On a cold Sun­day morn­ing in 1963, Dad was preach­ing from the pul­pit at Mount Mori­ah Methodist Church in White Hall, Vir­ginia, when screech­es and howls came up through the floor and a smoth­er­ing cloud of nox­ious fumes filled the sanctuary.

Sit­ting in one of the front pews, Cecil Gib­son jumped up and yelled, “Skunk!”

Dad hus­tled down from the pul­pit, wav­ing his arms toward the back doors. “Every­one outside!”

Hack­ing and cough­ing, the con­gre­ga­tion stam­ped­ed down the aisles, through the vestibule, and out the door. As the crowd of wor­ship­pers sucked in fresh air under a grove of tall pines, Cecil found a breach in the wire mesh over an open­ing to the church’s crawl space. Shin­ing a flash­light into the dark void, he spied a male and female skunk in fla­grante delic­to.

Up to that time, Dad had stead­fast­ly refused to call off church ser­vices even in the face of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. He preached through floods, boom­ing thun­der­storms, and hur­ri­cane winds. Even when a big black snake slith­ered down the aisle and scur­ried under the piano in the mid­dle of Dad’s ser­mon, we dis­en­tan­gled the snake from the piano strings and Dad picked up right where he left off.

But skunk mat­ing sea­son posed a prob­lem like no oth­er. When the amorous cou­ple chose the warm space under the House of the Lord to seal their bond, they turned the sanc­tu­ary into a lethal gas cham­ber. Dad had no choice but to shut the place down.

It took three days for sev­er­al brave church mem­bers to chase the skunks from their hon­ey­moon bun­ga­low. By then the fur­nace had pumped their per­fume through heat­ing ducts into every nook and cran­ny. Cur­tains, cush­ions, and altar cloths were so mar­i­nat­ed in skunk juice they couldn’t be cleansed and had to be burned.

Fifty years lat­er when a pair of pole­cats bur­rowed under our house in San Mari­no, I remem­bered the lessons of the Mount Mori­ah skunk inva­sion. To pro­tect our fur­ni­ture and cloth­ing, I turned off the fur­nace and sealed off the duct vents, then made an urgent call to the ani­mal con­trol peo­ple. They referred me to a skunk specialist.

Some voca­tion­al choic­es make no sense to me. I can’t under­stand why any­one would strug­gle through med­ical school and then choose to become a proc­tol­o­gist. In Rat­tlesnake Avoid­ance Train­ing, I made clear you couldn’t pay me enough to be a rat­tlesnake han­dler. I’d sign up for those jobs in a heart­beat, though, if my only alter­na­tive was a career in skunk removal.

I smelled the skunk tech­ni­cian before his truck round­ed the turn at the end of my street. Short and over­weight with greasy shoul­der-length black hair and an expres­sion on his face befit­ting some­one on death row, he explained that he would bait a cage with peanut but­ter, trap the skunks overnight, and return the next morn­ing to col­lect them for release in the Ange­les Nation­al For­est. Cov­er­ing my nose with a ker­chief, I wrote him a check and care­ful­ly hand­ed it to him with­out mak­ing phys­i­cal contact.

At dawn, I awoke to enraged screams when the trap door fell, lock­ing the skunks in the cage. Lat­er that morn­ing when the skunk guy threw a tarp over the steel box and car­ried it out to his truck, they screamed again. The cloud of spray envelop­ing him was as thick as coal dust and the stench was … well … there are no words. As he drove away, I won­dered what it must be like to be him, to have no hope of ever going out on a date, mak­ing a friend, enjoy­ing the com­pan­ion­ship of a faith­ful pet, or even com­ing with­in shout­ing dis­tance of any crea­ture with olfac­to­ry glands.

I tell you my his­to­ry with skunks as a long-wind­ed intro­duc­tion to this month’s top­ic of con­tro­ver­sy: Pepé Le Pew. Pepé is a car­toon skunk who starred in 17 Looney Tunes pro­duc­tions, mak­ing his debut in 1945 in Odor-able Kit­ty and win­ning an Oscar in 1949 for Scent-imen­tal Rea­sons. Pepe’s char­ac­ter is mod­eled on Charles Boy­er, a French cin­e­mat­ic heart­throb of the 1940’s. Most of Pepe’s films involve the same plot line. By acci­dent a female cat ends up with a white stripe paint­ed down her back. Pepe mis­takes her for a skunk and falls in love. Bliss­ful­ly obliv­i­ous to his repul­sive odor, Pepé pur­sues the trau­ma­tized cat relent­less­ly while she des­per­ate­ly tries to fend him off.

