is one of the pen names of Davis Dresser, American mystery writer, creator of the Mike Shayne novels and credited with Shane Black for the 2005 film "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang."



Memorial to Burr Tillstrom, 1917-1985, Puppeteer.  Saugatuck, Michigan.

Kukla, Fran and Ollie were familiar to me as a child, from their television program and my own fairly confused encounters in real life on summer vacations in Saugatuck, where Fran and Burr were considered honorary members of the family -- my Aunt Ruth had a habit of collecting and adopting interesting people.  Since I already had a real Aunt Fran it wasn't hard to accept another one, and this second Aunt Fran was already recognizable to me from somewhere and plus, she was a very sweet lady.  Uncle Burr was more problematic, since I never connected him to the guy whose hands were inside little Kukla and Ollie, making them come to life.  My cousin says she remembers Uncle Burr had a big Cadillac convertible he'd drive her to the beach in, guiding the behemoth down the sandy narrow roads with calm and easy assurance.  I also dimly recall Uncle Burr making my dad and uncle nervous, but that might just have come from jealousy, not being puppeteers themselves who could charm young children. 

I have heard there was a tiny teacup-size tempest over the statue they erected in Uncle Burr's memory, which as you can see, is a little girl playing with a hand puppet which resembles something Alice In Wonderland would have had, not the surreal Dada-ist constructions of Kukla (Russian for doll) and Ollie, who are mixed up in my grown-up mind with the Jack-in-the-Box guy and shaggy Cecil of Beany and Cecil fame, with a little Dr. Seuss and Felix the Cat thrown in, and stir well with a few hits of acid and R. Crumb comics too.  But even if for copyright restrictions you couldn't show the real puppets (a local rumor says they were buried with Burr) at least, some people complained, you should have made the statue a little boy, except there were those who argued a young boy would have sent the wrong message.  My cousin, a little girl herself when she knew him, said she never felt unsafe in his company, which I have no reason to doubt.  She said they didn't have much to talk about, but she never felt unsafe.  Plus, we all loved Kukla, Fran and Ollie.  Maybe there should have been a statue erected to them instead.

So what's left for posterity, what's erected to commemorate -- history, if you will, in short -- can end up adding to the mystery, as much as it attempts to preserve and shed light on the past.  Wandering the streets of Saugatuck during our recent family reunion, for instance, I tried superimposing my unreliable memories on the present scene, so anything I might tell you here would only add to the layers of obfuscation and be subject to conflicting interpretation.  Plus I would soon be off on a tangent, the Russian word for doll leading to the Ballets Russes (see below) and then where would we be?

Yesterday, back in sunny California, I attended a small memorial service for a friend of ours who was once a part of several communities, some of which barely overlap or interact.  A representative from the ashram of which the dearly departed was a member spoke of his quiet devotion; another old friend remembered nearly a different person altogether, one given to wild and uncontrollable and comically burst-into-flames fits of rage.  The eulogy, such as it was, had us all laughing, remembering.  To an outsider hearing these stories, our friend would seem like some sort of Gandhi or Mother Teresa who was also secretly a chain-smoking drag queen afflicted with Tourettes, and that description would only begin to cover all the bases.  So to try and tell you about the trip I made with him to Laguna Beach for the fire ceremony in honor of the goddess Kali and how he taught me about Aghora and the Left-Handed Path to God would be only to add to the mystery, almost like insult to injury.  

Life is mystery.  Family is mystery.  Death too, probably, don't you think?  I thought, as I'm sure we all do at times like this, sitting through another memorial (we've all been to a few in our time, haven't we), of the one I cringe to think about, the one that might just one day end up being mine.   

What would it be like, I wonder.  A tale told by a little Edwardian girl with a puppet Nanny might have made for her?  Or a Punch and Judy show by Dali, with possessed pantomime supplied by Aleister Crowley?  If you're taking requests, then build a big fire chanted over by priests from Dakshineswar.  And no statues afterward, please.

But you'll do what you want to.  Or not.  More mystery, you see.  A job for Brett Halliday.  Will the real Burr Tillstrom stand up.