Today's Story

Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks

2010-07-29T12:39:00.013-04:00

1956 newspaper advertisement for Bonnee Butters, showing the typical cooking attire of that time

Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks

©Thomas W. Shawcross 16 Dec 2011

Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks, made of “finely chopped beef, molded, frozen, sliced and buttered,” were served to my brother Jim and me whenever Mom and Dad had T-bone steaks for their dinner during the mid-1950’s to early 1960’s. Sold in packages of four frozen 2-ounce beef patties, each slice of Bonnee Butters (as we called them at Chateau Shawcross) included the eponymous pat of frozen butter. They were muy delicious, as the French say when they are drunk and confused!

“But Tom!,” you youngsters say, “didn’t people realize back then that butter is high in saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories, and has few vitamins and minerals?” To you I say “apparently not, but who cares – it tasted great!” Back then, pats of butter were routinely slathered on nearly everything we ate that was warm enough to melt butter. I remember admiring pretty yellow orbs of melted butter surrounded by the purple juice from cooked beets. Anyway, the butter used in Bonnee Butters was score 94 butter, which is weapons-grade butter, a higher grade than even the best butter graded by the USDA today (which is score 93 – AA butter).

Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks cost 58 cents a pound in 1956, which was 10 cents a pound more than smoked ham. They were very thin, so they could be cooked to perfection in about two minutes, using an iron skillet on a gas stove.

The Bonnee Frozen Products Company, led by Sam Brown, was in business in from the early 1940's until the early 1960's. Their products (frozen buttered beef steaks, frozen tamales, and frozen cubed steaks) were sold in 38 states and eight foreign countries. For more information, see my wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnee_Buttered_Beef_Steaks

Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks co-sponsored the St. Louis Hop (a slightly less-famous version of Philadelphia’s American Bandstand, which starred Dick Clark).

Sam Brown (1913-1996)

What was the fabulous flavor secret of Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks? Was it their 94-score butter, which was probably made from sweet cream? I am going to go out on a limb here and say “maybe not.” As a result of the exhausting research I have put into this story, I have learned that the higher the score a butter has, the less “butter” flavor it has! Seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? But “flavor” is the basic quality factor in grading butter, and it is determined organoleptically by taste and smell. Surprisingly (to me at least), butter is classified by seventeen flavor characteristics: feed, cooked, acid, aged, bitter, coarse, flat, smothered, storage, malty, musty, neutralizer, scorched, utensil, weed, whey, and old cream. Butter also has eight body characteristics, four color characteristics, and two salt characteristics.

Like me, you may have been surprised to see “whey” listed as a butter flavor characteristic. I had assumed that only Little Miss Muppet (the first documented case of arachnophobia) ate whey, as in “curds and whey,” an unappetizing mixture of coagulated milk and watery cheese by-product. My mom told me that when I was two years old, I wanted her to read to me, but she was busy doing housework, so I started “reading” aloud, and I did ok in the beginning due to having heard the story so many times, but when I got to the page where she was sitting on her tuffet, tucking into a bowl of curds and whey as the bovine provider of her repast stood behind her, looking on, I “read” that page as “Uh oh, girl! Cow!” Giant cows were much scarier to me than itsy-bitsy spiders – I can still “see” in my mind’s eye that image of her and the cow!

Was the butter used in Bonnee Butters the best butter ever made? We may never know. Butter critics favor the butter made in the Brittany region of France as being the best made today. The soil of that region is soft and damp, and the grass that grows there is rich in iodine and beta-carotine (interesting fact – butter’s distinctive yellow color comes from grass-fed cows – winter butter from wheat-fed cows is white), and Brittany region butter may contain very fine particles of the natural sea salt known as Fleur de Sel (literally “flower of salt”), which is harvested only in the town of Guérande, between May and September. Butter was originally salted as a means of preserving it, except in ancient Ireland, where wooden barrels of butter were preserved by burying them in peat bogs. The conventional wisdom was that the longer the butter was aged in the wooden barrels, the better it tasted, and sometimes trees were planted to mark the spot where a barrel of butter had been buried. Recently, a 3000-year old barrel of bog butter was unearthed in Ireland – one can only imagine how good it must taste. Ironically, the French also invented margarine (at the command of Napoleon, who wanted a butter substitute for his traveling troops). When I was a younger boy than I am now, the butter lobbyists had forced margarine manufacturers to sell white margarine (so it would look less appetizing than naturally yellow butter), but the margarine producers got around this law by including small packets of yellow food dye that the consumer could mix into the margarine after purchasing it.

But I digress. The big question here is whatever happened to Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks, and I am still looking for the answer. This is part of the trilogy of unanswered questions I am researching:

1. Whatever happened to the design and construction documents for the Egyptian pyramids?

2. Whatever happened to Bonnee Buttered Beef Steaks?

3. Whatever happened to the children’s story of Little Black Sambo?

As it turns out, I have made better progress with question number three. It has been suppressed.

The Story of Little Black Sambo was a children’s book written by Helen Bannerman in Madras, India and published in London in 1899. As described in Wikipedia, in the tale, an Indian boy named Sambo prevails over a group of hungry tigers. The little boy has to give his colourful new clothes, shoes, and umbrella to four tigers so they will not eat him. Sambo recovers the clothes when the jealous, conceited tigers chase each other around a tree until they are reduced to a pool of delicious melted butter. The story was a children's favourite for half a century, but then became controversial due to the use of the word sambo , a racial slur in some countries, and the illustrations, which are reminiscent of "darky iconography."

It is truly unfortunate that the story became associated with racial slurs against African-Americans. As a result of this, the book is no longer available, even though the story itself was about a dark-skinned Tamil Indian, not an African-American, who was actually quite clever and resourceful. I liked this story when I was a boy, because the little boy outwitted the nasty tigers who had robbed him of his fine new clothes and even turned them into butter which his family poured onto a delicious pancake dinner! Little Black Sambo was a role model for all young boys, I thought!

Not only did the original story not contain the demeaning blackface “pickaninny” American racial stereotype illustrations used in the more widely available and less-expensive pirated editions, it did not even mention butter – it had the tigers turn into ghee, which is a clarified butter that is widely-sold in India! I enjoyed some ghee when I was in India in January 2010.

Here is the now-suppressed story Helen Bannerman wrote for her daughters, as it was translated for American readers:

The Story of Little Black Sambo
By Helen Bannerman

PREFACE by John Horner.

There is very little to say about the story of LITTLE BLACK
SAMBO. Once upon a time there was an English lady in India,
where black children abound and tigers are everyday affairs,
who had two little girls. To amuse these little girls she
used now and then to invent stories, for which, being
extremely talented, she also drew and coloured the pictures.
Among these stories LITTLE BLACK SAMBO, which was made up on a
long railway journey, was the favourite; and it has been put
into a DUMPY BOOK, and the pictures copies as exactly as
possible, in the hope that you will like it as much as the two
little girls did.

The Story of Little Black Sambo.

Once upon a time there was a little black boy, and his name
was Little Black Sambo.

And his mother was called Black Mumbo.

And his father was called Black Jumbo.

And Black Mumbo made him a beautiful little Red Coat, and a
pair of beautiful little blue trousers.

And Black Jumbo went to the Bazaar, and bought him a beautiful
Green Umbrella, and a lovely little Pair of Purple Shoes with
Crimson Soles and Crimson Linings.

And then wasn't Little Black Sambo grand?

So he put on all his Fine Clothes, and went out for a walk in
the Jungle. And by and by he met a Tiger. And the Tiger said
to him, "Little Black Sambo, I'm going to eat you up!" And
Little Black Sambo said, "Oh! Please Mr. Tiger, don't eat me
up, and I'll give you my beautiful little Red Coat." So the
Tiger said, "Very well, I won't eat you this time, but you
must give me your beautiful little Red Coat." So the Tiger
got poor Little Black Sambo's beautiful little Red Coat, and
went away saying, "Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle."

And Little Black Sambo went on, and by and by he met another
Tiger, and it said to him, "Little Black Sambo, I'm going to
eat you up!" And Little Black Sambo said, "Oh! Please Mr.
Tiger, don't eat me up, and I'll give you my beautiful little
Blue Trousers." So the Tiger said, "Very well, I won't eat
you this time, but you must give me your beautiful little Blue
Trousers." So the Tiger got poor Little Black Sambo's
beautiful little Blue Trousers, and went away saying, "Now I'm
the grandest Tiger in the Jungle."

And Little Black Sambo went on, and by and by he met another
Tiger, and it said to him, "Little Black Sambo, I'm going to
eat you up!" And Little Black Sambo said, "Oh! Please Mr.
Tiger, don't eat me up, and I'll give you my beautiful little
Purple Shoes with Crimson Soles and Crimson Linings."

But the Tiger said, "What use would your shoes be to me? I've
got four feet, and you've got only two; you haven't got enough
shoes for me."

But Little Black Sambo said, "You could wear them on your
ears."

"So I could," said the Tiger: "that's a very good idea. Give
them to me, and I won't eat you this time."

So the Tiger got poor Little Black Sambo's beautiful little
Purple Shoes with Crimson Soles and Crimson Linings, and went
away saying, "Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle."

And by and by Little Black Sambo met another Tiger, and it
said to him, "Little Black Sambo, I'm going to eat you up!"
And Little Black Sambo said, "Oh! Please Mr. Tiger, don't eat
me up, and I'll give you my beautiful Green Umbrella." But
the Tiger said, "How can I carry an umbrella, when I need all
my paws for walking with?"

"You could tie a knot on your tail and carry it that way,"
said Little Black Sambo. "So I could," said the Tiger."
Give it to me, and I won't eat you this time." So he got poor
Little Black Sambo's beautiful Green Umbrella, and went away
saying, "Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle."

And poor Little Black Sambo went away crying, because the
cruel Tigers had taken all his fine clothes.

Presently he heard a horrible noise that sounded like "Gr-r-r-
r-rrrrrr," and it got louder and louder. "Oh! dear!" said
Little Black Sambo, "there are all the Tigers coming back to
eat me up! What shall I do?" So he ran quickly to a palm-
tree, and peeped round it to see what the matter was.

And there he saw all the Tigers fighting, and disputing which
of them was the grandest. And at last they all got so angry
that they jumped up and took off all the fine clothes, and
began to tear each other with their claws, and bite each other
with their great big white teeth.

And they came, rolling and tumbling right to the foot of the
very tree where Little Black Sambo was hiding, but he jumped
quickly in behind the umbrella. And the Tigers all caught
hold of each other's tails, as they wrangled and scrambled,
and so they found themselves in a ring round the tree.

Then, when the Tigers were very wee and very far away, Little
Black Sambo jumped up, and called out, "Oh! Tigers! why have
you taken off all your nice clothes? Don't you want them any
more?" But the Tigers only answered, "Gr-r-rrrr!"

Then Little Black Sambo said, "If you want them, say so, or
I'll take them away." But the Tigers would not let go of each
other's tails, and so they could only say "Gr-r-r-rrrrrr!"

So Little Black Sambo put on all his fine clothes again and
walked off.

And the Tigers were very, very angry, but still they would not
let go of each other's tails. And they were so angry, that
they ran round the tree, trying to eat each other up, and they
ran faster and faster, till they were whirling round so fast
that you couldn't see their legs at all.

And they still ran faster and faster and faster, till they all
just melted away, and there was nothing left but a great big
pool of melted butter (or "ghi," as it is called in India)
round the foot of the tree.

Now Black Jumbo was just coming home from his work, with a
great big brass pot in his arms, and when he saw what was left
of all the Tigers he said, "Oh! what lovely melted butter!
I'll take that home to Black Mumbo for her to cook with."

So he put it all into the great big brass pot, and took it
home to Black Mumbo to cook with.

When Black Mumbo saw the melted butter, wasn't she pleased!
"Now," said she, "we'll all have pancakes for supper!"

So she got flour and eggs and milk and sugar and butter, and
she made a huge big plate of most lovely pancakes. And she
fried them in the melted butter which the Tigers had made, and
they were just as yellow and brown as little Tigers.

And then they all sat down to supper. And Black Mumbo ate
Twenty-seven pancakes, and Black Jumbo ate Fifty-five but
Little Black Sambo ate a Hundred and Sixty-nine, because he
was so hungry.

Indian Ghee

A bit of collateral damage that was the result of the demonization of the original story was the closing of the Sambo’s pancake restaurant chain, which had 1,200 outlets in the US in 1979. The founders, Sam Battistoone and Newell Bohnett, must have thought they were born to create that restaurant chain.

Sugar is a Female

2006-10-15T13:30:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 15 Oct 2006

The ambience of The Cuban Café is enhanced by its splendid art collection. Shown here are its two largest prints, which are by Vintage Travel Poster artist Kerne Erickson.

Last week, I was riding shotgun on the end stool by the window at The Cuban Café in Pompano Beach. I was idly nibbling on the potato sticks that had fallen onto my plate off of my steak sandwich, and downing the last sips from my can of Ironbeer. My luncheon companion, friend, and work colleague, Robert Lobaina, was conversing in Spanish with a lady who worked behind the counter.

I started thinking about how much I liked this place, and how I should properly thank my friend and work colleague Lynn Massenzio for tipping me off about this small eatery. Small is, I think, the correct word, as the café does not have room enough for tables and chairs. It consists of seven stools in front of an L-shaped counter, with four additional stools in what could generously be called an adjoining nook area.

As usual, it was standing-room-only at The Cuban Café. The atmosphere was thick with the pleasant aromas of espresso, platanos maduros, ham, pork, white rice, and black beans. It was also thick with non-stop Spanish chatter by the standing patrons, mostly local industrial workers, who were waiting for their take-out orders.

I understood almost nothing of what they were saying, since spoken Spanish is mostly Greek to me. Having attempted for the past two years to assist my son Michael with his Spanish language studies, I have developed a minimal ability to read Spanish, but since I never sat in the classroom with him and heard how the words were supposed to be pronounced, I tend to pronounce Spanish words as if they were French (the only language besides English in which I have some fluency). Perhaps the best way to describe my level of proficiency in Spanish is to say that I speak enough Spanish to be misunderstood.

I finished my Ironbeer and started wondering how to describe its unique flavor. Somewhere, I had read a description that pegged it as a “citrusy root beer,” but I find no taste similarity between root beer and ironbeer. Perhaps the text on the can itself would provide a clue? No, it said only “On a summers afternoon, in 1917 a mule-drawn, wooden wagon arrived at a popular cafeteria in Havana, Cuba. It delivered the first four cases of a new soft drink that would soon be called "The National Beverage". Now more than 80 years later, IRONBEER is still enjoyed for its refreshing flavor with just a hint of island spices. A lot can change over the years - but not the original flavor of IRONBEER!”

No, if I were writing the can copy, I would describe it as “an impudent, fruit-punch-flavored soft drink, with hints of Brazilian guarana berry and top notes of Bazooka bubble gum.”

As Robert and the waitress continued to converse in Spanish, I decided to surprise Robert (and the waitress, and no doubt everyone else in the café) by unleashing my best Spanglish and ordering a Cuban coffee. My Spanglish (a dialect in which one uses Spanish for the easy words and English for the hard words) was more than a little rusty (since Michael isn’t taking Spanish this year), so I decided to rehearse a bit. Softly, I muttered “Yo quiero dos cafes Cubanos (one for me and one for Robert), con leche y un pico azucar.” (I would like two Cuban coffees, with milk and a little sugar.) But, no, that didn’t seem quite right. Maybe it should be “Quisiera el café Cubano con leche y un pico azucar?”

But was “un pico” correct? That didn’t sound quite right, maybe it was “un poco?”

I must have said “un pico” a little louder than I intended, because the waitress paused in her conversation with Robert, looked at me earnestly, and said,

“Un azúcar pequeña, not un azúcar pequeño. Sugar is a female.”

Then we stared wordlessly at each other across a linguistic crossroad. I appreciated that she was trying to help me. Her Spanglish was better than mine. But we had both reached our limits. Suddenly, I felt like I had when I was six years old, when a bad case of laryngitis had caused me to stay at home and miss a day of first grade at Concord School. I was very thirsty but too short to reach the water faucet in the sink. I decided to impress Mom by handing her a note that said “Mom, would you please give me a glass of water?”