When I was grow­ing up, Pepé’s one-sided, cross-species love affair made me laugh out loud, but appar­ent­ly not every child found Pepé’s antics humor­ous. In a March 3 NY Times op-ed about the can­cel­la­tion of sev­er­al Dr. Seuss Books, Charles Blow took a swipe at Pepé. “Some of the first car­toons I can remem­ber,” he wrote, “includ­ed Pepé Le Pew, who nor­mal­ized rape culture.”

At first, I thought Charles’s remark about Pepé was as looney as the toons he skew­ered, but in research­ing this post, I dis­cov­ered he is far from alone in regard­ing Pepé a per­vert. In 2000, Dave Chapelle, the come­di­an, in a stand-up rou­tine declared Pepé a “f****** rapist.” He was fish­ing for a laugh and got one, but since then many schol­ar­ly arti­cles have made sim­i­lar dead-seri­ous accu­sa­tions against Pepé.

This from Kirsten Thomp­son, Pro­fes­sor of Film Stud­ies at Seat­tle Uni­ver­si­ty: “Pepé’s nar­cis­sism relies on a strat­e­gy of dis­avow­al so hyper­bol­ic and resilient that his per­for­ma­tive and con­struct­ed mas­culin­i­ty lays bare its ide­o­log­i­cal repres­sion. Here the role of the joke nego­ti­ates the unset­tling ter­ri­to­ry of any cas­tra­tion anxieties.”

I have no clue what that means, but it doesn’t sound good, espe­cial­ly that last part.

Dr. Amber George, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Cul­tur­al Diver­si­ty at Galen Col­lege of Nurs­ing, deliv­ered a more blunt cri­tique, assert­ing that Pepé’s behav­ior con­sti­tutes “sex­u­al harass­ment, stalk­ing, and abuse.” Pro­fes­sor Amy Bar­tow of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Hamp­shire School of Law shared Charles Blow’s reac­tion to Pepé. “Those car­toons made me uneasy as a child, and now I find them tru­ly sick­en­ing. Rape isn’t fun­ny, and it cer­tain­ly isn’t ‘love.’”

After read­ing these arti­cles, I thought maybe I’m the one who’s looney, so I down­loaded Scen­ti-men­tal Rea­sons and watched it again. Okay, appar­ent­ly I’ve grown up a lit­tle. I’ll admit Pepé isn’t as fun­ny to me now as he was when I was a kid, and I can see what offends his detrac­tors. As Charles tweet­ed in defense of his NY Times remark, “Pepé grabs/kisses a girl/stranger, repeat­ed­ly, w/o con­sent and against her will.”

I get that, but I don’t agree with the con­clu­sions Charles and oth­ers draw from it – that Pepé teach­es lit­tle boys no doesn’t real­ly mean no and over­com­ing a woman’s stren­u­ous objec­tions is nor­mal, adorable, and funny.

I real­ize I’m not attuned to the chang­ing social norms. No one would char­ac­ter­ize me as “woke.” In fact, as an old guy who has a hard time remain­ing con­scious for eight hours at a stretch, my polit­i­cal state of aware­ness is, at best, “som­nam­bu­lant.”

But come on, man! Here’s the deal! Pepé’s a skunk. He’s chas­ing a cat. Skunks don’t rape cats. I’m not even sure skunks rape skunks. The cat isn’t afraid of Pepe’s “per­for­ma­tive and con­struct­ed mas­culin­i­ty.” She’s afraid of chok­ing to death on tox­ic skunk mist. That’s the joke – Pepé’s mis­ap­pre­hen­sion that the cat is a skunk who is immune from his stench. Which could nev­er hap­pen in real life because, and here’s the kick­er, CARTOONS ARE NOT REAL! They are named “Looney Tunes” for a reason.

