The Pied Rapper of Hamlin Most middle-class people imagine rap music to be a phenomenon of the 70's and 80's; they wouldn't believe you if you told them that it originated in the little town of Hamlin, Texas in the mid nineteen-thirties. Old Jake McPherson was dying, and that's not an overwhelmingly bad thing for somebody who has basically accomplished everything he set out to do in life and whose affairs are more or less in order. The next world is said to be better than this one in fact, but there was one tiny detail which was troubling Jake, and this centered around his young second wife and their infant son who hadn't even been named yet. Two of Jake's grown sons were in attendance, along with business partners, an attorney, and representatives of the medical profession. "I know what you're thinking, Jake" said John, the managing partner of oil operations, "but we'll look after the boy and, hell, Rachel's a graduate of that fancy school up East, there can't be much she wouldn't be able to teach him..." "That's what I'm afraid of..." replied Jake. "Left to 'er own devices, she's gonna turn that kid into what French or Germans would call a firlefan, which is kind of an aggrandized an' artificially enhanced variation of what you or I would call a sissy. Danged kid probably wouldn't be lucky enough to grow up bein' an ordinary faggot. Now, I know all of you folks mean well, but you've got your own lives to lead, your own families, and you're not gonna have the time it would take to try to provide the kinda countervailin' influence that kid's gonna need." "I'll tell ya'all what I'm a-gonna do. I'm gonna stipulate two conditions in my will which are gonna have to be obeyed before that kid can collect on any part o' his inheritance. I'm gonna name 'im after two o' my illustrious ancesters back about two hunnert years ago; the kid's gonna be named Ichabod D. TollhouseCookie McPherson III, and the other condition's gonna be that he attend schools right here in Hamlin Texas and nowhere else on this planet till he's eighteen years of age. Hell, name like that over in East Hamlin elementary... oughta be good fer at least two ass-kickins a day. After the first year or two, oughta be him doin' the kickin'! "That's one hell of a stupid plan, Jake." said the attorney Abrams; "Only problem is, I ain't got anything better... any of you folks?" Nobody else had a better idea, and the little boy indeed was named Ichabod D. Tollhouse-Cookie McPherson III, which other kids couldn't even pronounce, much less fight over; they called him Ick-D, and more often Ice-D, which sounded like Iced tea which was a big item in a town where summer days normally saw 110 degree temperatures and you could fry eggs on the sidewalks. The Ick-D variant was good for fights, however, and by the time young Ichabod reached his late teens, he had gotten good enough at that avocation to earn money working as a sparring partner for top middleweight and light-heavy contenders during summer vacation, and had actually trained with Billy Con during one three-week layover in Pittsburgh. Three things mitigated against a boxing career for Ichabod, however: one was that any serious career along those lines would ultimately lead to encounters with the aforementinoed Con or, much worse, with Joe Louis; two was that it would interfere with what was rapidly becoming the boy's true vocation in life, music and, three was that the childhood which old Jake had so carefully charted out for the boy had left him with an attitude not so much against any one particular opponent in the ring, but rather against the whole world. Ichabod felt that, like the Jewish prophets, he had a message to deliver to his people, and this was not the sort of message which the complacent delight in hearing. Ichabod planned on using music as the medium for this message, and practiced honing this message in the little town of Hamlin on weekends at the dance hall. You've got to understand how boring life can get to be in little Texas towns to appreciate how this worked. A movie called "The Last Picture Show" once depicted a town so boring that when the Korean War broke out, it sounded like the greatest thing which had ever happened, and everybody volunteered. Individual towns have their own unique systems for breaking up the monotony, and Hamlin had its own little saturday-night version of what later became the Gong Show. After the pledge of allegiance and the anthym, the pie-fight scene from "Keystone Hotel" was shown, and after that, every kind of practiced act from all over Texas and Oklahoma and, should the audience have anything less than total appreciation and admiration for a particular act... you guessed it; girls in Hamlin Texas all knew how to make custard pies by age twelve, even if they didn't know anything else... The all-time favorite target for custard pies at these events was Ichabod D. TollhouseCookie McPherson III. Ice-D, as he was now beginning to bill himself, would be practicing his new musical form which he called "rap", and the fusilade of custard was non-stop, often for ten or fifteen minutes until ammunition stores ran out. Ice-D began to be known also as the Pied Rapper of Hamlin Texas. "I hope those idiots never figure out how much I love coconut custard!" he thought to himself, licking enough of a elear area on his face to sing: "You know you strut it at the school, but you can't cut it an' the teacher's got you figured for a fool an you ain't got no way to reach 'er cause your mind's a mess, a dog's mentality at best, an so you try to act cool, but your brain is always flustered an you're out here at the dance hall drinkin beer an flingin' custard, but your life ain't all that cool, an it ain't that hard to know, that your momma's just a floozy and your daddy's just a schmo who when you wake up in the mornin' heave your butt straight out the do', an' say, 'milk the cow, an then, hit it with the plow... SPLOW!! more custard... If