The only flaw to this plan was that I didn’t know how to spell most of the words in that sentence. I had only recently learned how to read, and I don’t believe I had as yet had any spelling lessons. I began my note well enough by printing “Mom,” but then I realized I had no idea of how to spell “would.” Well, ok then, I would use a homonym for “wood,” but before I could finish congratulating myself on my resourcefulness (we had not yet invented the phrase “thinking out of the box,”) I realized I didn’t know how to spell “wood” either. But I did not want to give up on my dream of impressing Mom with a hand-written note, so I decided I would simply draw a picture of a piece of wood. But how does one draw a piece of wood? Maybe I could just draw a twig, and Mom would figure out that I meant wood? Yes, Mom was pretty clever.

Unfortunately, my twig looked more like a thick horizontal line than a twig. The rational observer might have concluded I was trying to cross out a word, rather than depict one. Mom couldn’t figure out that my thick horizontal line was part of a rebus that meant “would.” I was really thirsty. Finally, in desperation, I pointed to the water faucet and then to my mouth. That worked, but I certainly felt foolish. Oddly, it had never bothered me when I watched Red Skelton on television but I could not understand many of the words in his comedy sketches. I knew Red was using English words that I had not yet learned, and I was satisfied with parsing out the words I did know, and anyway much of his comedy was physical humor.

But now it was 2006, not 1952, and Robert and the waitress were using Spanish words that I did not know, and not much, if any, physical humor was involved.

“Sugar is a female?” What were we talking about now? Suddenly, it dawned on me that Robert had been ordering two Cuban coffees for us, and he had been explaining to the waitress how much sugar should be involved. She must have thought that I understood more of the conversation than I had. I was flattered.

Afterwards, as we sat at the counter and drank our Cuban coffees (with milk and a little sugar), Robert and I discussed languages and their usages of grammatical genders/noun classes. For Americans who speak only English, it seems unusual to refer to objects that have no genital organs as being either male or female. The concept itself can even be a bit humorous.

The next day, my daughter Lauren Shawcross called me, and I related this story to her. Lauren is in her junior year at Emory University. Lauren speaks English, French, Spanish, and un poco Russian. Lauren informed me that “most of the Indo-European languages have grammatical genders/noun classes, Dad.”

Conversations such as this with Lauren always give me pause, because I can still remember her as a baby to whom I tried to introduce the concept that solid food (such as bits of chocolate-chip cookie) was, in fact, edible. Now, she has left me in the intellectual dust and explains things to me, such as (last week) Kant’s Analysis of Judgment, or, as in this case, how languages work.

Going on, Lauren noted that Old English had grammatical genders/noun classes, but that modern English has only “a vestigial natural gender system (on pronouns) but no grammatical gender.” Hence, in English, we might say something like “that is his chair,” or “that is her chair,” while chairs themselves are thought of in a gender fashion (if at all) as being neuter. Oh, we do sometimes use different word forms to indicate gender, such as actor or actress, but then we are in fact referring to objects that have a gender based on their physical possession of genital organs.

As such, English has more in common as a language with Chinese, Japanese, or even Basque, than it does with German, Hindi, Italian, Punjabi, Spanish, French, or even Klingon. Those languages have grammatical genders/noun classes.

Lauren continued, saying, “In Spanish, sugar is a female, but in French, sugar is a male.”

Whoa! Who knew? How does one decide such things, anyway?

I decided to go back to the Cuban Café and think about this while I enjoyed another Café Cubano with perhaps a side dish of flan.

Entering the café, I thought of how my knowledge of Cuban cuisine had been greatly expanded from the simple Cuban sandwich (sweet ham, smoked ham, pork, cheese, pickle, mayo and mustard, toasted and served on Cuban bread). Now, I felt equally at home in ordering a Midnight (Media Noche) sandwich, which is a basically the same thing as a Cuban sandwich, but served on toasted sweet yellow bread.

Also, I no longer thought, as I did when Robert first ordered a steak sandwich, that someone had spilled a can of potato sticks onto his sandwich. Well, such accidents do happen. The world-famous St. Louis Toasted Raviolis were invented when someone accidentally spilled some raviolis into a deep fryer and decided to serve them to the bar patrons rather than throw them out. When people started asking for more of these “toasted” raviolis, they became a permanent addition to St. Louis Italian restaurant/bar cuisine. Maybe I had just witnessed the invention of a new sandwich?

No, Robert patiently explained, one always puts potato sticks on steak sandwiches. Again, who knew? I would never have thought of doing that, but it is an excellent idea!

The Cuban Café, located at 1699 N. Powerline Road in Pompano Beach, FL

As I waited for my café Cubano and side dish of flan, I enjoyed looking at the The Cuban Café’s fabulous art collection. I have already mentioned the Kerne Erickson vintage travel posters, which are the crown jewels of an eclectic collection of product advertisements (mostly for Pilon coffee), photos of 1940’s-vintage American cars in modern-day Cuba, and a series of Cuban landscape photos, including one of Baracoa, which is Robert’s home town (Robert left Baracoa at the age of six, in order to be with his parents, who were migrating to the US).

The photo behind me is particularly intriguing, because I cannot understand how it fits in with the overall Cuban theme. It is a photo of Bridal Veil Falls. I am not sure which one, as there are more than thirty waterfalls, world-wide, that are named Bridal Veil Falls (none of which are in Cuba). I have seen the one in Oregon. I think this photo is of the one in Yosemite National Park. It is flanked by Cuban and American flags. It puzzles me, and I am determined to figure it out some day.

The author enjoys a Café Cubano and side dish of flan at The Cuban Cafe, which has a four-spigot espresso machine (no waiting) that cost (I have been informed by Robert Lobaina) $10,000!

Above is a photo of Tom Shawcross, who is sitting in “the nook” at The Cuban Café.
Below is a photo of a tile that is located in the restroom at The Cuban Café.

Anti-Castro sentiments rule at The Cuban Café

Baracoa, formerly in the Oriente Province, is Cuba’s eastern-most city

Since this has been a non-traditional story (with no discernible plot, or point, for that matter) – it is really just an excerpt from a couple of days in my life and some conversations and thoughts that I had – I will close it in a non-traditional way.

I wish I knew how to contact Kerne Erickson to ask for his permission to reproduce his work in my blog story, but I will make up for it by giving him some additional free publicity (after all, my blog has a reader as far away as Australia!).

Here are some more Kerne Erickson vintage travel posters, which can be purchased online:

“Happy Trails and Buenas Noches!”
An original Spanglish phrase coined today by the author of this blog, Thomas Wilson Shawcross

Delray Beach Dog Walk III

2006-10-01T00:17:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 1 Oct 2006

Author’s note: This is the third story in my Delray Beach Dog Walk series. The first story in this series was written 29 May 2005 and the second on 1 Oct 2005.

Peanut Max Shawcross
Canis familiaris

This evening, as I took Peanut for a walk through our “hood” in downtown Delray Beach, it occurred to me that I should make better use of the time I spend in these dog walks. Surely, walking a dog does not require 100% of the 10% of our brains that we humans are said to use; perhaps I could accomplish a bit more than making sure that a certain pampered Bichon Frisé gets his exercise?

Years ago, I read of an English nobleman who had written an entire volume of poetry while waiting, every day, for his wife to finish dressing for dinner. Last week, at Barnes & Noble, I saw a book that Jack Kerouac wrote after a friend had advised him to write short stories in a manner similar to how an artist might go into the streets of a city to sketch.

Well, I have written street scene sketches (see the first two articles of this series), and I could have written another one tonight, but tonight I was feeling that I should try to do more than simply observe and comment. I should try to do something a bit more intellectual.

A recent letter I received from Jo Brockhaus had started me thinking along this line. Jo and her husband Doug had visited Delray Beach recently, and Jo had mailed me a photo she took of me and Doug and commented that they had started reading my blog and thought it was intellectual.

That surprised me. Moi, intellectual?

My first thought was that Jo was kidding, as she had also written that Doug and I had not changed a bit (well, Doug looks the same, but either Jo was kidding or else Jo needs glasses, as I have put on at least five pounds in the last thirty years). Ok, ok, at least ten pounds. So anyway, maybe Jo was kidding about the intellectual part too?

But, it is never too late, so maybe I could use these Delray Beach dogwalks to increase my intellectual power? That would stop those super-smart physicists from kicking sand on me when I take my girl to the beach! Well, to be honest, I don’t have a girl to take to the beach right now, and the irony of that is not lost on me every time I see a local character whom I shall refer to as “No Nose” walking the sidewalks of Delray Beach with his girlfriend. “No Nose” has a girlfriend but no nose. Literally. I don’t mean that he has a smallish nose. There is a black hole in the middle of his face where his nose should be. And yet, “No Nose” has a girlfriend, while I, who have all of my original equipment body parts, don’t. Women. Go figure. Maybe she cut off his nose during an argument and now stays with him out of guilt?

But, I digress.

So, now I had determined to spend the remainder of tonight’s Delray Beach dog walk in lofty intellectual pursuits. But, how, exactly, was I supposed to do that? “WWED?” I thought to myself – (“What would Einstein do?).

I vaguely recalled reading some story about how Einstein had been riding the train to work when he got the idea for the relativity of time as he was looking at a large clock in the town square. See? He could have been just riding a train to work, much as I was just walking a dog, but he had the initiative to use some of his otherwise unused brain cycles and came up with something tres intellectual. Why couldn’t I do that too?

I thought pretty hard about things for a half-block or so, but I was coming up empty, intellectual-wise. Maybe it would help if I pretended I was Einstein? It was worth a shot.

I remembered that Einstein was proudest of his equation for gravity, which he personally felt put e = mc² in the shade. But, I couldn’t remember what it was – but maybe I could quickly infer it as I walked to see the Elvis impersonator at Elwoods? True, it had taken Einstein himself much longer to come up with it, but maybe he was not as motivated as I was tonight.

Hmm, let’s see now, I could remember Isaac Newton’s equation for gravity, which was a laughingly simple:

F = -G (m1m2/r²)

In which:

F is the magnitude of the (repulsive) gravitational force between the two point masses
G is the gravitational constant
m1 is the mass of the first point mass
m2 is the mass of the second point mass
r is the distance between the two point masses

As I recall, if one would mention this equation to Einstein while he was drinking a beer, he would start laughing so hard that the beer would shoot out through his nose! No, his gravity equation (actually, I think there was a set of them) was much more complicated, even before he added the universal constant which he later characterized as “the worst mistake of my life.” Obviously, Einstein never hired my divorce attorney.

But, I should be able to figure this out. They say that the movement of the ocean tides is caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, so assuming that the ocean level nearest the moon is lifted a half-meter or so, then (excuse me while I perform a few complex mathematical calculations in my head) . . . then that means that the gravitational pull of the moon must lift approximately one gajillion kilograms of water!

But wait, that can’t be right. If the pull of the moon’s gravity was that strong, why doesn’t it pull tiny birds off of telephone wires, or at least cause a rustling of silk scarves on the sales tables at Bloomingdale’s, as it gently tugs them toward the moon? Hmm, maybe it has something to do with uneven gravitational pull across the large curved surface of the earth? That could explain why tides are not seen in small ponds or in glasses of Fiji water.

Oh, I was getting nowhere. Maybe I should try channeling Einstein, letting his voice speak to me inside my head (if he can be heard above all the others). Ok, now I am walking alongside some of Delray’s sidewalk cafes, pretending that I am Einstein as I observe the crowds. Analyzing the faces of the happy diners intently (and hoping not to see “No Nose” sharing a bottle of Cristal with his trophy babe), I see them through Einstein’s eyes.

I feel the beginning of a sneer, as I hear his voice say, “Ach! I bet I know more physics than all of those dumbkoffs put together!”’

Whoa! Who knew that Einstein was like that?

Then again, maybe the world’s tallest man nicknames everyone else “Shorty.” Maybe if one knows one is the best in the world in a particular thing, be it intellect, beauty, athleticism, art, or whatever, one becomes a bit full of oneself and starts looking down on one’s inferiors. Maybe that would happen to me if I became an actual intellectual? I would not want that to happen, so I think I will abandon the idea of increasing my intellect before it is too late! I did do some heavy thinking for awhile tonight; perhaps as a caution, I should take steps to “dumb down” again.

Hmm, I wonder if that Three Stooges marathon is showing on tv tonight?

What'd I Say

2006-06-11T14:50:00.001-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 11 Jun 2006

Et tout d’un coup le souvenir m’est apparu. Ce gout cétait celui du petit morceau de madeleine que le dimanche matin … Combray . . . ma tante Léonie m’offrait aprés l’avoir tremp‚ dans son infusion de thé ou de tilleul

Du cote de chez Swann (Swann’s Way, 1913) vol. 1, p. 61 by Marcel Proust

Translation: And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray . . . my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane.

In his novel A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, which has been translated as Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust remembers how a host of childhood memories were brought back to him as he was drinking tea with his mother and tasted a small sweet cake such as he had during his childhood in Combray.

I had a similar experience today, which took me back to a Ray Charles concert I had attended in St. Louis in 1962.

This morning, I arose with the older and more sluggish larks and decided to see if the World Cup was being televised. The TV came on showing the 2004 movie Ray, a biopic starring Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles.

My son Michael and I had seen this film in a movie theater, and I remembered having the decidedly odd sensation of crossing the line between Art and Reality when the movie recreated a real life scene from Ray’s 1962 appearance in St. Louis. In the movie scene,the stage manager turned down the house lights and put a spotlight on Ray, in order to quiet an audience that wanted Ray to play one of his familiar hits instead of his new “country” song. The lighting trick worked, and the movie camera panned out from Ray (Jamie) to show the audience reaction.

As the camera panned up to the balcony seating area at Kiel Auditorium, suddenly, it became 1962 for me again. I looked to see if I could see Carol Moeser and myself sitting there! When I couldn’t spot us there, I snapped back and remembered that this was not a documentary film, it was a recreation, so of course I was not going to see myself in the Ray movie. Still, that was a weird feeling.

I do remember the house lights going down and the spotlight being put on Ray. I do not remember the audience grumbling prior to that (as depicted in the movie), but maybe that happened. My memory of that evening is a bit spotty, because my mind had been boggled on the ride to the show. Carol had sat on my lap during the ride to Kiel! I do not recall who else went with us that night, I just remember there were two boys and two girls to sit in the backseat, and Carol’s mom turning around from the front seat and suggesting that the girls sit on the boys laps. What a wonderful woman Carol’s mom was! It was the first time a girl had ever sat on my lap, so you can understand why my memories of the peripheral events (such as who else was with us in the car) is a bit spotty.

It was also the first time I had attended a live entertainment performance, unless you count the Cub Scout parades I had participated in at the St. Louis Arena (I don’t think those count, although I do have fond memories of being in show business, which was how I looked at it at the time).

But, I digress. I remember that when Carol invited me to the show, I was already familiar with Ray Charles. I even had one of his 45’s, Hit the Road Jack, which I had acquired in October, 1961, when Uncle Jack was shot. Uncle Jack had operated a jukebox business, and after he died Aunt Dorto let Jim and me have any records we wanted. We could choose from all of the popular records of October, 1961. If there is ever a Jeopardy category called “Hits of October, 1961” I think I would win, as I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert on the top tunes of Oct 1961. So far, I have not figured out how to make this pay off, but still I think of Uncle Jack whenever I hear Hit the Road Jack.

As I wrote this preceding sentence, I remembered that I had never been able to figure out one of the lines sung by one of the Raelettes in that song, which sounded to me like:

“You ain’t got no money, you just an old hood.”

So, I looked it up just now! Here are the complete lyrics (the parts in parentheses were sung by Margie Hendricks, and the other parts were sung by Ray Charles):

(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.)
(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more.)
What you say?
(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.)
(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more.)

Woah Woman, oh woman, don't treat me so mean,
You're the meanest old woman that I've ever seen.
I guess if you said so
I'd have to pack my things and go. (That's right)

(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.)
(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more.)
What you say?
(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.)
(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more.)