I con­fess, how­ev­er, that I’m prob­a­bly not an objec­tive judge of Pepé’s char­ac­ter. I feel a cer­tain kin­ship with him. When your last name is Oder, you endure a lot of taunt­ing in ele­men­tary school. For a hor­ri­ble few weeks in the third grade, I got sad­dled with the nick­name Stinky. My lit­tle broth­er had it worse. In the sec­ond grade, the teacher assigned lock­er mates using the alpha­bet­i­cal order of their last names. In a cru­el twist of fate, my brother’s lock­er bud­dy became Ron­nie Pugh (pro­nounced “pew”). The Oder-Pugh lock­er took a lot of gas, so to speak. For those of us in the Oder clan, and prob­a­bly for most of the Pughs, Pepé’s per­sis­tent con­fi­dence in the face of an over­pow­er­ing social stig­ma gave us the strength to endure the wit­less slings and arrows of count­less imma­ture stu­pid jerks (not that we took it per­son­al­ly or hold a grudge or anything).

So while I’ve assid­u­ous­ly avoid­ed writ­ing posts about my polit­i­cal views because Pol­i­tics Makes Me Sick, on this par­tic­u­lar con­tro­ver­sy I feel com­pelled to speak my mind.

Let me be clear. On the ques­tion of Pepé Le Pew, I stand with the skunk!

In the dark I saw the sharp bend to the left too late and drove into the turn too fast. I jammed on the brakes and jerked the steer­ing wheel to the left, but the road was slick from the pour­ing rain. The car went straight. The tires squealed and skid­ded off the asphalt. Sit­ting beside me, Randy grabbed the dash­board with both hands as we careened toward a three-rail fence.

Time seemed to shift into slow motion. The car’s hood dipped down as the front wheels plunged into a ditch. My chest slammed into the steer­ing wheel. The hood bounced sky­ward, throw­ing me back in the seat. The car soared out of the ditch, then crashed back down, still speed­ing forward.

The bumper struck the base of a fen­ce­post. With the soil soft­ened by a two-day rain, the blow uproot­ed the post and threw it up on the hood. It came at the wind­shield like a bat­ter­ing ram and hit the plate glass at eye lev­el. A gory image of my decap­i­ta­tion flashed through my mind, but the wind­shield held in place and the post launched into the air and flew over the roof. I watched the seams of wood­en planks sep­a­rate and slide across the wind­shield and heard the bro­ken boards scrape along the sides of the car as it sped through the fence.

The car zoomed over a lit­tle knoll, then pitched for­ward, and skat­ed down a steep slope of soft wet loam. The head­light beams bounced up and down over a green pas­ture that descend­ed to a tree-lined ravine a hun­dred feet below.

I stood on the brake, but it had no effect. The car raced down toward the trees like a sled on an icy hill­side. Twen­ty feet. Forty. Fifty. I put all my leg’s strength into the brake, my knee locked, my fists grind­ing the steer­ing wheel to dust, my jaw clenched so tight I couldn’t breathe.

Six­ty feet. Sev­en­ty. The head­lights fell on a big tree direct­ly in our path at the bot­tom of the slope. Out of the cor­ner of my eye, I saw Randy brace for the impact.

We’re going to die, I thought.

Then it came to me out of nowhere. I turned the steer­ing wheel as hard to the left as I could. The car kept going straight, but it slowed, then coast­ed to a full stop, and stalled out.

I leaned back in the seat and let out a heavy breath. Through sil­ver strings of rain, I stared at the broad trunk of the tree. We were so close I could see the tex­ture of its bark.

“You okay?” I asked Randy.

He lit a Marl­boro with a trem­bling hand and drew hard on it. “I’m alive,” he said quietly.

We sat for a long time with­out say­ing any­thing, the only sound the rain pound­ing on the car’s roof.

When the adren­a­line wore off, it sank into my con­scious­ness that I had wrecked my car, a gray Dodge Lancer my dad bought me for $350, a six-cylin­der stick shift I’d named the Bul­let as a joke because it didn’t go fast. I stared at the igni­tion key dan­gling from the steer­ing col­umn, think­ing about the Bul­let. Some­times, it seemed she almost had a per­son­al­i­ty. Reli­able. Deter­mined. Resilient. I ten­ta­tive­ly reached for the key and turned it. She start­ed right up. I gave her some gas, then eased off. She idled smoothly.