Ice-D wasn't a the world's biggest hit amongst farm boys, his trashing ot teachers, principals, and town and state officials was much worse, and you can imagine how industrialists, bankers, and the monied classes perceived him: "You know that great depression what's, got you fools greivin' aint nothin but the world, tryin' to get even. You fenced off all the prairies and you clear-cut all the trees then you strip-mined the whole country from, sea to shinin' sea. You dump shit in all the rivers, toxic waste in all the streams, tie up all the country's money with your phony Wall-Street schemes, till the whole thing crashes down, an the bankers all are leapin' outa windows with the cabbies keepin' time with horns a beepin.... And the funny thing was that Ichabod, being a member of the monied classes in fact if not in spirit, could not be touched or simply removed in the manner in which you might have expected an ordinary person preaching such messages to have been in those days. Not that the course which Ichabod was charting out for himself wasn't sufficiently fraught with peril; Ichabod's mother, on the rare occasions when she actually ventured back in Texas, tried to talk him into becoming a playboy like several of his uncles, but being a playboy is a state of mind, and Ichabod definitely saw himself as part of the working class at this point. Graduating from the environs of Hamlin, Ichabod toured the country, earning his living in a haphazard manner, at times in the ring and on other occasions at dance and music halls until, at length, one of the big New York promoters hit upon the ultimate scheme for selling the new musical form. The one class of people who appeared totally enthralled with "rap", as Ice-D was beginning to present it, was criminals... every one of them, from ordinary small-time hoodlums, pickpockets, burglers, boosters, con-artists and the like right on up to the Dutch Schultzes, Legs Diamonds, and more serious types of mafiosi. They were mesmerized by it. The Scheme which Ice and the promotors hit upon was not so much to have these worthies pay to hear rap music, but to have the city councils and chambers of commerce of small towns and cities pay to have Ice-D lead all of the aforementioned vermin out of their towns: "All you greasy criminals, yearnin' to be free, gather round, hear the sound, an' F - F - follow - follow me.... Ice-D thus became the first musical exterminator, and was beginning to make quite a lot of money at this new calling when Pearl Harbor happened, and he, along with the aforementined Louis and Con, all of the farm boys, all of the hoodlums and criminals, the school teachers, the principals, the town and state officials, and even the rich kids and bankers (the ones who hadn't yet taken the leap), and everybody else all ended up in the service together. At this point, after basic training and a certain period of training with airborne groups and rangers, Ice-D dropped out of view altogether for a long period of time, as if he were part of one of the special projects which cropped up at various points during the war. April, 1944. Dwight Eisenhower and other general officers were going over plans for the momentous invasion, and one not-quite-minor detail which hadn't been resolved came up in the discussion: "The 68'th German rangers are orphans, aren't they?" Ike asked, the implications being fairly obvious. These were the craziest of the crazy, the baddest of the bad, owing allegiance to nothing in this world other than Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, having been raised and trained for mayhem since infancy. They were experts in the use of the reich's most advanced tactical weaponry, they all spoke English, and they figured to be two miles behind Omaha beach. "Those boys all speak English, don't they?" queried Ike. "As well as you or I." replied Montgomery. "I know what you're thinking, paratroopers landing in the dark with all that fog... those bloody German rangers could simply start issuing orders; something like that could cause havoc." "Omaha's going to be tricky enough without that problem to contend with..." Ike mused. "Is there any conceivable way to take them away from that beach, do something that pulls them either West towards Utah, or back South somehow or other?" "As a matter of fact, there is, general..." replied one of the two OSS majors in attendence, "But you don't want to hear how this one works; take my word for it, the 68'th won't be at the beach." "What do you have in mind?" asked Patton. "Those guys speaking English could be a two-edged sword..." replied the other OSS officer. "Depends on what they have to listen to, and how close they come to being able to deal with it; trust me..." What was at the beach, or three miles behind it to be more precise on that fateful morning of June 6, 1944, having parachuted in in the wee hours, was something the likes of which the 68'th ranger group had never seen or heard: "Now listen up fools, to what I'm rappin' down bout your faggot Fuehrer, here's a surly clown, tried to take the world, couldn't get the handle, blew up in his face, turned into a scandal now the master race, is wearin' rags and sandals, like huns and vandals. And the only thing sadder, than this sorry clown, are you stupid mother-fuckers who, follow him around, gettin' bombed to pieces in these barbed-wire trenches while he's makin' time with your blue-eyed wenches. Now, friends, that ain't the way it's a-gotta be, stop followin' him an' start followin' me Don't stay, don't delay, heed what I say, I been paid to lead all you vermin away, Just walk this way, F-F-F-Follow follow, follow-follow, follow-follow me.... And they did, all weapons blazing in a crazed mass charge away from Omaha beach and far to the South, and were never heard from again. Nor was Ichabod D. TollhouseCookie McPherson III, Ice-D, the first rapper, ever seen or heard from again. The rest of the story you know.