Now baby, listen baby, don't ya treat me this-a way
Cause I'll be back on my feet some day.
(Don't care if you do 'cause it's understood)
(you ain't got no money you just ain't no good.)
Well, I guess if you say so
I'd have to pack my things and go. (That's right)

(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.)
(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more.)
What you say?
(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.)
(Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more.)

Well
(don't you come back no more.)
Uh, what you say?
(don't you come back no more.)
I didn't understand you
(don't you come back no more.)
You can't mean that
(don't you come back no more.)
Oh, now baby, please
(don't you come back no more.)
What you tryin' to do to me?
(don't you come back no more.)
Oh, don't treat me like that
(don't you come back no more.)

The Raelettes were the female vocalists who backed up Ray Charles and contributed to the Ray Charles sound, which often included “call and response” styling. According to Wikipedia, Ray Charles admitted that he “auditioned” his backup singers. As Ray, who was not only a musical genius but also a notorious womanizer, put it, “to be a Raelette, you’ve got to let Ray.”

So anyway, as I watched the movie this morning, I could hardly wait for Jamie to play my favorite Ray Charles song, What’d I Say.

If I had one molecule of musical talent, I would buy a piano and learn how to play the opening bars of What’d I Say. Lucky for me, I have no musical talent whatsoever, or otherwise I suspect I would just play the opening over and over until the nice gentlemen in white coats finished placing the padding in my cell.

If I were a professional writer, I would listen to the intro to What’d I Say prior to each day’s writing session. Although, from a practical standpoint, that could be a bit impractical for the times when I write in France, because they have a different kind of electricity there, so my CD player would not work. Still, I suppose I could buy a French one. But, I digress de nouveau.

Allow me to show you how this works. Pardon me, while I put my Ray soundtrack in my computer . . . and hit Track 8 and Repeat.

Ok, now I am listening to the opening of What’d I Say!

It sounds like it is being played on an electric piano. As I listen, I am getting caught in the rhythm of it, and I start thinking stream-of-consciously.

I think this is the way Jack Kerouac wrote his stream of consciousness bits in On the Road, although Jack may have been fueled by alcohol, not music. For example this excerpt from page 9, where Sal Paradise describes Dean Morarity and friends:

But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
Jack Kerouac

Or, Allen Ginsburg’s landmark 1956 poem, Howl:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night ...

Of course, as Liz Wadsworth points out, one can take only so large a dose of s-o-c writing, but is fun to indulge in, as it always surprising to see where one will go. Let’s continue, shall we? Let’s dive back into the stream . . .

Now, I am thinking about a screen door I saw yesterday on an old house in Delray Beach, and how new houses have air conditioning and no screen doors, and this could explain why one seldom hears now the expression “don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out.” For the benefit of my younger readers, I will explain that houses used to have two doors, a “regular” door and outside of it a “screen” door which allowed air to flow into the house when the regular door was opened. Screen doors had springs that retracted them after one went outside, so if one moved slowly, one could get struck by the screen door as it closed. For the benefit of my young Florida readers, I will explain that doors in the houses built outside hurricane zones open toward the inside of the house, and not toward the outside as they do in Florida. Also, the houses have coat closets inside, adjacent to the front door (I will explain “winter” later), and in the winter, the screen door became a storm door, as the screen panels were replaced by glass ones.

This reminds me of a section in my family history book, in which I wrote of a game that my brother Jim and I played with a screen door (Play Station 2 had not been invented yet, so we were left to our own devices):

Ready, little boy?

I would say, “ready, little boy?” and my brother and I would race down the short hallway from the kitchen to the screen door and back. It was exhilarating fun. We did this when we lived in the “Big House” at 585 Mueller Road, Rural Route 14, St. Louis, 23, Missouri. Jim was three years old and I was six. For some reason, Jim always called me “big boy” and I called him “little boy.” I don’t know why we weren’t on a first name basis.
One day, I was at Aunt Ruth’s house and Mom called. Jim was with her, and she asked him if he wanted to talk to Tommy. Jim said “Hello, Tommy” into the telephone receiver, and that was the end of “big boy” and “little boy.”

That was a really fun game! Another screen door game was to run down the hall as fast as one could, punch the release handle on the screen door, and see how far you could run outside before hearing the screen door slam shut. An eternal optimist at age 6, I sincerely believed I could significantly increase the distance, but I never did. I also believed back then that I could fly if only I tried hard enough, and my continued failure (still haven’t) was not due to lack of effort (I have stopped trying now). I would run around the big house, to get a good start, and then when I reached the hollow by the maple tree, I would leap off, arms straight out by my side. I was no dummy. I knew it was useless to try flapping like a bird, but if I could just get enough takeoff speed, who was to say I couldn’t glide for a bit, then maybe catch an updraft, and then who knew? Ha ha! That would impress my doubters . . .

I was always seeking ways to impress my doubters then. Not that I had any, that I knew of, but it would be fun to see the looks on their faces anyway.

Maybe this is why I am one of the few people still alive who remember when Kellogg’s came out with a brand of cereal called OK’s. Made from oats and shaped like “O’s” and “K’s”, the cereal truly lived up to its name. It was not very good, just OK, and it made it to the majors for just a cup of coffee in 1959 and 1960 before being sent back down.

Well, apparently I am not the only person still alive who remembers this breakfast cereal, as I have just used Google to find an image of the box:

The reason I remember this cereal is because of Big Otis, who was featured on the front of the box. The back of the box provided a brief bio of Big Otis, a brawny Scot who could draw upon the strength of his ancestors whenever he needed a bit more strength during battle. As I recall, he could call upon his father’s strength, then his grandfather’s, etc. and go back as far as was necessary in order to win.

I was intrigued by the concept. Dad was pretty strong, and I didn’t know about his Dad, but surely the endless chain of Shawcross men going back would be more than sufficient to meet any of my usual needs. Maybe I could finally attain the speed I needed before getting to the maple tree! Hoo ha! So, I ate the cereal. Dad got it for free anyway, so why not?

In writing this, I have just now figured out the connection between Big Otis and a cereal made from oats. Surely, OK’s was not a cereal imported from Scotland, and I remember vaguely wondering what connection there might be other than the homophonic similarity between “oats” and “Otis.”

I mentioned this connection between oats and Scots in my 19 Apr 2005 blog story “Oatmeal and Uncle Harry”:

"A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."
- Oats, as defined by Samuel Johnson in his English dictionary of 1747

“Which is why England is known for its horses and Scotland for its men."- reply issued by James Boswell, the Scottish biographer of Sam’l Johnson

Self-Portraits

2006-03-25T16:58:00.001-05:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 25 Mar 2006

Museum of Luxembourg 31 March – 25 July 2004 ME! Self-portraits of the 20th century

Last weekend, to celebrate the start of my son Michael’s Spring Break, we went to DisneyWorld, where we saw this Mickey Mouse Self-Portrait:

I thought this was a clever painting. After all, Walt Disney was the originator of the cartoon character Mickey Mouse and Walt’s voice was used for all of Mickey’s cartoon dialogues until 1946. How appropriate to have Mickey paint his self-portrait in the image of Walter Elias Disney!

Of course, this might have been an Oswald Rabbit Self-Portrait if Disney had not been cheated out of the rights to his Oswald Rabbit character by Universal Studios. Is it just me, or is there more than a casual resemblance between 1927 Oswald and 1928 Mickey?

But beyond being impressed by the cleverness of the Mickey / Disney self-portrait, I was struck by the realization that I was seeing another example of art parody – something that I had written about last month in my story Nighthawks and Night Hogs. In yet another spooky coincidence, on the preceding evening at Disney Village, I had purchased a Tom Waits CD titled Nighthawks at the Diner.

The Mickey Mouse Self-Portrait is a parody of the Norman Rockwell Triple Self-Portrait that appeared on the cover of the 13 Feb 1961 Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell’s image made a strong impression on me when I had seen it on the magazine cover in 1961, and subsequently I had the good fortune of seeing his original painting at the Norman Rockwell museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

My impression in 1961 was that Norman Rockwell was trying to show that he was a true artist, not a mere illustrator, as his painting included postcard-sized self-portraits that had been made by recognized great artists. It strikes me as unfair that illustrators and commercial artists seem to be considered by some as second-class citizens in the Art World. I suppose it is related to the distinction made between arts and crafts, and the difference may be in the degree of creativity or originality or talent supposedly involved. But in my opinion, this is a grossly unfair and misleading distinction, as some of our most memorable and striking images have been created by great artists for commercial purposes (think Maxfield Parrish, Norman Rockwell, and David Lance Goines).

As Mike and I stood at Epcot, looking at Mickey Mouse Self-Portrait, I thought of how original Norman Rockwell’s self-portrait had been – and that gave me the idea of writing about self-portraits.

Here is an excerpt from the website of the Norman Rockwell Museum:
Source: http://www.nrm.org/eyeopener/eye_self.html

“Throughout art history, artists have explored the idea of the self-portrait. Norman Rockwell admired the work of other artists, among them Durer, Rembrandt, Picasso, and Van Gogh. Their self-portraits are tacked to Rockwell's canvas for inspiration . . . While Rockwell painted many self-portraits over the years, this one, done when the artist was 66 years old, is the most famous.
This self-portrait gives a glimpse into Rockwell's life: a glass of Coca-Cola, a dog-eared book and a metal bucket with a bit of smoke. This last detail probably refers to Norman Rockwell's Vermont studio fire in 1943. Describing this fire with sketches in his autobiography, Rockwell said, "In a way the fire was a good thing. It cleaned out the cobwebs.”

I think the writer of the above excerpt under-estimated the significance of the Dürer, Rembrandt, Picasso, and Van Gogh self-portraits. I suspect Rockwell was showing his knowledge of Art History by including works of these artists in his triple self-portrait, and that he was suggesting that he too was an Artist (not a mere Illustrator).

Rockwell’s triple self-portrait displays much more than his background in art history. It tells us much about him. For one thing, it shows his sense of humor in painting himself as he really looked (in the mirror and sitting on the stool) while also showing an idealized “glamour shot” of himself without glasses and his pipe jauntily cocked.

We see not only the self-image (typically expected) in self-portraits. We see objects that tell us about the personal life and views of the artist. Look at this painting from the standpoint of wondering what each object may have meant to Norman Rockwell. Note that the background of the painting is white – he did not paint the room he was in – he painted only the objects he wanted us to see, so each of them has significance.

I suspect the paint brushes on the “floor” are there to provide the illusion that there was a floor (that he was not suspended in space as he painted this), but note their placement as well – they lead the eye to the stool and from there on up to Norman Rockwell himself.

Rockwell was a master of using objects to “lead the eye.” Note how the pole on which he rested his arm while painting leads your eye to the self-portraits done by Dürer and Rembrandt. See how his paint brushes lead the eye to his image in the mirror, how the mirror image of the palette leads the eye to the glass of Coke (and how that helps suggest one of the many triangle images in this composition of multiple rectangles and triangles).

Other objects in the painting do not serve so much to “lead the eye” as they do to give clues to the interests of the artist. Consider that the glass of Coca-Cola, the book, even the American Federalist style mirror, were chosen to be in this self-portrait. I do not pretend to know what each object meant to Norman Rockwell. Did he drink Coca-Cola while painting? Did he refer to Art History books for inspiration? I have no idea what was the significance of the golden helmet atop the easel, but it might refer to another Rembrandt painting. As for the metal bucket with smoke coming up from it, what did the bucket symbolize? The website suggests that the smoke may have referenced the 1943 fire in Rockwell’s studio, but why was there a smoking bucket in 1961? Did Rockwell use a metal bucket as an “ashtray” for his pipe? At any rate, the placement of the smoke wisp does help the overall composition.

The painting within the painting of his in-progress idealized image has already been “signed” by Norman Rockwell. I suspect that Rockwell usually signed his paintings when they were completed, so this seeming “blooper” is actually a visual double entendre, because the image of the unfinished idealized painting is part of the finished work of art.

Rockwell provides revealing glimpses of how he painted – the previously mentioned pole on which he rested his hand while painting, and the five preliminary self-sketches that are tacked to the upper left corner of the painting. But even more revealing are the pictures in the upper right corner of his painting – the self-portraits done by other artists.

The first painting in the upper right is of a self-portrait done by Albrecht Dürer. Albrecht painted this in 1498 when he was 26 years old. I have seen it in Madrid at the Museo Nacional del Prado:

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was one of our greatest artists and is recognized as being the first artist to consistently create self-portraits. In doing so, he elevated self-portraits to the level of being considered works of art. He created his first self-portrait at the age of 13. By including a Dürer self-portrait, Rockwell was acknowledging the artist who granted artistic legitimacy to self-portraits.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) is recognized as the first artist to intensely study the self through the art of self-portraiture. He sketched his own face literally thousands of times, throughout his lifetime. I have seen many of his self-portraits, and on a side note, I cannot help but wonder if Rembrandt shopped in the remainder bins of stores that sold clothing to pirates.

Rembrandt van Rijn Self-portrait, 1661

In the pantheon of self-portraiture, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is as noted as Rembrandt, even though Vincent painted most of his self-portraits during only two years of his life (1886-1888). His 1889 self-portraits seem especially revealing of his troubled psyche(the bandaged head image was painted after his self-mutilation).

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Head (1889)

Self-Portrait (1889)

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was another innovator in self-portraiture. He painted himself in several artistic styles. His earliest self-portraits (1900-1901) were, like those of Rembrandt and Van Gogh, images in which he stared at the viewer and revealed himself through his expression. He also painted himself during his Cubist period and his Blue Period, but perhaps his most innovative approach was in the late 1930’s, when he painted himself by showing front and side views within the same picture:

Self-Portrait

(grayed area to show side-view)

Self-portraits can have many meanings. They have been made to project how an artist wishes to be seen, or for doing a study of oneself, to help remember the past, to reveal emotions, or maybe just because an artist could not afford to pay for a model.

Sometimes, they are done to test a new technique. Leonardo Da Vinci, another innovator in self-portraiture, was the first to attempt to make three-dimensional-looking portraits, using the sfumato drawing technique in which the image softens as it recedes from the viewer, and there are no hard outlines.

Self-portrait, Leonardo Da Vinci 1525 (red chalk)

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was another innovator. Beyond painting his own self-likeness, he created fantasy scenes that represented aspects, real and symbolic, of his life. In his celebrated Interior of My Studio, A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist Courbet depicts not only himself at his easel, but also symbolic characters (the nude model is thought to represent Nature, and the small boy represents Innocence) and real characters (Baudelaire is shown reading a book).

Interior of My Studio, A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist (1854-1855)
Gustave Courbet

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) told her life story in her self-portraits and used them as a kind of therapy for a leg that was crippled by polio and permanent injuries that she suffered in a bus accident that hospitalized her for months. Frida’s mother had a mirror installed above Frida’s bed, and Frida started painting self-portraits. During the remainder of her life, she painted 55 of them. I particularly like the genealogical one shown here:

Self-portraits have gone far beyond capturing a literal likeness of the artist. They embody self-exploration, looking beyond the image presented in the mirror. Abstract self-portraits, such as those done by Pollack or Rothko, do not bear any resemblance to the human form. Others, such as Chagall’s I and the Village, are memoirs that do not resemble the artist:

Marc Chagall I and the Village (1911)

One of the more innovative self-portrait artists of recent times is Chuck Close. He has gone from extreme realism to techno-reality:

How many ways of depicting oneself have yet to be invented? In this story, I have shown and discussed only a few. I have not even hinted at some of the other options, such as these self-portraits painted by Renee Magritte (1898-1967):

If you had the artistic ability to paint your self-portrait, in any imaginable style, what would you do? Would you make yet another parody of a famous work of art?

Or would you choose a new way to give insight to your life experiences, your world-view, and the essence that is uniquely you?