Randy shook his head and grinned.

We got out in the pour­ing rain, walked around to the front end, and stared at the mounds of mud that had piled up at the Bullet’s front wheels to scotch her momen­tum when I’d turned the steer­ing wheel to the left, almost too late.

The fen­ce­post had gouged a big gash in the Bullet’s grille and front bumper and the bust­ed planks had scratched her sides, but oth­er­wise, her exte­ri­or seemed okay. We looked under the hood. There was no vis­i­ble dam­age. I took a close look at the wind­shield. No cracks. Even the wipers still worked.

With Randy push­ing from the front, I backed the Bul­let out of the hole she had dug. Randy climbed in, and I drove her slow­ly up the slope. Halfway up, I heard a cow bawl and I saw ten or twelve dark fig­ures hulk­ing under trees on a ridge to my left. By the time I drove through the break in the fence and eased the Bul­let through the ditch, the rain had light­ened up.

I stopped on the side of the road and looked back at twin trench­es in the mud run­ning through the ditch and the fence and on over the knoll. “I didn’t think I was going that fast.”

“It wasn’t the speed,” Randy said. “You hit the brake too hard com­ing into the turn. It locked the wheels and we slid out of control.”

Randy would lat­er dri­ve heavy-duty trucks in the Army and pub­lic tran­sit bus­es in D.C. He knew what he was talk­ing about. The crash was my fault. The break in the fence was my responsibility.

“The cat­tle will get out,” I said. “We bet­ter tell someone.”

“I saw a farm­house back the way we came,” Randy said.

I turned the car around. We found a mud­dy dri­ve­way run­ning down a hill to the farm­house. The dri­ve­way took us around behind the house where I parked between a pick-up truck and a tractor.

It was past mid­night and pitch dark, no moon or stars in the driz­zling rain, no light in or around the house. Wak­ing up coun­try peo­ple in the mid­dle of the night is a risky propo­si­tion, but at six­teen I didn’t know enough to be afraid.

Randy and I were head­ed toward the back porch when the dis­tinc­tive sound of a shot­gun being racked pierced the silence and a blind­ing light hit us between the eyes.

I froze.

“Who are ya and whad­daya want?” A hoarse angry voice.

“Name’s Ken Oder,” I said, my voice shak­ing. “I ran my car through your fence. Your cat­tle can get out through the break.”

“He’s tellin the truth!” A high-pitched scratchy voice. “I heard the crash!”

The blind­ing light went off. A porch light came on. A bean pole dressed in long johns with a spot­light in one hand and a rifle in the oth­er stood beside a short stumpy woman wear­ing a flan­nel night­gown and armed with a pump-action shot­gun. “Put on your slick­er,” she barked at the old man. “Take ‘em up the hill and fix the fence ‘fore the cows run all over cre­ation.” They shuf­fled through a screen door and dis­ap­peared inside the house with­out anoth­er word.

“Damned if I go any­where with you again,” Randy mut­tered. “Sec­ond time tonight you almost got us killed.”

The old man came out wear­ing a rain­coat over his long johns and threw some planks in the truck bed. We rigged up a tem­po­rary fence that night. I went back in the morn­ing and helped him sink a new post and nail up rails. He wouldn’t let me pay for the dam­ages. “Crazy sumbitch­es run through this fence all a time in a big rain,” he said. “You the only one ever come and told me. We’re square.”

Dad took the Bul­let to a church mem­ber who was an auto mechan­ic. He adjust­ed the front end align­ment, removed a splin­ter from the radi­a­tor, and sealed up the pin­hole. Cost about thir­ty bucks. I nev­er fixed the big dent in the grille and bumper.

Sport­ing her bro­ken nose and bust­ed lip, the Bul­let clocked 100,000 miles after the wreck, tak­ing me every­where I want­ed to go from my high school years all the way through UVA, trips to Flori­da on spring breaks, out to Yel­low­stone Park, down through Wyoming, Col­orado, and Texas, all across the south­east, scores of runs to Mary Bald­win to court my auburn-haired blind date, and sev­er­al nerve-wrack­ing mis­sions to Aiken, South Car­oli­na, try­ing to con­vince her to mar­ry me.

