Down Home: Listen to Dalton Roberts' podcast about what he learned from County Judge Chester Frost.
Al Harvey sits out on Bakewell Mountain thinking up philosophical jewels and comedy routines. I have long said he is the funniest man I have ever known, but interestingly, he is also one of the deepest.
Every funny person totes around characters in his or her being and finds it necessary now and then to let them out to play. One of Al's is Grandfather Fluke.
Once, when I was interviewing Grandfather Fluke for my show "Face This Big Awful Stinking Mess" (my version of Meet The Press), I asked him, "Why do you feel the need for out-of-body travel?" He answered, "Ever so often, a man has just got to get away from himself."
That is really a deep and profound statement. It made me stop and realize how much of our behavior is really an effort to get away from our limited world and play a while on a different playground. I am thinking a lot of our obsession with sports is just such escapism. For a while, we want to live through others we have idealized.
One of his sayings made Page One of my book "Kickstarts": "There's a time for glee and a time for woe, a time to peacock and a time to lay low, and it's up to you to know what time it is."
One day, when I had spent some time laughing with an old pal and then stopped by a funeral home to be with friends in grief, I realized that there are days when we experience all these things - glee, woe, peacocking and laying low.
The thing I questioned at first was the value of laying low. Then I discovered the Biblical character Eutychus. He fell asleep while sitting in an open window on the third floor of a building while listening to Paul preach. Paul went down and raised him from the dead, I thought to myself, "I bet Eutychus became a firebrand for Paul after being raised from the dead."
To check that out, I went to my concordance and was shocked to see that Eutychus is never mentioned again in the Bible. So I developed the theory that Eutychus just believed in keeping a low profile. I came up with a chapter for a book titled "Low-Profile Eutychus." Al's now-famous words helped me rescue Eutychus from oblivion - a fate worse than death.
Once, I was asked to emcee a show at The Comedy Catch, where three area stand-up comics were taping their acts to create a demo to send to clubs where they were seeking bookings. I saw it as a chance to expose Al's comedic talents to the world and asked him to come and do some crazy stuff with me. I was also hoping he'd "get the bug" and decide to become a professional comedian. He brought the house down, but when he showed no interest in following up, I asked him why. He said, "I do my thing for my friends only. It's really spur-of-the moment stuff. I can't imagine anything more boring than repeating the same material from town to town, night after night."
Al may need to get away from himself now and then, but he always comes right back home to who he is.
E-mail Dalton Roberts at DownhomeP@aol.com