Nighthawks and Nighthogs

2006-02-20T23:29:00.001-05:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 20 Feb 2006

Nighthawks, 1942 Oil on Canvas 76.2 X 144 cm The Art Institute of Chicago

Edward Hopper’s paintings of urban scenes often convey a sense of calm, isolation, and detachment. His masterpiece painting Nighthawks has particular resonance for me, perhaps because my line of work has afforded me the opportunity to make solitary visits to late-night restaurants located around the globe. I feel as if I have been in this diner, and I suspect that is part of the wide appeal of this painting – many people can relate to this scene – and perhaps that is why Nighthawks is one of the most imitated, and parodied, of American paintings.

Until recently, I would have said that Nighthawks is one of the most famous American paintings, but a recent experience at work has caused me to re-evaluate my position on this. While sitting in on a code walkthrough, I noticed that one of the young developers had a Homer Simpson laptop screensaver that was a parody of Nighthawks. This was a new one for me. I had seen other parodies, the most memorable of which being Gottfried Heinwein’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams, in which the diners are replaced by figures of James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, and Marilyn Monroe – and the counterman is Elvis Presley.

Since two of the people participating in the walkthrough were from Chicago, where the original painting of Nighthawks is on permanent display, I figured they would enjoy seeing the newest parody of their “local” masterpiece. But, when I pointed out the Homer Simpson version to them, all I received in return were blank looks.

“See, this is a Simpsonized Nighthawks,” I offered. “Doesn’t this scene remind you of a more famous painting?” Nothing. Then, uneasy looks. Suddenly, the eyes of the developer brightened, and I realized he had caught on.

“Oh! You mean the painting with James Dean! And Elvis Presley!”

Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Gottfried Heinwein

That hurt. Suddenly, I felt very old. I recalled the time when I had told my Dad in 1963 about the “new” recording I had heard (Deep Purple by Nino Temple and April Stevens), and Dad had dryly informed me that Deep Purple had been a #1 hit in 1939. Now, I was my Dad. Well, that wouldn’t have bothered me, as he was a wonderful Dad, but now I felt as old as my Dad, and that did bother me. My colleagues in this walkthrough were all bright, young professionals – too young to remember the “Big Bang” (the original Nighthawks) that had launched a series of Art parodies.

A few days later, it occurred to me that perhaps this wasn’t an “age” thing, and maybe it was just a fluke. So, I conducted a scientific test and asked a cute girl at work (whom I thought had a pretty good head on her shoulders – but then, where else would it have been?) if she recognized the painting. “Sorry, Gramps, I have not seen it,” was her disconcerting response. Well, she did not actually call me Gramps, but that’s how I felt. So it was an age thing.

But, I digress. This story is supposed to be about Nighthawks and why Nighthawks has had such a powerful effect on (some) people.

Nighthogs (with apologies to Edward Hopper)

Many of the analyses of Nighthawks have concluded that it portrays urban life as empty or lonely, and they draw attention to the fact that scene shows no visible door. The conclusion is that the diners are trapped or confined (since there is no obvious way out).

I disagree. For one, if there is no way out, then how did they get in? Are we supposed to believe they are in some sort of human terrarium set up by space aliens for twisted space alien amusement? If so, then why don’t the male diners at least take off their hats? That’s the first thing I would do if I were trapped in a space alien terrarium. Well, maybe I would order some coffee first, and then take off my hat. Sometimes, one has to actually be in a situation before one can say how one would act.

No, I think the door was not shown simply so that Hopper could show more of the glass that surrounded the restaurant patrons, and thereby, more of the light that illuminated them.

Bear in mind that this painting was executed in January of 1942. As we all recall, fluorescent lighting was introduced in 1938. Think of the impact this would have had on a painter – someone who has been trained to see light professionally.

Edward Hopper was born in July 1882, so he was nearly 60 years old (still a young man, now that I think about it) when he saw fluorescent lighting in the actual restaurant that was the inspiration for this painting – a now-demolished restaurant near his home in Greenwich Village, New York City. The bright glare of fluorescent lighting offered possibilities for night scenes such as had never existed before. Although the objects in Hopper’s paintings often seem to be seen behind glass, Nighthawks is the only one of his paintings in which the glass is visible, a giant curved pane that allows a nearly unimpeded view of the Nighthawks inside.

Speaking of which, why isn’t this painting called Night Owls? Both owls and hawks are birds of prey, but people who like to stay up late are usually called Night Owls, not Nighthawks, so what does that tell us about what Hopper was thinking? Here is all that I have been able to find:

“Nighthawks seems to be the way I think of a night street. I didn’t see it as particularly lonely. I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger. Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”
EDWARD HOPPER

Edward Hopper’s paintings have been called “metaphors of silence.” Here is another example, a painting which for some reason always makes me think of Sioux City, Iowa (a 1998 work location of mine):

Office in a Small City, 1953 Edward Hopper

I think there is a temptation to over-analyze Hopper’s art and over-emphasize the lonely aspects: Text from "Sister Wendy's American Masterpieces":

"Apparently, there was a period when every college dormitory in the country had on its walls a poster of Hopper's Nighthawks; it had become an icon. It is easy to understand its appeal. This is not just an image of big-city loneliness, but of existential loneliness: the sense that we have (perhaps overwhelmingly in late adolescence) of being on our own in the human condition. When we look at that dark New York street, we would expect the fluorescent-lit cafe to be welcoming, but it is not. There is no way to enter it, no door. The extreme brightness means that the people inside are held, exposed and vulnerable. They hunch their shoulders defensively. Hopper did not actually observe them, because he used himself as a model for both the seated men, as if he perceived men in this situation as clones. He modeled the woman, as he did all of his female characters, on his wife Jo. He was a difficult man, and Jo was far more emotionally involved with him than he with her; one of her methods of keeping him with her was to insist that only she would be his model.”

As a student of Robert Henri, the founder of the Ashcan School of American Art, Hopper was taught to paint realistic scenes of urban life. Yet, unlike many of his fellow students, who focused on the more nitty-gritty aspects of urban life, Hopper looked at more common features motels, empty streets, offices, gas stations, etc., and he often was drawn to unusual lighting. Of himself, Hopper once said:

“Maybe I am not very human. What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.”

Yet, there is an unmistakable human appeal to Nighthawks. The scene has inspired not only numerous parodies on canvas – also it has inspired writers to wonder about what dialogue might have been spoken by the people in the diner that evening.

I found two such stories using Google. My impression is that both stories had been written by young writers, as both stories referenced the restaurant as being a diner named “Phillies.” I assume these writers were not observant enough to spot the cigar icon and “only 5¢” to the left of the word “Phillies” and were too young to remember the advertisements for the popular five-cent Phillies cigar.

I doubt that the writers would have thought that the diner was named “Coca-Cola” if a Coke advertisement had been posted above the window.

Other writers have been content merely to reference Nighthawks, perhaps for its decidedly film noir connotations. Here is an excerpt from The Black Echo by Michael Connelly:

He made another one of those psychic connections with Eleanor Wish when he turned around and looked at the wall above the couch. Framed in black wood was a print of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. Bosch didn't have the print at home but he was familiar with the painting and from time to time even thought about it when he was deep on a case or on a surveillance. He had seen the original in Chicago once and had stood in front of it studying it for nearly an hour. A quiet, shadowy man sits alone at the counter of a street-front diner. He looks across at another customer much like himself, but only the second man is with a woman. Somehow, Bosch identified with it, with that first man. I am the loner, he thought. I am the nighthawk. The print, with its stark dark hues and shadows, did not fit in this apartment, Bosch realized. Its darkness clashed with the pastels. Why did Eleanor have it? What did she see there?

Interestingly, according to the diary of his wife Jo, Hopper himself referred to Nighthawks as a painting “of three characters” (not four). Remember, he had used himself as the model for the two men at sitting at the counter, and his wife Jo was the model for the woman. So, in a sense, we see Hopper sitting at a counter across from himself and his wife.

Jo was often his female model, and she appears nude in several paintings, but in Nighthawks she is hardly the object of desire. One can infer from the placement of her hand near that of the man next to her that they are a couple, but they are each seemingly lost in their own thoughts (which do not seem to be about each other).

Perhaps the highest testament to the psychological impact of Nighthawks is the frequency in which it has been parodied. I think only one other American painting has been “covered” as often, and that painting is Grant Wood’s iconic Iowan farmer and unmarried daughter in American Gothic (which also resides in the Art Institute of Chicago).

American Gothic, 1930 Grant Wood

Here are some more of the many works inspired by Nighthawks. Which is your favorite?

A man, a woman, an ashtray

2006-01-30T19:45:00.000-05:00

Here is a story my daughter wrote today. It was an assignment in her Creative Writing class, based on a "prompt" that Chekhov had given to a writing student.

Everyone in her class had to write a story on the prompt of "a man, a woman, an ashtray." The prize is a Pez dispenser, and they all want it, so this should be interesting.

I thought you might like to try writing a story on this same prompt. I wrote my story after reading Lauren's. Here is her story:

Lauren Shawcross

Fiction Writing

1/30/06

Go on, tell me how big your state is. I dare you. Madison Lemming was a true Rhode Islander. And at four-foot eleven, she was just as small and feisty as her state.

She surveyed the room, from the flag mounted on the back wall to the cowboy hat atop the file cabinet—the room reeked of Texas. On the desk, in front of a framed photograph of four bushy-haired children was the embossed quote: "By now you have noticed that there is no product that can't be improved by making it in the shape of Texas." How tacky, she thought. If he liked Texas so much why didn’t he stay there?

She sighed, her reign was over. It had lasted two blissful days following the previous manager’s abrupt resignation. For 2/7ths of a week, she ran the show—all 675 square-feet of it. She was, after all, second in command. Then headquarters sent in this clown. They must have lost her application.

This Tom Jenkins was definitely a change. No more leaning towers of paper, even the highlighters were alphabetized—but any five-year-old could have done that. Neat people irritated Madison. She was the type of person who recklessly squeezed toothpaste from the middle of the tube, instead of carefully rolling the end up a bit more after each brushing. She eyed the golden ashtray in the shape of the twenty-eighth state and wondered if it was aerodynamic.

Reflexively, she drew back her hand, as the door swung open revealing a plaque that read: “Tom Jenkins- Manager- Sweets-N-More” and a gangly, bow-legged man with porcelain veneers that soon eclipsed it.

“Hi there,” he said in a soft-spoken voice and offered her his hand. “What are you doing in here? Ms. Lemming is it?”

“Yes.”

“Taffy?” He offered, pulling a piece of twisted wax paper from his pocket, “It’s the new flavor—Cran-Raspberry.”

She squinched her left eye (the lazy one) and turned her head ever so slightly. Was he hitting on her? Just because he was the new head honcho, did not give him the right to prey on the lesser-paid, but noble-hearted head cashier. She had a Masters in Finance, thank you very much. So what if it was from an online university? If he even tried to sidle up to her, she was prepared to tell him to take that ashtray and shove up his gangly little…

“Ms. Lemming?”

“Thank you sir, but I’m diabetic.” She diminutively cocked her head, while looking up at him through what she thought were long lashes. She adjusted the green and black plaid headband that she had found outside a Catholic day school and wondered what would happen if she kicked him in the shins.

Just then the cell phone affixed to his belt rang, so she excused herself to open up the cash register.

An hour later he returned, scratching his balding head.

“Have you seen my ashtray? It’s in the shape of Texas.”

She shrugged and turned back to the silver balance. Smiling, she weighed out another pound of banana taffy.

Thomas Shawcross
Fiction Writing

1/30/06, later in the day

Hi there. What are you doing in here? Ms. Lemming is it? Tom Jenkins could hardly believe what he had just said. How lame was that? After all the planning and stealth it had taken to be transferred to Store 1113, just so he could woo and win the woman of his dreams – Madison Lemming – why did those have to be his first words to her? Probably, they would laugh about that as they worked late tonight, aligning the inventory according to Magnetic North. She was definitely signaling that she liked what she saw in him. Tom couldn’t help but notice the way Madison had admired the razor-sharp crease on his trousers – women were such suckers for neatness! He chuckled to himself how he had always been able to read women’s (and cats’) minds and often wondered why it had provided him surprisingly little advantage so far.

Tom loved Texas and wanted to stay there forever, but Tom had asked for a transfer from managing the 10,000 square-foot Store 1031 at the Galveston Galleria after his cat, Chekhov, (who had watched him hack into the corporate Human Resources website to look for potential dates) had disdainfully prompted him (telepathically, of course) to “grow a pair, and ask her out.”

So, when the opening came up at the Tummy Acres food court in Providence, Tom shredded all the other applications, packed his U-haul, and left his stunned co-workers with only a cryptic “wouldn’t you like to know?”

Now, here he was, in a “store” so small he had to step outside just to change his mind, and he had fumbled his first chance to impress Madison. After all, he had done his research and knew all there was to know about her. But wait, wasn’t that headband she was wearing of a Scottish tartan pattern? Was Lemming a Scottish name? Now that money he had coincidentally spent on bagpipe lessons wasn’t looking like such a bad investment after all! This was another sign!

Tom’s ace-in-the-hole with Madison was her love of expensive jewelry. Tom had paid Tiffany’s to create a one-of-a-kind diamond brooch in the shape of the Rhode Island Red hen for Madison. A simple yet tasteful pavé of rubies and white diamonds, it had set him back an extra ten grand just to have the gold filagree set with blue sapphires spelling out the Rhode Island State Motto, but if he didn’t have “HOPE” then what did he have? Certainly, luck wouldn’t win him a woman from the thirteenth State. He had taped the engagement brooch to the bottom of his handsome Texas-Flyer ashtray, and he would present it to her when the moment was right. Yee Haw!

But first, he would go SLOW, teasing Madison with his knowledge of her State, and of her. Cranberries were the major crop in Rhode Island, so maybe he should offer her some Cranberry taffy? No, too obvious, make it Cran-Raspberry. That should keep her guessing! Personally, Tom preferred banana taffy, but he had always hoped to find the woman who would share his dreams with him, and if Madison preferred Cran-Raspberry, then so be it. All he needed from her now was just one small sign . . .

This Is Where I Came In

2006-01-01T22:28:00.000-05:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 1 Jan 2006

William Powell, “Asta,” and Myrna Loy

For Christmas this year, Lauren and Michael gave me a box set of the Thin Man hard-drinking comic detective movies. It consists of six films, inspired by The Thin Man novel written by the hard-drinking Dashiel Hammett (author of The Maltese Falcon). These films were highly popular in their day (1934 to 1947), as they featured the witty, flirtatious banter of the married couple Nick and Nora Charles (played by William Powell and Myrna Loy), which was inspired in turn by Dashiel Hammett’s relationship with the playwright Lillian Hellman (The Little Foxes).

This was a great gift for me, as I prefer the old black & white movies over today’s new-fangled colorized ones, and besides, the set includes two movie shorts starring my idol, Robert Benchley! But, as Michael and I sat down on Christmas day to begin our Thin Man movie marathon (Lauren was not feeling well, so she stayed home with her mom), I realized that due to our disparate life experiences, Michael and I were seeing this movie differently.

In one scene of After The Thin Man, a party guest in New York City wanted to call his mother to wish her a merry Christmas, but he was despondent because he had “no nickels.” Nick tells him to use the phone in the hotel suite. As Nick hears the guest asking the operator to place a call to San Francisco, he does a slight double take. Michael’s life experience does not include asking telephone operators to place long-distance calls, and he does not remember when AT&T subsidized their local phone calls by seriously overcharging for long-distance calls. Hence, Michael missed the joke. Someday, I must tell him about two-party line telephone service.

As the movie progressed, I started noticing more things that would fly under the radar of today’s typical young person.

This Is Where I Came In

Some of these were visual subtleties. For example, why, in After The Thin Man, was Nora slicing bread and why did a deliveryman come into the Charles kitchen with a huge block of ice? I suppose Michael has heard me refer to the refrigerator as an “ice box,” but does he understand the origin of the expression “the greatest thing since sliced bread?” Why, wasn’t bread always sold pre-sliced?

However, it was another expression that inspired this story. When some murder suspects started repeating themselves during a police interrogation, Nick Charles announces, “This is where I came in.”

I asked Michael if he knew what that phrase meant, and if he had recognized the humor in it. It was under his radar.