They say a car is just a pile of met­al parts put togeth­er a cer­tain way. Gen­er­al­ly, that’s true, I guess. I’ve owned twen­ty-three cars over my long life. Twen­ty-two of them had no soul.

The Bul­let was dif­fer­ent. She was my steady com­pan­ion through sev­en of the best years of my life. I came of age with her, and I cried when I had to give her up. I loved that old car, and fifty years after we part­ed, I still miss her.

Fif­teen years ago Cindy and I were hav­ing break­fast at The Colo­nial Kitchen in San Mari­no when a short bone-thin old­er man with curly brown hair that fell to his shoul­ders and a pasty face stretched tight by too much plas­tic surgery led a stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful young Asian woman wear­ing skin-tight black leather pants and high-heeled boots across the din­ing room to a booth direct­ly across from us. He sat down and scoot­ed over against the wall. She sat beside him, put her arm around him, nib­bled his ear, and rubbed his sunken chest while he ignored her and looked over the menu.

“Phil Spec­tor just walked in,” I said to Cindy.

Cindy’s pret­ty hazel eyes widened. She turned to look and we both stared at him. 

When you live in LA, you see a lot of celebri­ties. We stood on the side­walk with Jack Palance one night in Han­cock Park and watched a duplex burn to the ground. Lee Mar­vin shopped beside us in a depart­ment store on Wilshire Boule­vard. Elton John sat three tables away at L’Orangerie. The nov­el­ty wears off after a while, and you learn to respect their pri­va­cy. You take a quick look and move on. You nev­er stare. 

That sight­ing of Phil Spec­tor was dif­fer­ent, though. He was a glob­al­ly famous mul­ti-mil­lion­aire music pro­duc­er fac­ing a mur­der tri­al. The indict­ment alleged he shot a young woman late at night at his home, The Pyre­nees Cas­tle, a sprawl­ing man­sion locat­ed on a hill just a stone’s throw from The Colo­nial Kitchen, where we sat that morning.

The news reports said his behav­ior became unpre­dictable and vio­lent decades ear­li­er when his career began to fal­ter. His first song was a mega-hit way back in 1958 when he was only 19. He wrote, arranged, played gui­tar, sang, and pro­duced To Know Him is to Love Him with the group, The Ted­dy Bears. It soared to num­ber one on the charts and remained a top hit for six months, sell­ing over two and a half mil­lion copies. The Ted­dy Bears broke up. Spec­tor moved behind the scenes as a pro­duc­er and released a daz­zling string of hits in the ear­ly 1960’s. Dream Lover, Da Doo Ron Ron, Then He Kissed Me, Be My Baby, I Love the Way You Love Me. By the time he was 26, he had pro­duced more than two dozen songs that made the Bill­board Top 40, most of them char­ac­ter­ized by his sig­na­ture “wall of sound,” legions of musi­cal instru­ments and back­up singers that came togeth­er in a dynam­ic son­ic mass, prob­a­bly best exem­pli­fied by The Right­eous Broth­ers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feel­in’.

But in the late 1960’s his red-hot career sud­den­ly cooled off, and his per­son­al life fell apart. His first mar­riage blew up. His sec­ond wife, Veron­i­ca Ben­nett, lead singer of The Ronettes, said he impris­oned her in The Pyre­nees Cas­tle and abused her. After she divorced him in 1974, he hit the bot­tle hard and devel­oped a fond­ness for firearms. He spec­tac­u­lar­ly crashed his car, fly­ing through the wind­shield and almost dying from the head injuries. Even amidst the tur­moil, he man­aged to pro­duce sev­er­al albums in the 1970’s with John Lennon and George Har­ri­son, but his pro­fes­sion­al behav­ior became errat­ic and volatile. He famous­ly shot up the stu­dio ceil­ing while work­ing on a Lennon album and put a loaded revolver to singer Leonard Cohen’s head dur­ing a taping. 

