By Scott Graber
In 1966, I was involved in a car wreck on I-95 just north of Emporia, Va. I was with another Citadel cadet, and we survived that wreck, just barely, and thereafter, I was hospitalized at the Medical College in Richmond.
After abdominal surgery and two weeks in the hospital, I was advised to go home for another six months. Then, after my recovery, I would return to the military college. I didn’t like that plan.
I wanted to “graduate with my class,” and that meant going back to the barracks in Charleston. It meant daily drill and Saturday Morning Inspections (SMI) and a rigor entirely unknown in other academic landscapes.
When I returned I was put into a room with two senior cadets, one a senior private named Reinhardt (“Mouse”) Griffin, Class of 1966. I was perplexed by this arrangement.
“Mouse” was, in fact, a small, thin man who was regarded with a kind of awe that worked in my favor. Which is to say our barracks room was seldom inspected. And if there was an unexpected, late night visit there were never any demerits or confinements attached to those inspections. It was as if Mouse Griffin had some sort of immunity.
Mouse was The Citadel’s mascot, and at every football game he climbed into bulldog garb and assumed the reckless, take-no-prisoners personality of your abused, underfed, staked-in-the-yard bulldog, sometimes “capturing” a cheerleader from the visiting team and delivering that astonished, disoriented woman to the massed cadets on our side of the stadium.
After the game, Mouse would change into the costume and mentality of James Brown — “the hardest working man in show business.” He knew Brown’s lyrics, had the musician’s steps, his vocal range and shared Brown’s obvious contempt for convention.
Sometimes Mouse would perform during the week. This involved somehow sneaking past the Officer of the Day, over (or under) the 8-foot-high fence that surrounded the campus and then returning to a sleeping campus just before dawn.
And so, in this way, I came to know the James Brown playlist as interpreted by Reinhardt Griffin. He would listen to Brown constantly; imitating the twisting and the twirling and then Brown’s famous on-stage “collapse” complete with the terrified assistant running onstage and covering-up Brown’s quivering, jerking, seized-up body with a cape.
All of which brings me, naturally, to Augusta, Ga.
Earlier today, Susan and I toured the James Brown Wing of the Augusta History Museum, stopping and studying the plexiglas case that contains Brown’s famous, all-white cape.
In addition to the cape there are a half dozen other cases containing Brown’s on-stage garb. There are also posters, photographs, album covers and videos where one might see James Brown and Pavarotti teaming up for a duet in Italy.
The exhibit largely ignores the alleged abuse of Tammy Terrell; the multiple marriages and the “extramarital children.” I can almost hear the museum’s curators saying; “I don’t care about the jail time and the circus that surrounded his Last Will and Testament. I only know this wizard emerged from the same God-forsaken pine barrens (in Elko, S.C.) that I came from. And that, by God, is a miracle in itself.”
After a three hour visit to Augusta’s museum—there is also a smaller exhibit on the life and times of Brenda Lee — Susan and I walked along their rebuilt, re-imagined waterfront levee that runs for a couple of miles parallel to the Savannah River. Eventually we found a bar where they were grilling hamburgers in the window.
“I would like a glass of your Pinot Noir.” Susan said to the young, curly-headed bartender.
“We don’t have wine of any kind,” he replied. “Actually we discourage the drinking of wine.”
“What kind of vegetables can I get with my burger?” she asked.
“Actually the fried onion rings are the only vegetable on our menu,” he said.
“I’ll never know why—when I got back from the hospital in Richmond, they put me into a room with Griffin,” I said to Susan trying to get her mind away from the bar’s limited offerings. “He was certifiably crazy by any standards.”
“Maybe they wanted to protect you,” she replied. “Maybe your classmates knew you were too broken up. That you couldn’t make it on your own. Maybe they thought Griffin would protect you from the inspections and the physical stuff. Maybe they wanted to keep you …”
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