For the benefit of my younger readers, I will explain this particular phrase. It is based on a former practice in which movie theater operators would show a continuously repeating loop of films – often a double feature of movies with cartoons and movie newsreels separating them (yes, Virginia, in the days before wide-spread television reception, one could watch the weekly news at one’s local movie theater).

Anyway, on Saturdays, when Mom and Dad would give Jim and me each a quarter and drop us off at the Crest movie theater on Gravois Road in St. Louis, we would enter the theater at some random point in the loop of films being shown that day.

Usually, we would come in during a cowboy movie, but sometimes it was Ma and Pa Kettle or maybe Francis the Talking Mule. I remember trying to figure out what the heck was going on, as we had missed all of the preceding storyline and character development. Eventually, the time would come when one full cycle had been shown, and we would recognize that we were now seeing the part of the movie that had been showing when we entered the theater. Hence, “this is where I came in” was a phrase that had meaning then.

The expression “this is where I came in” is one that I seldom hear any more. I wonder how much shelf life remains for it. Some expressions seem to go on and on, long after their original meanings have been forgotten.

Recently, my work colleague Chuck Englert (a fellow Baby-Boomer) was telling me about a co-worker who was “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” It occurred to me that I had not heard that expression lately, and I wondered if any of my younger co-workers (they are not hard to find) were familiar with it.

Some of the twenty-somethings had heard of the expression, but none knew what it meant. I think I am the only one in the building who has ever seen a chicken run around with its head cut off. I have a vivid memory of this, actually.

I was six years old. In my mind’s eye, I can still see Dad standing by the garage, holding a live chicken by the head. I have no idea where Dad managed to obtain a live chicken – since we didn’t raise them! But anyway, Dad could do everything, and somehow he had managed to acquire a live chicken, and I didn’t really question it at the time. In my mind’s ear, I can still hear that chicken squawking as Dad grabbed it and then started whirling it with his arm like an airplane propeller. The chicken’s wings were flapping as Dad gave it a ride (why was he doing that?). Then Dad paused to adjust his grip and continued giving that lucky chicken more propeller rides.

Almost as in slow motion, I can still “see” the chicken’s body separate from Dad’s hand, and silently cartwheel through the air, wings a-flapping furiously. The headless chicken body landed heavily on the gravel driveway.

Then, the most amazing thing happened.

Wings still flapping, the headless chicken managed to right itself and begin running at high speed toward Judy Nitsch’s house! Wow! How was that possible? The chicken had no head! It ran pretty well, considering that it had no head and presumably could not see where it was going. Perhaps that explains its rather erratic path, and why, at some point, it changed directions and started running back towards Dad. It didn’t run very long before it fell over dead, but I was impressed that it had run at all. Frankly, I still don’t understand how it could do that, but I certainly learned the meaning that day of the expression “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”

I should explain that Dad was a kind man and not generally inclined to do his own butcher work. He must have really wanted to eat some fried chicken that day. Mom must have too, for she then had to pluck the chicken, an act that seemed to me to be nearly as barbaric as watching Dad kill it. As I recall, Dad did not own an axe, so I don’t know how else he could have killed that chicken, short of running it over with his 1949 Pontiac. Nevertheless, this made a deep impression on me – but not so deep that I didn’t enjoy eating fried chicken that night.

But I digress.

The “this is where I came in” expression started me to wonder how many things are flying under my radar. How many things do I see and not understand?

Real life should come with sub-titles.

When I was a sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis, I wrote a column for our school newspaper, Student Life. My editor suggested I call my column “Local Color and Comments,” since there was no identifiable theme to my stories (sort of like my blogs today). Often, I would search microfilm reels of old St. Louis newspapers to get story ideas. One of the papers from 1928 had the following joke:

two flappers at a dance:
“Say, that saxophone player is really cute!”
“Yes, I wish he’d blow some my way.”

That particular joke would have flown under my radar if I had not already done so much research on the life of Robert Benchley and had read many magazines from the 1920’s. I particularly remembered this classic advertisement from 1926:

This iconic advertisement appeared at a time when it was considered scandalous for women to smoke. “Blow some my way” did much to help the big cigarette companies to acquire the 50% of the market that they felt they had been missing – female smokers.

. . .

I will close today’s story with a memory that just occurred to me. As I was thinking about my afternoons at the Crest Theater, which no doubt led to my love of movies, I remembered one particularly scary movie that I saw there. It was Universal’s classic 1941 tale of The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney, Jr.

When I was ten years old, this movie scared the bejeesus out of me. The movie started out innocently enough, as a normal looking guy goes out for a walk one evening in a small village in Wales and gets bitten by a real werewolf (well, it could happen). Subsequently, on the night of a full moon, he finds himself transforming into a murderous werewolf! Hair begins to sprout on his face, his voice changes, and he is consumed by a lust for blood. I had never seen anything so frightening in my life! He was much scarier than Ma Kettle was on even her worst day.

Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Wolf Man

At some point, I just couldn’t stand to look at the screen anymore. I ducked down behind the seat in front of me. I suppose I must have been keening in fear, as I somehow attracted the attention of some kindly old lady whom I had not previously noticed.

“There, there, dear. It will be all right. Don’t be afraid.”

I knew the lady had good intentions, but what-the-hell was she thinking? Talking would just draw to us the attention of the real werewolf who was undoubtedly sitting in this very movie theater and who was helplessly being transformed into wolf form by the full moon that was showing in the movie.

Sheesh. Some people just never get it.

Somehow, I managed to get blabbermouth to stop talking to me, and after that show ended, Jim and I fled to the lobby, where we stayed until Mom & Dad came to pick us up. I miss those days . . .

Golden Boulder of Kyaiktiyo

2005-12-03T09:58:00.000-05:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross and Rich Marcy 3 Dec 2005

Cleverly concealed in its native habitat, the Golden Boulder
amply rewards the perceptive traveler who can find it

In a departure from my usual routine in writing “Today’s Story,” I have decided to write just the introduction to someone else’s story. In this case, that “someone else” is my good friend Rich Marcy, who, unaccountably is still on speaking terms with me. You will understand why I say “unaccountably” after you have read Rich’s amazing travel adventure.

But first, a few words about the Boulder . . .

I first became aware of the Golden Boulder about thirty years ago, when I was doing some research on Burma (now called Myanmar). I was considering going there on holiday, as I had seen some terrific travel posters of the Plains of Bagan. Here are two images I found at www.asiatours.net :

As noted in Wikipedia: Bagan (Burmese), formerly Pagan, was the ancient capital of several ancient kingdoms in Myanmar (Burma). It is located in the dry central plains of the country, located on the western banks of the Ayeyarwady River (Irrawaddy River), and is 145 km (90 mi) southwest of Mandalay. UNESCO has long tried unsuccessfully to designate Bagan as a World Heritage Site. However, Bagan's chance of becoming a World Heritage Site is now slim, as the government has renovated many temples and pagodas without taking into consideration their former architectural styles.

Oh, how I wanted to go to Bagan! This looked so different from what I normally experience. But the icing was put on the cake when I read about another of Burma’s (now Myanmar’s) great attractions: the Golden Boulder of Kyaiktiyo. Who wouldn’t want to see a giant gold boulder that was so precariously balanced; tourists could make it wobble by prying beneath it with a small stick?

I almost went to Myanmar when I was working in Thailand and Singapore, but I didn’t want to go there by myself, and I couldn’t persuade any of my colleagues to join me. They were put off by the warning posted on the Lonely Planet travel guide that said it was dangerous to go there (just because Myanmar was in the throes of an extended civil war, and if one used the official government-sponsored travel agency, rebels would try to shoot you, and if you didn’t use it the government would try to arrest you).

When my good friend Rich Marcy was nearing the end of his work assignment in Japan, he asked me for suggestions regarding what he should see before returning to the US. Well, of course, I suggested the Golden Boulder. Come to think of it, I think I forgot to mention that civil war thing to Rich, but I doubt that would have influenced Rich’s decision anyway.

Rich decided to go see the Golden Boulder of Kyaktiyo. Here is his story:

The following story was written by my good friend Rich Marcy:

Ah yes, Burma! The land of mystery that we all know and love.* (Okay, so who am I kidding?! I didn’t know anything about this place, until a good friend of mine told me about it, just shortly before I left for Cambodia). (“Myanmar? Huh??”)

Anyway, on my friend’s prompting, I ended up doing some research and found Burma to be an extremely interesting place, to say the least (It’s one of the oldest Buddhist countries in the world, closed off in isolation for the last couple of decades by an extreme military regime, home to Buddhist religious sites that are hundreds of years old, etc. etc.) I also found out in these readings, that Burma is also home to the amazing balancing Golden Boulder of Kyaiktiyo!

The Golden Boulder of Kyaiktiyo is this huge boulder (33 feet high, actually), that is precariously balanced on the edge of a cliff, at the very top of a mountain (Kyaiktiyo mountain, actually). Its balance is so sensitive, that visitors were once allowed to push on it, and watch it sway back and forth on its precipice (visitors are no longer allowed to do this, for obvious reasons). Even now, no one has any idea of how it is able to stay up there.

It’s called the “Golden” Boulder because Buddhist monks from all over Burma make pilgrimages to it year-round (it’s one of Burma’s holiest sites), and when they arrive, they press gold leaf onto it. It is entirely covered in gold.

After reading all of this, I was completely hooked. I "had" to see the Golden Boulder. So, shortly after leaving Phnom Penh, and flying into Bangkok, I took the next flight to Yangon, and began my pilgrimage.

Once I arrived in Yangon, I checked my guidebook, and found that it said: ”to get to Kyaiktiyo (the Golden Boulder), you must go to the Yangon Bus Terminal, and take a 5 hour bus ride to Kyaiktiyo. Then, when you get there, you must work out local transportation to get to the mountain base. There will then be transportation there to get you up the largest part of the mountain, stopping short of the peak, so that you can then walk the rest of the way up to the top, to see the Golden Boulder.”

It all sounded straightforward enough, so the minute I landed at the Yangon International Airport, I made my way to the information desk, and got a taxi to the Yangon Bus Terminal. It was really no problem getting there (it only took 15 minutes from the airport), but nothing prepared me for what I had to deal with once I got there.

First off, when someone says “Bus Terminal” to me, I usually think of some of the terminals that I have spent time in, like in North America, or Japan, or Europe, with some terminals being very nice, and some terminals being quite rundown. But usually, to the best of my memory, they all had a central "building" they resided in. The Yangon Bus Terminal is literally a dirty crowded field filled with people and dilapidated buses, with some wooden shanties around it. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. And looking around the crowd, at the hundreds of Burmese people moving about, I quickly realized that I was also the only Westerner there.

I started going up to the shanties and asking about Kyaiktiyo. Absolutely no one knew what the hell I was talking about. This is just a hunch now mind you, but I think this may have something to do with the fact that I was speaking English and not Burmese. (Granted, I was using a couple of Burmese phrases that I picked up in the guidebook, but none of these were really getting me very far!)

I finally came up to a shack of people that actually smiled and nodded in acknowledgement when I said the word, “Kyaiktiyo.” Of course, shortly thereafter, they just rattled on in Burmese, and again, I didn’t understand a word. I just continued to grin like an idiot, and hoped that eventually, I would understand what was going on. It didn’t happen. The Burmese at the shack grew tired of talking at me, and began to talk amongst themselves. I didn’t know what the hell else to do, so I just stood there, and continued to look at them and grin. They were starting to get annoyed, and averting their eyes from mine (god knows, I don’t blame them; I would have done the same.) But this was the closest I had gotten to Kyaiktiyo yet, so I was sticking with it. Eventually, just to break it up a little bit, I said (you’re not going to believe this - ), ”Kyaiktiyo?”

Finally, one man broke. He got out of his chair, and came up to me and said, “Kyaiktiyo?”, and I, still grinning like an idiot, said, ”Kyaiktiyo!” He then literally grabbed me by the arm, and led me, for the next 15 minutes, through the urban jungle that was the Yangon Bus Terminal, until we reached the sorriest excuse for a truck I have ever seen.

It was loaded with people (there were literally 17 people crammed in the back), and the man who had escorted me by the arm, began talking with the driver. The driver listened to the shack-man, all the while laughing and nodding, and then eventually gestured to me to come sit in the front of the cab with him, in between him and his friend who was holding onto some pvc pipe out the side window. I crawled in between them, with all of my stuff (a month’s worth of backpacking gear), and we set off in the truck.

All the while I was thinking, “Truck? I’ve just started, and I’m already off the fucking page of the guidebook!”

Going down the road in this truck, I started thinking about all of the things that I read from the State Department about transportation in Burma. For example, the Burmese drive on the right side of the road, just like in the US and Canada. However, 90% of their vehicles are set up with right-hand drive, just like in the UK, effectively leaving a blind spot on the left-hand side of the vehicle that could aptly be called a “death zone.” In addition, I also read that it is best to stay off the roads at night, because the truck drivers who are driving at that time, are often high on spiked betel nut (which is this amphetamine-laced, leafy-like substance that produces a very red mouth, and very red spit, and can be seen everywhere in Burma). I didn’t think much of this second fact (as I was too busy focusing on the first) until the driver literally offered me some.

I wasn’t sure at first, if it was the same betel nut that the State Department had talked about, assuming I was just being paranoid. But when the driver offered me some, he pointed at it with his other hand (of course, thereby effectively taking both hands off the wheel of the truck to do so!), and then pointed at his head, rolled his eyes and his head at the same time, and then laughed. Given everything going on at the moment, I nodded appreciatively, and gestured, “no thanks, maybe next time!”

The driver was actually a really nice and funny guy, and throughout the whole time I was in the truck cab, he continued to talk to me in a non-patronizing manner (I think it was a non-patronizing manner!), even though he knew I didn’t speak a lick of Burmese. He was often joking around; at one point, he even pointed at the front of the truck and laughed, noting with his hands how high the front of this rickety truck was off of the road, due to the amount of people we were carrying in the back. I laughed, all the while quietly shitting my pants.

Eventually, we pulled into another large, you guessed it, “ bus “terminal” (I guess, by definition, accurate enough). And hell, I was already starting to appreciate this kind of craziness!) I then realized the difficulty at the former bus terminal -there must have been no buses there going to Kyaiktiyo, and I had to make it over to this one in order to leave today.

Same as before, I was lead by the truck driver to another man, who then, fantastically, took me to an actual bus, and after taking my money (US equivalent: 50 cents), sat me on board. Now, it seemed, I was finally going to be taking the 5 hour bus ride to Kyaiktiyo. Waiting to depart, this was all somewhat confirmed by the many Buddhist monks coming on board. There were quite a number of them, and it was already an interesting experience sharing a bus with them. Some of them had tattoos on their hands, very crudely drawn, and it made them look very bad-assy, which also was a great contradiction, and yet, seemed right somehow too. The idea of having to really earn enlightenment, seemed to be driven home in those tattoos, and their sunburned and wrinkled bald heads.

We waited until the bus was filled to capacity, and then we were off. The bus ride went pretty smoothly, despite the shape the bus was in. All of the buses in the terminal, interestingly enough, have “Air-Con” prominently displayed on the fronts and sides of them; and yet, none of them have air conditioning, and have nothing more than the most incredibly worn seats in them. The thing is though, this was absolutely fine with me. I actually like the heat, and don’t like air-conditioning, and the breeze from the open windows was fine. Plus, the unadulterated view of the Burmese countryside was amazing (when I say unadulterated, I mean that my view was not obstructed by a smoky sealed-glass window. Or any window, for that matter!)

Along the way, I saw Burmese farmers, wearing their Tatamaw hats, and religious stands along the highway, with huge loudspeakers (which I later found out, were for asking money from people who are passing through). Long stretches of farmland, and shacks out in the middle of nowhere. Every once in awhile we would stop to go to the bathroom, or to eat at a local stand.

After approximately 5 and a half hours, we came into a town, and I started to get the feeling that this might be it - this might be Kyaiktiyo. I asked a couple of Burmese passengers, and they nodded that yes, this was Kyaiktiyo. I was very excited. I went up to ask the bus driver, and he nodded the same. The bus then came to a halt, and the driver then gestured for me to get out. I was thinking about what I would have to do next (the guidebook said that I would have to hook up local transportation at this point), so I couldn’t believe my luck when there was a truck right there at the stop, waiting to take passengers to the base of the mountain.