In the 1980’s and 90’s, he pro­duced almost no music as his life tum­bled steadi­ly down­hill. On the night of Feb­ru­ary 2, 2003, about a month before Cindy and I saw him at The Colo­nial Kitchen, he hit rock bot­tom. He drank his way through Bev­er­ly Hills and Hol­ly­wood, fin­ish­ing up at the House of Blues on Sun­set Strip where he talked Lana Clark­son, a B‑movie actress less than half his age, into going back to the Cas­tle with him. Spector’s chauf­feur, Adri­ano de Souza, drove them there and watched them go inside the house. Sit­ting in the dri­ve­way, he heard a gun­shot, and Spec­tor came out the front door bran­dish­ing a revolver. “I think I killed some­body,” he said. De Souza found Clarkson’s corpse slumped in a chair, a gun­shot wound to the mouth, blood splat­tered on the chair and wall, bits of her teeth on the floor. When the police came, they had to taser Spec­tor to dis­arm him.

The LA Dis­trict Attor­ney charged him with sec­ond-degree mur­der, and he was out of jail on a one mil­lion dol­lar bail bond when Cindy and I saw him that morn­ing in The Colo­nial Kitchen.

So we couldn’t resist star­ing at Phil Spec­tor, but we gawked at him for too long. He looked up and caught us. A hard look came across his face. We turned away and resumed eat­ing break­fast, but he didn’t let it go. Every time I glanced at him, he was still glar­ing at us. This went on for five or ten min­utes. Spec­tor was a lit­tle guy, about five feet five, a hun­dred forty pounds, but he packed more malev­o­lence into his dark scowl than most any­one I’d encoun­tered. I don’t want to make too much of this. He didn’t move toward us or threat­en us in any way, but his men­ac­ing glow­er was unset­tling. We cut our break­fast short and he stared us down all the way out the door.

Years lat­er, his first tri­al end­ed in a hung jury, but the jury in the sec­ond tri­al found him guilty and the judge gave him 19 to life. I hadn’t thought much about him after that until two weeks ago when I learned he died on Jan­u­ary 14 of com­pli­ca­tions from Covid19 while serv­ing out his prison sentence.

When Cindy and I were watch­ing a tele­vi­sion show recap­ping his trou­bled life, I asked her if she remem­bered that day we saw him. “I’ll nev­er for­get it,” she said. She recalled his angry stare as vivid­ly as I did. “The face of evil,” she said.

Spec­tor lament­ed that he strug­gled with the “dev­ils inside me.” Men­tal ill­ness ran in his fam­i­ly. His father com­mit­ted sui­cide when Spec­tor was nine. Telling­ly, the inscrip­tion on his father’s grave­stone reads, “To know him was to love him.” Spec­tor, his moth­er, and sis­ter fought con­stant­ly, blam­ing one anoth­er for the sui­cide. His sis­ter was even­tu­al­ly com­mit­ted to a men­tal insti­tu­tion. In an inter­view a few months before he shot Lana Clark­son, Spec­tor said he was bi-polar and tak­ing med­ica­tion for schiz­o­phre­nia. “I’ve been a very tor­tured soul,” he said. “I have not been at peace. I have not been happy.”

In prepar­ing this post, I pulled up his top hits on the inter­net and lis­tened to them all in one sit­ting. It was an emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence. They take you back to your first slow dance, those sock-hops in the gym, the first big crush, the breakup that felt like the end of the world. Each song is a mag­i­cal mas­ter­piece, the pop music touch­stones of my generation’s ado­les­cence, “lit­tle sym­phonies for the kids,” Spec­tor called them, dec­la­ra­tions of teen love and heartache set to orches­tral explo­sions, drums pound­ing like heart­beats, strings swelling and reced­ing, thun­der­ous hand­claps, clat­ter­ing cas­tanets, blar­ing horns, and boom­ing cho­rus­es. They’re bril­liant and wonderful.

He want­ed this music to be his lega­cy. “I don’t want to be Elvis or Lenny Bruce,” he once said. “Do you think peo­ple will remem­ber their genius or the way they died on the bath­room floor?”

Spec­tor was a boy genius who rose above the mis­ery of his child­hood and shot the moon, but when he lost the mag­ic and couldn’t get it back, dev­ils breached his wall of sound and reclaimed their place inside him. His music will live on, as he hoped, but sad­ly for Spec­tor, most peo­ple will remem­ber the man he became. 

The tor­tured soul. 

The mur­der­er.

The face of evil.