tenth gear.   
     As the scabs advanced on him Pop started swinging his 
fists.  He knocked one of them over, but the other one got him in
a hammerlock.  Now the one that had fallen got back up, started
punching Pops in the stomach--while he couldn't fight back. 
     I opened my eyes.  "Kid Strange!  Pop is in trouble!   He's
on strike, and the scabs are beating the crap out of him!" 
     Kid Strange, ever alert to cosmic evil, shouted, "Hang on
while I turn on my decoder ring!"   
     Like Frodo slipping the Precious over his finger, Kid
Strange fiddled with the dials on his magical ring:  Suddenly an
amazing transformation came over the Cosmic Kid.  Strange  
glittered in the dark, by the hall, by the doorway.  Sparks shot
up and down his form.  In his place stood the awesome Master of
the Occult Arts! 
     "Let us zoom," he said, racing out of the shop, past the
rows of bicycles.   He clutched me tightly in his embrace and all
at once we were flying.  It was exciting:  We rocketed above
trees and rooftops, startling the birds we passed as the mystic
Master of the Occult Arts carried his little brother to a con-
frontation with evil strike-breakers.   
     Scabs.   
     I wondered why they called them scabs; sometimes I'd get a
scab on my finger and Mommy would put a Band-aid on it....   
     But how could people be scabs?  It was an awesome thought,
soon forgotten in the fun of flying.   
     We touched down outside the Factory.  Pop was down on the
ground now, wrestling with a dozen burly scabs while all around
the Union boys were engaging in fist-fights. 
     "Don't worry, Pop!  We've come to save the day!" I cried.  
     And Kid Strange started shooting sapphire bullets of occult
light-energy into the crowd, knocking dozens of the muscular
scabs to their knees, when suddenly a sinister sorceress of
ominous power appeared:   
     Sister Mary Sophia.   
     She fended off the blaze of occult energies from Kid 
Strange with a silver pentangle. 
     Things were looking bad for our side, when suddenly the 
transformation that sometimes overtook me occurred once more:
     The Savage Id was on the scene!   
     These vicious malefactors... could they ever hope to 
understand the Id?  When even Sigmund Freud barely touched its
untamed depths, its violent fury?   
     They dreaded the Id who wrestled with them. 
     And whatever knows fear and loathing burns at the Slime-
thing's touch!!!!! 
     Scabs started going up in smoke. 
     Now I was alone with Sister Mary Sophia.  She was dressed as
a prostitute--as usual.  A magical ring glittered on her finger;
a pentagle hung as a pendant between the twin peaks of her
breasts:  a witch and a whore.  The evil Principal. 
     I touched her. 
     "Aieeeeee!" she screamed, as her beautiful but base body 
began to burn.  Flames clutched at her clothes; her entire 
outfit changed:  Now she appeared thoroughly as a sorceress, 
thoroughly evil. 
     Her magician's gown was littered with alchemical  
symbols:   
     The Raven trapped in the retort.   
     An old man dying inside a sphere of glass.   
The Salamander running thru the fire.   
     They were all symbols from the beginning of the Work, when
matter had not been purified of the Dark Side. 
     She fled--by what sinister magics I do not know.  One moment
she was standing there, burning, then the next she cried to some
other-dimensional power, "Beam me up, Scottie!"  
     She disappeared in a twinkling of a thousand points of
light.  Now, without her to enable her minions to defeat us, Kid
Strange zapped the rest of the scabs into slimy jelly while Pop
emerged triumphant, shouting, "You don't get me; I'm part of the
Union!" 
     Empowered by a Shaft of brilliant mystical energy from Kid
Strange--his kid--Pop swung a roundhouse right and took out a
strikebreaker.  A burly lumberjack came at him with a crowbar. 
He ducked and kicked him in the stomach.  That was a blow for our
side. 
     "Come on, Pop, you can do it!!" I shouted while Kid Strange
chanted mystical spells for the rise of the Factory's fall.  Kid
Strange kept zapping Pop, giving him the strength of ten.  Pop
mowed 'em down like a bulldozer.   Some athletic Union buster
broke a bottle over Pop's head.  It didn't even faze him.  He
just stood there, turned around slowly, faced his opponent
menacingly like Muhammad Ali taunting some heavyweight who'd had
it, said, "The meaning of my life was never clear, until the
Union appeared," and knocked the burly giant out with a single
uppercut to the taller man. 
     Sirens wailed.  
     The Police... 
     The scabs whom Pop hadn't already knocked into the 21st 
Century all split, racing for pickups or on foot.  The rest of
them were just lying around on the ground with broken bones or
bleeding where Pop had taken them out. 
     Sexy Sergeant Cindy Bender (the first Invisible Police-
woman) stepped out of her patrol car, surveyed the scene of mob
violence, and said, "What's going on here, George?" 
     "Just a little Union meeting," Pop said, grinning broadly. 
She tapped her billy club against her open palm.  "Well, see that
there isn't any violence!" 
     Then Sexy Cindy just got back into her cop car and drove 
off. 
     The Police were nice to Pop.  Pop fixed radios for the
Police. 
     Then Pop noticed us, playing superhero in the crime-fighting 
costumes we'd gotten for Christmas.   
     "What are you kids doing here?  You could get hurt!!"   
     Pop scooped us into his arms, lifted us into his truck.   
     "Come on, kids, time to go home.  Ma probably has supper  
ready by now." 
     The mighty Pops-mobile zoomed.  All around, bodies were
lying on the ground and I knew that what the Id alone couldn't do
the Father could:  Bring about the Factory's Fall. 
     Together, Kid Strange and I sang:  You don't get me; I'm
part of the Union! 
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