There was however, one problem.

This truck was an even bigger piece of shit than the one I had been in Yangon.

I couldn’t believe it. I have been in some pieces of shit before; hell, I’ve personally owned some questionable cars in my life. But this thing was unbelievable. Again, I was led into the cab (and again, there were something like 13 people hanging out the back - now a common sight to me), but this time, the door had to be secured with wire from the outside. As I looked at the inside of the door, and the inside of the entire cabin, I noticed that everything that could have possibly rusted and fallen out - had. The door handles, the radio, the siding, entire parts of the dashboard, etc. etc. There were no seatbelts (of course), and as we went down the road, I noticed that the steering of the wheel seemed to bear little relationship to the actual direction of the truck. The man driving this truck was literally in his 60’s, and frail looking as all hell.

I was just putting all of this together in my head as we barreled down the road, thinking of an emergency plan in case all hell broke loose, when, just as I started to think I had it all figured out, I heard a grinding noise. I traced it all the way up into the front windshield, when I noticed that this was not a windshield at all - it was actually panes of window glass fitted into the frame! (In case you are not aware of this, the importance of using an actual windshield in a truck is that, in the event of an accident, the windshield will crack and splinter like a spider web, but will not shatter and blow razor sharp shards of glass into your face. Guess what window pane glass will do?!)

So here I was, on my way to the Golden Boulder - or certain death. I am happy to say, that after a couple of hairy turns, some uncertain stops with the truck driver asking me questions in Burmese (and of course, me responding with an idiotic grin, and my mantra, “Kyaiktiyo?”), we arrived at the base of the mountain.

By this time, I had been traveling for approximately 9 hours, and the time was now 6 pm. There was still sunlight out, and I started to think that maybe I would actually see the Golden Boulder today. I walked my way through the town, and came up on a small hill where a large truck was parked, with many people sitting in the bed in back. I was hoping that this might be the truck up the mountain, and I was right. I bought a ticket at the stand next to the truck, climbed in the back, and waited. After a half an hour, the driver climbed inside the truck, and we started up the mountain.

At this point, I figured I had about an hour left of sunlight in the day. The guidebook said that it would take a half an hour for the truck to get to its stop near the peak, and another 45 minutes to walk to the top. I figured that if I really stepped it out, that maybe I could make the top within the sunset. I was getting psyched.

The ascent was very steep, but beautiful, and as the truck wound its way up the mountain in second gear (often times in first), the scenery was unbelievable. Very lush jungle, with the sun hitting it all just right. And there I was sitting in the back of this truck, all filled with Burmese people, no one speaking a drop of English. It was really great.

And then, we ended up stopping at what seemed to be a rest stop just short of the top, and the truck driver shut off the truck. I thought that it was maybe perhaps to give the truck’s transmission a little break.

But then we waited, and we waited. The driver did not even get out of the cab. No one climbed out from the bed of the truck. No one moved. Everyone spoke in the same even calm tones (in Burmese, of course.) And I just sat there in the back, wondering what the hell was going on.

Eventually, night fell. At one point, even knowing it was going to be useless, I couldn’t resist anymore, and looked at the woman next to me, and said with a smile, “why are we not moving?” Of course, she just looked at me, smiled a big smile, and then nodded politely. I did the same, and then continued to look straight ahead, into what was now nothing, blackness. And then I giggled a little bit.

Several minutes later, inexplicably, the truck driver started the truck, and we started back up the mountain again. To this day, I have no idea of why we stopped. Ten minutes later, we were at the head of the walking trail.

At this point, it was already night, and I was pretty tired, so I decided that I would climb up to see the Golden Boulder first thing in the morning. I got a room at an inn that they had at the base camp, and promptly passed out, waking up the next morning at 5:30 am.

It was still dark when I hit the trail going up to the peak, so I broke out my flashlight. There was no one else on the trail going up, at least not initially. Eventually, I ran into some Buddhist monks who were making their pilgrimages up the mountain, and who, unlike me, had climbed all the way from the base of the mountain up. Everyone was nodding and smiling at each other.

Although I couldn’t see very much in the dark, for what I could see, it was all very nice, with the steep path up the mountain bordered by the jungle, and it all felt (I hate to say it!) very mystical. There was a fog surrounding everything, and it was all very perfect. And the climb was a nice hike, just physical enough to get the blood going in the morning. When I reached the platform, I was already starting to feel some accomplishment, and passing through the two huge monuments that guarded the entrance, really did make me feel as if I was entering some new strange world. I was starting to get pretty amped up by the whole experience, and was starting to think about how impressive it was going to be to see this boulder surrounded by fog, balancing in the wind, up on the top of a mountain.

The platform at the top was huge, and it’s a little misleading to call it a platform, because it extends for what seems to be forever. It’s really huge, and had many interesting statues and gazebos on it. I gathered that this was all supporting infrastructure for the pilgrimages that surround the Boulder. It was interesting, because it looked as if a lot of it was under construction, with great piles of dirt and tiles stacked up everywhere (at their religious sites, the Burmese do not allow anyone to wear anything on their feet, so they place tile down everywhere.). As the sun started to come up, I began to quickly pass by the majority of it, getting eager to see the Boulder itself.

But I couldn’t seem to find it. Eventually, I came upon a pretty huge structure, all decked out with construction scaffolding, with steps leading up the side of it. Looking at it, I deduced that this was perhaps a reviewing stand being built to better view the Golden Boulder, and I got excited, because then I realized that the Golden Boulder had to be just on the opposite side of this thing. As early as it was, there were already a number of people praying in this very area, and I thought this is gotta be it; I gotta be close. I worked my way around the reviewing stand to get a better look.

When I finally got to the other side, I found - nothing. I was starting to get dumbfounded. Where is this thing? It’s supposed to be huge! I started thinking back to a conversation I was having with myself back in Bagan, and the construction that I had seen that was going on there. I was laughing to myself then over the idea that in a country so isolated from the world as Burma, that it might be possible to just make things up about yourself. I mean, hypothetically, wouldn’t it be funny, if you were in charge, to just tell the world, “oh yeah, we have 1000 year old ruins. They’re amazing. You should come see them sometime.” And then just build some structures that look old and interesting. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. And right now, I was starting to doubt whether or not the Boulder ever really existed or not. I went back to the reviewing stand and stared at it a little while, thinking to myself, “well, if this is meant to view it, then it must be around here somewhere.” And that’s when I stared and stared at the reviewing stand. And then looked at the people praying. And then noticed, that it looked as if they were praying to the reviewing stand. And that’s when I realized that this was not a reviewing stand being built - It was the Golden Boulder, completely encased in wicker and construction scaffolding.

I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked. I was stupefied. I was completely fucking amazed.

Here I was. On this mountain top, literally thousands of miles from home. I had journeyed under some pretty difficult circumstances, and under some fairly harsh conditions, to see this Golden Boulder balancing on this very cliff. And here it was - completely and effectively out of view.

And that’s when I was enlightened.

It started off as a small titter, which led to a moderate giggle, and then finally I had to sit down, and I fell into a tremendous laughing fit. And I was suddenly overcome with a feeling of how perfect it all was. Everything. Every bit of it. The journey, the Boulder, my life, the world - all of it. Every bit of it. I thought of that quote by Charles Simic, where he says, “Do I love Jesus? Yeah, sure. Hell, I love everyone.” And I thought of that great cartoon by Rodriguez, “The Colossal Joke.” I thought of everything. And I thought of nothing. And it was all so perfect, that it just made me laugh and laugh.

And when I got done laughing, I stood up, looked around at the few people who were, oddly enough, looking at me warmly with nice smiles, smiled at them back, waved, and then started my journey back down the mountain.

* * * * * *
Epilogue:

Fortunately, when Rich traveled to Bagan, it’s thousand-plus temples and stupas were not concealed under temporary bamboo enclosures.

See: http://students.ou.edu/M/Richard.T.Marcy-1/travel.html

The Golden Boulder on the day Rich Marcy was there

The Golden Boulder on almost any other day

Rich Marcy in Bagan

Carmen Miranda

2005-11-24T20:20:00.000-05:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 24 Nov 2005

Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha
a.k.a. Carmen Miranda

Before I started writing daily blog stories, I used to e-mail a series of daily quizzes to my friends. In the spirit of nostalgia on this Thanksgiving Day, I offer a special edition of:

Today’s Quiz

· Who was the highest-paid entertainer in the US in 1943?
· Who was the highest-paid female in the US in 1945? ($210,000)
· Who inspired the advertising icon “Chiquita Banana”?

The Chiquita Banana advertising jingle:

"Hello Amigo...I'm Chiquita Banana and I've come to say/You eat the banana in a special way/And when it's fleck with brown and has a golden hue/That's when bananas are the best for you...."

The Chiquita Banana jingle was created in 1944 for the United Fruit Company by a BBDO advertising team headed by Robert Foreman. The song's lyrics, written by Garth Montgomery and music composed by co-worker Ken MacKenzie, instructed Americans on how to ripen and properly use this golden tropical fruit, for example, putting them in pies, or salads and to never to put the equator grown fruit in the refrigerator.

source: http://www.tvacres.com/admascots_misschiquita.htm

The Answer to Today’s Quiz:

If you said “Carmen Miranda,” give yourself a gold star!

I have fond memories of Carmen Miranda, who passed away on 5 Aug 1955 (five years to the day later, Marilyn Monroe, another of my boyhood favorites, would die). For some reason, I have a particularly vivid memory of the Carmen Miranda coloring book that I saw in the Kresge’s dime store at Hampton Village in 1954 (or maybe it was a Woolworth’s 5¢ and 10¢ store, my memory of the store name is not quite so vivid). For the benefit of my younger readers, there used to be 5¢ and 10¢ stores, sometimes called “five and dime” and later on “dime stores,” in which one could actually buy products that cost five or ten cents. Of course, they carried higher-ticket items as well, such as the Carmen Miranda coloring book I coveted, which was a “too much money” 15¢.

In my opinion, this would have been a great coloring book to buy, because it offered so many options for the colour artiste. Carmen Miranda was famous for wearing the multi-colored dresses and tutti-frutti hats of Brazil’s Baiana region, so one could use any color in the Crayola box when coloring a Carmen Miranda color book, as opposed to say, a Batman color book, which dictated a limited palette, dominated by blacks and greys.

I recall studying this page of the Carmen Miranda color book, and thinking about which colors I might use:

Memorable page from the Carmen Miranda color book
source: the MovieDiva Jr. website
http://www.moviediva.com/MDJr_root/MDjr/MDjrGangsAllHere.htm

Biographical sketch

Born in Portugal on 9 Feb 1909, Maria do Carmo Miranda Da Cunha came to Brazil at the age of one year. At the age of fourteen, she had to drop out of school to help earn money for the medications needed by her sister, who had developed tuberculosis. Her first job was making ties, but then got a job at a boutique called La Femme Chic, where she learned how to make hats. She was so good at this, she started her own hat-making business, and her brother Mario quit his job to help Carmen deliver hats to her customers. But this success was just the first for Carmen. By age 17, she was performing at parties and small motion pictures. At age 19, she recorded her first song, Samba Não vá Simbora.

The famous Brazilian composer and doctor Joubert de Carvalho was inspired by hearing her sing, and he wrote Tai for her, which sold 35,000 copies, a record for its time (later the popular Brazilian soft drink Guarana Tai was named after this hit song). By 1935, Carmen was a big star in Brazil. She was making movies with her sister Aurora and had lucrative radio and recording contracts.

In February of 1939, the figure skating champion Sonja Henie and theatrical producer Lee Shunert came to Rio de Janeiro and saw Carmen perform in the baiana costume she had worn in her movie Banana de Terra. Sonja invited Carmen to perform on Broadway.

American audiences loved her. In no time, she became a headliner and a style setter. In New York City alone, Saks sold millions of dollars of Carmen Miranda jewelry and accessories. In 1940, Twentieth Century Fox asked her to star in the movie Down Argentine Way.

Ironically, this movie was banned in Argentina and criticized in Brazil. Why? Well, some say it depicted the people of Argentina in a foolish way. I have not seen this movie, but I do wonder if they may have over-reacted. Carmen Miranda was an entertainer, not an actress in documentary films.

Having said that, it is indisputable that Carmen’s powerful personality, style, and sensuality became bigger-than-life in subsequent movies, which lampooned her heavy accent, mangled English, and sex appeal.

Excess

Some people say that Carmen became a caricature of the Latina woman, that her image was carried to excess. Excess? Where did that come from? Just to make sure, I looked up the definition of Excess in Webster’s online dictionary:
Main Entry: 1 ex·cess
Pronunciation: ik-'ses, 'ek-"
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French or Late Latin; Middle French exces, from Late Latin excessus, from Latin, departure, projection, from excedere to exceed
1 a : the state or an instance of surpassing usual, proper, or specified limits : SUPERFLUITY b : the amount or degree by which one thing or quantity exceeds another
2 : Carmen Miranda, as depicted in any of the Busby-Berkeley-directed movies, but particularly so in 1943’s hit movie The Gang’s All Here.

Hmmm. Ahem. Well, maybe Carmen’s image was carried to excess, but I will let you, dear reader, decide.

The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat

One of the classic scenes in The Gang’s All Here was a song and dance number called “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat.” In this scene, set on a lush tropic island decorated with sixty scantily-clad native girls, Carmen Miranda appears in a gold cart drawn by gold oxen. She was supposed to wear a thirty-foot tall headdress of fruit and banana flowers, but this simple yet tasteful headdress was dislodged when the camera boom carrying the Director Busby Berkeley swooped in too close, allegedly causing the distraught Carmen to cry out “Eef you wan’ to kill me, why don’ use a gun?” So, the thirty-foot headdress was replaced by a larger, painted one that reached to the ceiling of the sound stage:

Excessive? You make the call.

Ok, maybe some would call that excessive. Or maybe this scene with giant dancing bananas:

Personally, if any of the scenes in that movie were excessive, I would say it was possibly the scene in which Carmen played a giant banana xylophone, or maybe the scene with the giant strawberries in the later, colorized version (they were way too red).

It is interesting to see how Carmen Miranda has been viewed over time. At the height of her popularity in the US as a singer, dancer, comedienne, and movie star, she was resented in Brazil as a sell-out, a woman who provided a false image of Latina women and had become too Americanized. Now, however, time has mellowed that image, and she is remembered as a musical innovator, one of the first true samba superstars, and the most famous Brazilian entertainer (even though she was of Portuguese birth, she was known as “the Brazilian Bombshell”). As for presenting a false image of Latina women, I have discussed this with my friend Jorge Camargo, who has been in every country in South America (I have been in only four), and he agrees with me that all Latina women are not as beautiful and exciting as Carmen Miranda. In truth, only about 85% of Latina women are gorgeous. But that’s movies for you – always exaggerating – Latina women do not in fact walk around in seven-inch platform shoes and towering headdresses, as Carmen did in her movies.

Sadly, Carmen Miranda died young. As noted in Wikipedia:

Carmen Miranda, who neither drank nor smoked, died of a heart attack less than a day after an appearance on The Jimmy Durante Show. On an A&E Biography episode about her, there was a fairly startling piece of tape or kinescope footage from that show, from August 4. After a dance number, she nearly passed out, presumably suffering a mild precursor to her later, fatal cardiac arrest. Durante, standing next to her, caught her and helped keep her on her feet. She then smiled and waved to the crowd, and walked offstage, unknowingly for the last time. She was gone by the next morning.

After her death, it was discovered that Carmen had died from untreated toxemia and heart failure stemming from pregnancy.

She is missed.

Brasilian Filmography

1932 - O CARNAVAL CANTADO NO RIO - Cinédia
Directors: Ademar Gonzaga and Humberto Mauro
Script: Joracy Camargo
Semi - documentary: Real carnaval and studio scenes of Carmen singing
Songs: Prá Você Gostar de Mim; Yayá, Yoyô, Carnavá tá Ahi; Vamos Brincar

1933 - A VOZ DO CARNAVAL - Cinédia
Directors: Ademar Gonzaga and Humberto Mauro
Script: Joracy Camargo
Cast: Gina Cavaliere, Lu Marival, Regina Maura, Elsa Moreno, Nana Figueredo, Lamartine Babo, Paolu Gonçalvez, Apolo Correa, Henrique Chaves, Jararaca & Ratinho
Semi - documentary: Real scenes of carnaval and in studio
Songs: Moleque Indigesto; Good-bye

1935 - ALÔ, ALÔ BRASIL! - Waldow - Cinédia
Directors: Wallance Downey, João de Barro and Alberto Ribeiro
Cast: Aurora Miranda, Dircinha Batista, Cordélia Ferreira, Elisa Coelho, César Ladeira, Francisco Alves, Barbosa Junior, Mário Reis, Jorge Murad, Custódio Mesquita, Almirante, Mesquitinha, Ary Barroso, Manoelito Teixeira, Arnaldo Pescuma, Manuel Monteiro, Afonso Stuart, Bando da Lua, os 4 Diabos, Simon Bountman´s Orchestra
Song: Primavera no Rio

1935 - ESTUDANTES - Waldow - Cinédia
Director: Wallace Downey
Cast: Aurora Miranda, Sylvinha Mello, Carmen Silva, Dulce Wheyting, Mesquitinha, César Ladeira, Barbosa Junior, Almirante, Jorge Murad, Mario Reis, Afonso Osório, Elio Pereira, Bando da Lua, Irmãos Tapajós, Benedicto Lacerda and regional band, Simon Bountman´s Orchestra
Songs: E bateu-se a Chapa; Sonho de Papel

1936 - ALÔ, ALÔ CARNAVAL - Waldow - Cinédia
Director: Adhemar Gonzaga
Cast: Aurora Miranda, Eloisa Helena, Alzirinha Camargo, dulce Wheyting, Dircinha Batista, Lelita Rosa, Francisco Alves Mário Reis, Jayme, Luiz Barbosa, Pinto Filho, Oscarito, Almirante, Muraro, Hervé Cordovil, Pery Ribas, Joel e Gaucho, Irmãs Pagãs, Banda da Lua, Os 4 Diabos, Simon Bountman´s Orchestra, Benedicto Lacerda and regional band
Songs: Querido Adão; Cantores do Rádio (com Aurora)

1939 - BANANA DA TERRA - Sonofilme
Director: João de Barro
Cast: Aurora Miranda, Dircinha ;batista, Linda Batista, Emilinha Borba, Neyde Martins, Almirante, Oscarito, Orlando Silva, Aloysio de Oliveira, Jorge Murad, Carlos Galhardo, Lauro Borges, Castro Barbosa, Mário Silva, Paulo Netto, Alvarenga e Betinho, Banda da Lua, Napolão Tavares Orchestra, Romeu Silva´s Orchestra and artists of the Cassino da Urca
Songs: Pirolito (with Almirante); O que é que a Baiana tem?

American Filmography

1940 - DOWN ARGENTINE WAY (SERENATA TROPICAL)
20th Century Fox - Colored
Cast: Betty Gable, Charlotte Greenwood, Don Ameche, Bando da Lua
Songs: South American Way; Mamãe eu Quero; Bambu, Bambu
Main character: Carmen Miranda

1941 - THAT NIGHT IN RIO (UMA NOITE NO RIO)
20th Century Fox - Colored
Cast: Don Ameche, Alice Faye, Bando da Lua, Flores Brothers
Songs: Chica Chica Bom Chic; Cai Cai; I, Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi, I Like You Very Much
Main character: Carmen Miranda

1941 - WEEKEND IN HAVANA (ACONTECEU EM HAVANA)
20th Century Fox - Colored
Cast: Alice Faye, John Payne, Cesar Romero, Bando da Lua.
Songs: A week end in Havana; When I Love I Love; Rebola Bola; The Nango
Main character: Rosita Rivas

1942 - SPRINGTIME IN THE ROCKIES (MINHA SECRETÁRIA BRASILEIRA)
20th Century Fox - Colored
Cast: Betty Gable, John Payne, Cesar Romero, Charlotte Greenwood, Edward Everett Horton, Trudy Marshal, Jackie Gleason, Harry James e Orquestra, Bando da Lua
Songs: Chattanooga Choo Choo; Tique Taque do Meu Coração
Main character: Rosita

1943 - THE GANG´S ALL HERE (ENTRE A LOIRA E MORENA)
20th Century Fox - Colored
Cast: Alice Faye, Phil Baker, Benny Goodman, Eugene Pallatte, Charlotte Greenwood, Edward Everett Horton, Tony De Marco, James Ellison, Dave Wollock.
Songs: Aquarela do Brasil; The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat; Paducah; You Discover You're in New York; A Journey to a Star
Main character: Dorita

1944 - FOUR JILLS IN A JEEP (QUATRO MOÇAS NUM JEEP)
20th Century Fox - Black and White
Cast: Kay Francis, Marta Raye, Dick Haymes, Betty Grable, Carole Landis, Jimmy Dorsey and Orchestra
Songs: I, Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi, I Like You Very Much

1944 - GREENWICH VILLAGE (SERENATA BOEMIA)
20th Century Fox - Colored
Cast: Don Ameche, Vivian Blaine, William Bendix, Emil Rameau
Songs: O que é que a Baiana Tem? ; Quando eu Penso na Bahia; Give Me a Band and Bandana; I´m Just Wild About Harry; I Like to be Loved by You
Main character: Princesa Querida

1944 - SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS (ALEGRIA RAPAZES!)
20th Century Fox - Colored
Cast: Vivian Blaine, Michael O´Shea, Cora Williams, Judy Holliday, Perry Como, Banda da Lua
Songs: Batuca Nego; Samba Boogie; Wouldn´t it be Nice?
Main character: Chiquita Hart

1945 - DOLL FACE (SONHOS DE ESTRELA)
20th Century Fox - Black and White
Cast: Vivian Blaine, Martha Stewart, Perry Como, Dennis O´Keefe, Michael Dunna
Songs: Chico - Chico ( From Porto Rico)
Main character: Chita

1946 - IF I´M LUCKY (SE EU FOSSE FELIZ)
20th Century Fox - Black and White
Cast: Vivian Blaine, Perry Como, Harry James e Orquestra
Songs: Batucada; Follow the Band; Bet Your Botton Dollar
Main character: Michele O´Toole

1947 - COPACABANA
United Artists - Black and White
Cast: Groucho Marx, Andy Russel, Gloria Jean, Steve Cochran, Merle McHugh
Songs: Tico Tico; How to Make a Hit with Fifi; Let´s do the Copacabana; Je vous aime; I Haven´t a Thing to Sell
Main characters: Carmen Navaro and Mademoiselle Fifi

1948 - A DATE WITH JUDY (O PRINCIPE ENCANTADO)
Metro Goldwyn - Mayer - Colored
Cast: Jane Powell, Elizabeth Taylor, Selena Royle, Wallace Beery, Robert Stack, Xaveir Cugat e Orquestra
Songs: Cuanto le Gusta; Cooking with Glass; It´s a Most Unusual Day
Main character: Rosita Conchellas

1950 -- NANCY GOES TO RIO (ROMANCE CARIOCA)
Metro Goldwyn - Mayer - Colored
Cast: Jane Powell, Ann Sothern, Barry Sullivan, Lois Calhern, Nella Walker, Bando da Lua
Songs: Baião Ca Room ´Pa Pa; Ipse-Ai-O
Main character: Marina Rodriguez

1953 - SCARED STIFF (MORRENDO DE MEDO)
Paramount - Black and White
Cast: Elizabeth Scott, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Dorothy Malone

Bucky Fuller

2005-10-24T00:15:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 23 October 2005

First Day of Issue of the U.S. commemorative postage stamp honoring Richard Buckminster Fuller was 12 July 2004.

What species of tree makes the best firewood? Apple? Ash? Cedar? Hickory?

If I know you, this is precisely what you were wondering about just now. Well, as it turns out, about twenty-five years ago, when I lived in Michigan, The New Yorker magazine published an article that discussed this!

Since I had two fireplaces in my Michigan home and a recently-purchased cord of firewood stacked in my garage, I figured I should read this story, so that I would know what kind of wood I should order next time. Not knowing any better, I had bought generic “wood,” but thanks to this magazine story, I would make an informed choice next time! I learned that some people preferred hard woods, such as ash, oak and hickory, while others preferred more aromatic woods, such as apple, cedar, and mesquite, but even though different species of trees varied in hardness and in fragrance, the chemistry involved in the burning of firewood was the same. The process of burning logs involves the release of its moisture content as water vapor (up to 60% of the weight of a “green” log can come from water – which is why one should try to burn only “dry” split logs that are about 20% water). The non-water part of logs consists mostly of hydrocarbon compounds, which leads us to consider carbon itself.

Carbon is a unique element because of its ability to form covalent bonds that are strong and stable. As we all remember, covalent bonds involve the sharing of electrons. Carbon has only four electrons in its outermost energy level, but there is room for eight. Think what this can mean!

Put another way, carbon is the Tara Reid of atoms – the true Party Girl of the Periodic Table of Elements.

As such, it is not unusual to find a carbon atom simultaneously “holding hands” with four hunky hydrogen atoms (we call this resultant compound “methane,” or CH4). The fact that carbon bonds so easily with common elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorous is interesting in itself and has much to do with the fact that we humans (and all other living things) are carbon-based life forms. But wait, there’s more! Carbon can also form chains of almost unlimited length by bonding to other carbon atoms (personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing that). In fact, it can bond in straight chains of single, double, or even triple covalent bonds or combinations thereof. As The New Yorker story explained, when a log burns, its hydrocarbon compounds react in a similar way to how gasoline reacts when exposed to a flame. In fact, gasoline is chains of hydrocarbons. As such, a log can be thought of as containing a solid form of gasoline.

That statement caught my imagination. I had never thought of logs as gasoline. When I had looked at a forest, I had seen only the trees. Now, I saw gasoline! As the more complex hydrocarbons in the tree heat up when exposed to flame, the chains break up and ignite, starting with the one-carbon methane gas, and including many other combinations, such as two-carbon ethane, three-carbon propane, four-carbon butane, etc. (and don’t forget eight-carbon octane)!

OK, so that was an interesting story, but I had other things to do, so I didn’t dwell on it. Frankly, I gave little more thought to it until a year or so later, when another article in The New Yorker grabbed my attention.

This other article contained a Bucky Fuller story (by now, I suppose you were wondering why I called this firewood-carbon story “Bucky Fuller”). Bucky Fuller had been a guest of an editor of The New Yorker. After dinner, they had retired to the den, where there was a fireplace. The young son of the editor came by to say goodnight, and when he looked at the burning logs in the fireplace, he asked what fire was.

Oh, how I wished I had been there! This would have been my big chance to impress Bucky Fuller, the possessor of one of the greatest minds of our time!

I had been so impressed by Bucky Fuller when he spoke at the campus of Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville (I saw Janis Joplin perform there too, but that is another story). It would have been a thrill to turn the tables and impress Buckminster Fuller!

I still recalled that firewood-gasoline story, and I ached for the chance to tell it to him. But wait! It turns out that the editor also remembered that story (possibly, he had edited it), and the editor related how he was about to reveal that logs were another form of gasoline . . . rats!

But then it got really interesting.

Before the editor (or me, in my fantasy world) could impress Bucky Fuller, Bucky asked the boy if he remembered when the logs in the fireplace had been part of a tree that had lived in the backyard. The boy remembered.

“Remember how the sun had shone on the leaves of the living tree, and it had grown and made these logs?” Bucky asked. “Well, now the sun is coming back out of the logs.”

Oooh! Good one. This explains why Bucky Fuller invented the geodesic dome and I didn’t. He knew how to see things in a different way.

Many years later (ok, it was in 1995), I found myself working as a business consultant to a company in Alberta, Canada. My client had exclusive rights to build the pipelines that transported natural gas from northern Alberta, and in return got to “skim the cream” from the natural gas, which is mostly methane. The more complex ethane gas was the “cream” as it has more of the highly coveted Tara Reid, er, carbon atoms and is therefore a much better monomer for building the more complex polymers of polyethelene and polystyrene.

The polyethelene pellets made by my client were then sold to manufacturers of shrink wrap food packaging, squeezable bottles, and grocery bags. The polystyrene pellets were sold for the manufacturing of polystyrene foam (known as Styrofoam when made by DuPont), and rigid products such as compact disc cases, and computer cabinets.

In an interesting twist of fate, Buckminster Fuller and carbon were to become forever associated through the research of Richard E. Smally, Robert F. Curl, Jr., and Harold Kroto, who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of fullerenes, a family of highly symmetrical carbon-cage molecules whose prototypical member is C60, known as Buckminsterfullerene, or a "Buckyball."

A Buckyball is the roundest and most symmetrical large molecule known to man. It has astounding properties of shock resistance, superconductivity, and, of course, has its carbon atoms arranged in the shape of a hollow geodesic dome.

Wish I’d thought of that . . .

Buckyball with single- (red) and
double- (yellow) bonds highlighted

Wayback Machine

2005-10-16T10:09:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 16 Oct 2005

The Wayback Machine, circa 1959
Shown here are Peabody and his boy Sherman

Last Friday afternoon at work, I met with Kendra Cooke, Jorge Camargo, Chris Welker, and Jim Mio to review some web page designs. At one point, a question arose regarding how certain pages had looked a few years ago, and Chris said, “Let’s take a ride in the Wayback Machine.” I wondered what Chris was talking about. Suddenly, the projector started displaying web pages from the past.

We had gone back in time!

Well, sort of. Chris had logged on to http://www.archive.org/ , otherwise known The Internet Archive Wayback Machine. It is a 501(c)(3) public nonprofit that was founded to build a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts, with the purpose of offering free permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars and the general public. It makes it possible to surf the web pages of the past and find text, audio, moving images and live music.

Of course, the original Wayback Machine appeared in Jay Ward’s cartoon series Peabody’s Improbable History, which was a back-up segment on the Rocky & His Friends cartoon on ABC and The Bullwinkle Show on NBC.

Peabody was a dog who had a boy (Sherman), and together they would use the Wayback Machine to travel back in time and influence how things were later to be recorded in history books.

I had been hooked on Jay Ward cartoons since the first time I saw his Crusader Rabbit, which was the first made-for-TV cartoon series. Crusader Rabbit and his sidekick, Ragland T. Tiger (“Rags”), had personalities that were the opposite of their appearance. It was a wonderful show!

Rags and Crusader Rabbit

But, I digress. I was a regular viewer of Peabody’s Improbable History, and so, it seems, were the people who created the Wayback Machine Internet search site.

Lately, I have been using another form of a Wayback Machine – a website created by Brenda Garver Lee – to travel back in time and read about events that happened in Ava, Illinois. Brenda’s website is called Who Was Who in Ava, IL and it is posted at http://groups.msn.com/WhoWasWhoinAvaIL

Today, I logged onto Brenda’s site and read a story that was originally published in The Ava Citizen newspaper on 15 Oct 1965. The story is about a birthday party for a one-year old girl. The little girl was presented with a birthday cake adorned with “a little doll with an umbrella over it.” The little girl thought the doll was pretty, and she kissed it.

The final paragraph of the newspaper article noted that “Refreshments of cake, jello, kool aid, and sandwiches were served.” That really took me back in time. I don’t think these are typical refreshments any more. I can picture the sandwiches, and I know they were made with white bread. That’s the only kind of bread we ever ate. Now, I have had white bread only once in the past thirty years, and that was when Aunt Dorothy brought a dish of pot roast (and white bread) to our farm near Ava.

I cannot remember the last time I had Kool-Aid. When I was a younger boy than I am now, I enjoyed Kool-Aid on a fairly regular basis. I suppose it was much cheaper than soda. Mom used to make jello, too. My favorite was red jello with sliced bananas in it. Maybe I will try to talk my son into making some for me (my CADD* disability prevents me from making jello myself).

If I could go back in time, I would persuade General Foods to come up with a more imaginative name for their Smiling Pitcher icon (I think I could come up with something better than their “Kool-Aid Man”). Also, I would plunk down a nickel and buy a package of Kool-Aid and make homemade popsicles like Mom used to make in our icebox, using orange Kool-Aid, Popsicle sticks, and an ice-cube tray (in the era before air-conditioning).

* CADD is Cooking Attention Deficit Disorder

Telugu

2005-10-12T23:13:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 12 Oct 2005

Yesterday evening, after driving home from work, I decided to while away a few pleasant hours doing my writing, engineering, and philanthropic work. Then, an idea struck me.

“Hey, why not listen to some Telugu songs while I work at the computer?”

I had only recently learned of the Telugu language, from a co-worker, Sharanya Muppidi, and I was keen to learn more about it.

The online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, says the Telugu language belongs to the family of Dravidian languages and is the official language of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, (A. P., as Sharanya calls it). But here is the intriguing part – Wikipedia says that Telugu is called the Italian of the East as all Telugu words end in a vowel sound. Telugu has sixteen vowels.

Immediately, this conjured the image in my mind of an A. P. family gathered around the kitchen. In this fantasy, the father looked like an Indian version of the Mario character from Nintendo, with a Mario-like handlebar mustache. Using his hands for emphasis, he was talking to his wife (I will translate from Telugu for you):

“That’s-a spicy Mirchi ka Salon, mama! Pass-a the chianti, and how about-a some more pasta?!”

On second thought, I realized that A. P. men probably bore no resemblance to the Italian cartoon character of Mario, and for that matter I had never seen any Italian men who did either, but that didn’t stop the mental image from jumping into my head.

It would definitely be interesting, however, if scientists someday discover a gene that combines a liking of vowel sounds with a preference for spicy cooking . . .

But, I digress. Wikipedia went on to say that say that some 70 to 80 million people speak the Telugu language! That astounded me, as I had never heard of Telugu until this week. Where have I been?

It turns out that Telugu is the second largest language in India, next only to Hindi (which I had heard of). Sharanya gave me the address of a web site that was devoted to Telugu films. Here, she said, I could listen to sound tracks from Telugu movies. I hadn’t realized there were Telugu movies. I was aware of the Hindi-language movies made in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay). The film industry there is so large, it has been nicknamed “Bollywood” a conflation of Bombay and Hollywood. Well, it turns out that Bollywood, when combined with “Tollywood” (the Telugu-language films) and the other Indian films made in Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam, and Kannada, is the largest film industry in the world, in terms of number of movies made and the number of people who see them. One can purchase these films on eBay India.

Sharanya said her favorite Telugu movie was the 2004 musical Aarya. So, I logged on to Telugufm.com and listened to a few songs from it, namely You Rock my World, Nuvvunte, O My Brotheru, Thakadhimithom, Feel My Love, and my personal favorite Aa Ante Amalapuram.

source: http://cgi.ebay.in/Aarya-Telugu-Movie-VCD_W0QQitemZ6437473727QQcategoryZ88408QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

Cast: Allu Arjun, Anuradha Mehta, Shiva Balaji, Sunil
Synopsis: Ajay (Siva) is a spoilt brat and is the son of local MP Avataram (Rajan P Dev). He likes Geeta (Anuradha Mehta) and proposes her. When she refuses, he threatens that he would jump from the college top. Being a meek girl, Geeta accepts the proposal and starts dating him.

Arya (Allu Arjun) is a carefree guy with positive attitude. He falls in love with Geeta at the first sight. He proposes her in front of her boyfriend. She bluntly refuses. The rest of the film is all about how he wins Geeta with his attitude and positive outlook.

I was especially interested in hearing these songs, because of a strange theory that I have. A woman in South Dakota once told me that whenever she looks at old black-and-white photos from the late 1800’s, she always searches the faces of the now long-dead people, looking for a match to a currently living person. Her theory is that, unlike snowflakes, faces repeat themselves from time to time.

I have a variation of this theory, based on music. I suspect that some songs have been invented, then forgotten, and then reinvented over the years. I expect there will be a movie made some day when someone rides a time machine back to the Middle Ages and discovers a court musician playing “Satin Doll” on a lute, only the court musician knows it as “Prithee Wench” or some other such title.

Well, I can’t go back in time and discover these invented-forgotten-reinvented songs, but I could listen to Telugu songs and see if any of the songs I knew had been reinvented in Telugu. It turns out they hadn’t, but the Telugu songs made enjoyable listening. They were catchy and danceable.

Today, I told Sharanya that I had listened to songs from Aarya and mentioned that Aarya could be purchased at eBay India. She then informed me that Telugu movies could be watched here in South Florida, via Satellite Dish! Shades of parallel universes!

I have long been intrigued by the concept of parallel universes. Some Physicists believe they exist. Me, I am not so sure, but then again, Sharanya had just demonstrated to me that there is a parallel Telugu universe all around me, but I had been unable to detect it. It was akin to the feeling I got when I learned that airlines had secret lounges inside airports for VIP travelers, or that department stores offered “personal shopper” services. Where had I been? And now, I find out about Telugu. Come to think of it, today I learned that the fourth floor of the building where I work has a better selection in its vending machines. I am riding a wave of discovery!

The world is finally revealing its secrets to me. I can’t wait to see what I will discover tomorrow . . .

Delray Beach Dog Walk II

2005-10-01T16:06:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 1 Oct 2005

Author’s note: This is the second story in my Delray Beach Dog Walk series. The first story in this series was written 29 May 2005.

Peanut Max Shawcross

White Parrot

Friday evening I was talking on the phone with my friend Eric Hollowaty about “in-scope / out-of-scope” work issues. At the conclusion of our conversation, I wished Eric a good weekend.

“What are you doing this weekend” he asked. I told Eric that my kids’ dog was staying with me, so I would probably go home and take Peanut for a walk, and maybe later this weekend I would help my son study for some high school tests.

The silence at the other end of the line was deafening. I could tell Eric was disappointed with my plans. Like most people who live in Chicago, he probably pictures my South Florida weekends as endless rounds of Latin Grammy after-parties or non-stop parties with lingerie models on my custom-made Cigarette racing yacht. Oh for sure, I would be busy next weekend, when as part of my annual Salute to France, I plan to dress up as the Sun King, Louis Quatorze, and create an aerial photograph in which I shall direct three thousand local school children to form into clusters of letters that spell “Greetings From Delray Beach.” But that would be next weekend. This weekend was planned for doing a bit of deep thinking.

So anyway, I drove home from Fort Lauderdale and took Peanut for a walk in downtown Delray Beach. As we approached Louie Louie’s, I noticed a quirky looking couple sitting on a sidewalk bench between Louie Louie's and Starbucks. I was looking at them as we approached. Suddenly, I realized that Peanut had stopped in his tracks and was staring at something. It took me a second to see what he was looking at. Perched on the arm of the bench, next to the quirky woman, was a large white parrot. It was almost as big as Peanut.

Peanut stared at the White Parrot for a while, and then he sat down on his haunches in front of it and continued gazing. He began wagging his tail. The couple and I stared at the white bird and the white dog. Peanut seemed really happy. The bird was harder to read.

I said, " My dog likes your chicken."

I knew it was a parrot, but I felt like messing with them. They laughed, and said their bird was a parrot. The quirky guy observed that the two animals were enjoying an "encounter." He laughed.

Then I laughed. Then their chicken mimicked my laugh to a tee - (spooky, but also funny).

But then I thought, “Wait a minute, is this parrot mimicking me, or is he mocking me? “ I had never been mocked by a bird – what is the correct response? I decided that Peanut and I should just keep on trucking.

Anyway, I had some deep thinking to do. I had to try to figure out when women stopped wearing slips. I had recently realized that women’s slips, like the inner tubes in car tires (see my 30 Jun 2005 story Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Hershey Bar) had disappeared from the every-day world.

This thought had been prompted when I looked at Brenda Lee’s website, Who Was Who in Ava, IL. I had noticed that some of the postings there were too small to read, and I was thinking about how to let Brenda know this in a nice way, so that she wouldn’t think I was criticizing her work. It occurred to me that I was doing this in the spirit of being helpful. It would be sort of as if I were pointing out to Brenda that her slip was showing. But then I realized that people never said “your slip is showing” any more. I couldn’t remember the last time I had said that, because, frankly, I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen one showing.

For my younger readers, I will explain that a slip was something that women used to wear under their dresses or skirts. Slips were made of some thin, slick material, and they were not supposed to be seen, but occasionally a bit of the bottom of a slip would stick out past the bottom of the dress or skirt. No big deal, really, but if you ever noticed that, it was considered proper etiquette to let the woman know, so she could hike up her slip to where it could no longer be seen.

The girls in my classes at Concord Elementary School wore slips. My mom wore slips. Somewhere along the way between the 1950’s and now, women seem to have stopped wearing slips. Or did scientists come up with some new technology that keeps slips from showing?

I don’t have a girlfriend at present, or else I would ask her about this (and she would probably tell me, unless she was mad at me about who knows what). So, I decided to ask my daughter Lauren about this. Lauren is almost twenty years old. Lauren has heard of slips, and Lauren says that “slip dresses” were popular a few years ago (I missed that fashion happening), but Lauren says that women her age don’t wear slips. Suspicions confirmed.

The proper scientific approach now would be to find some woman who is older than twenty and ask her about slips, and then keep working my way up (age-wise) until I find a woman who is old enough to remember when slips went the way of the Dodo bird.

Unfortunately, I suspect the women at my office would not react in the proper spirit of Science if I asked them their underwear preferences, so I am afraid that this is doomed to be one of those bits of knowledge that has “slipped” into the black hole of the unknown, and I will never know the answer to this – similar to my question, “why did the dinosaurs die?”

Nevertheless, I wonder . . .

Indian Love Call

2005-09-23T19:48:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 26 February 2005

“When I'm calling you-oo-oo-oo oo-oo-oo!
You will answer too-oo-oo-oo oo-oo-oo!
That means I offer my love to you to be your own.

If you refuse me, I will be blue
And waiting all alone;
But if when you hear my love call ringing clear,
And I hear your answering echo, so dear,
Then I will know our love will come true,
You'll belong to me, I'll belong to you!”
Refrain from Indian Love Call, lyrics by
Oscar Hammerstein and Otto Harbach

Great Art has a way of grabbing one by the throat, putting the “sleeper hold” on all distractions, and riveting one’s attention in such a way that the first experience of any Great Art is never forgotten. So it was for me in 1960, the first time I heard Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald sing Indian Love Call, in their 1936 movie classic Rose Marie.

I suppose I had turned on our Zenith television set after I had come home from school, and the movie was playing on the channel that happened to be on, so I watched it. In those days, no one had remote-control “clickers,” and one had to get up from the couch, walk over to the TV, and manually turn a dial to change channels. So, unless a program was especially objectionable, whatever channel was the last one watched tended to stay king of the hill until some energetic person got up and changed the dial. Usually, not me.

Love story movies are not my first-choice in cinematic entertainment, but there was a Canadian Mountie in this one, so maybe there would be some good action scenes. Sgt. Preston TV shows had always been worth watching, so maybe this would be ok too.

As it turned out, the movie was actually kind of interesting, for a love story, although I had forgotten most of the plot until I read a summary of it tonight (see the end of this story).

I suppose I was only paying partial attention until Nelson and Jeanette got into a canoe and started singing the amazing Indian Love Call.

Wow.

I wish I had a movie of me watching this scene. I suspect I was literally transfixed.

At the supper table that evening, I told Mom, Dad, and Jim about this wonderful song I had heard. I wanted to enlighten them, I suppose. I was chagrined to learn from Mom & Dad that the scene I had so graciously reenacted for them was considered to be an all-time classic. Who knew?

In case you would like to know more about this movie, here is an excerpt from http://www.dandugan.com/maytime/f-rosema.html

1936 Movie Poster for Rose Marie

Cast:
Jeanette MacDonald (Marie de Flor)
Nelson Eddy (Sergeant Bruce)
Reginald Owen (Myerson)
Allan Jones (Romeo, also Mario Cavaradossi)
James Stewart (John "Jack" Flower)
Alan Mowbray (Premier)
George Regas (Boniface)
Robert Greig (Cafe Manager)
Una O'Connor (Roderick, Marie's maid)
Lucien Littlefield (Storekeeper)
David Nivens [later "Niven"] (Teddy, a suitor)
Herman Bing (Mr. Danielle)
James Conlin (Joe, the piano player)
Dorothy Gray (Edith)
Mary Anita Loos (Corn Queen)
Aileen Carlyle (Susan)
Halliwell Hobbes (Mr. Gordon, opera manager)
Paul Porcasi (Emil, the chef)
Gilda Gray (Belle)
Bert Lindley (Pop)
Edgar Dearing (Motorcycle Policeman)
Pat West (Traveling Salesman)
Charles Brune (Man shaving in his BVD's)
Milton Owen (Stage Manager)
David Clyde (Doorman)
Russell Hicks (Commandant)
Rolfe Sedan, Louis Mercier (Admirers in Hall)
Jack Pennick (Brawler)
Leonard Carey (Louis)
David Robel, Rinaldo Alacorn, Joseph Cherrie, Bill cody, Iron Eyes Cody (Dancers)
Matty Roubert (Newsboy)
Major Sam Harris (Guest)
Ernie Alexander (Elevator Operator)
James Mason [American silent film villain, not British star] (Trapper)
John George, Lee Phelps (Barflies)
Fred Graham (Corporal)
Olga Dane (Roméo et Juliette singer)
Agostino Borgato, Adrian Rosley (Opera Fans)
Delos Jewkes (Butcher at Hotel)
Bits: Duke York, Julie Laird, Linda Parker, James Young, Tony Beard, Alesandro Giglio, Gennaro Maria-Curci, Doris Atkinson, Bill Steele, Margaret Zitt, Edith Holloway, William Stack

One of the twenty-five top-grossing films of 1935-1936.

Overview:
Stand on any street corner with a microphone and ask passersby to name a Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy musical. Nine out of ten will mention Rose Marie. In most minds, this film characterizes operetta and "the team" more than anything else they did together. Any recreation of the Golden Age of Film, comic or nostalgic, will inevitably include a singing Mountie and a lavishly-gowned and ringleted soprano.
The heroine of the stage Rose-Marie was a backwoods urchin who acquires a gloss of civilization but decides to return to her true love in the wilderness. The 1936 film version discards the stage plot for a tale of a temperamental opera singer who spurns suitors, but dotes on her ne'er-do-well kid brother who is serving time for armed robbery. In the stage version, the Mountie is a secondary character. Here he is the hero, forever associating Nelson and the distinctive Mountie hat.
The director, producer, and most of the writers, designers, and technicians for Rose Marie are the same people who created Naughty Marietta. The cast includes a generous sprinkling of prominent character actors from MGM's well-stocked stable, plus three interesting new faces: Young David Niven as a rejected suitor, singer Allan Jones who teams with MacDonald in two opera sequences, and Jimmy Stewart, compelling in the small part of the kid brother.
The title rôle was originally prepared for Grace Moore, but when the film was ready for shooting, she was unavailable until after Eddy was scheduled to leave on his annual concert tour. Since so much of the film was to be shot on location at Cascade Lake and Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, during the summer months of 1935, there was no possibility of delay, and the role fell to Miss MacDonald. The plot line of the high-strung prima donna and even the choice of opera sequences were all holdovers from a Moore vehicle. (Miss Moore had sung both Juliette and Tosca at the Met.)

Plot:
On stage, opera star Marie de Flor (Jeanette) is sweetness personified. Backstage she bitches at everyone in sight, including the tenor (Allan Jones) and a playboy suitor (David Niven). She tells her maid (Una O'Connor) that no man except her imprisoned baby brother, Jack, is worth caring about. However, when the Premier of Canada (Alan Mowbray) invites her to dine, she eagerly accepts, hoping to charm him into pardoning her brother.
During the meal, Marie is called outside to speak to a mysterious backwoodsman (George Regas). He tells Marie that Jack has been wounded while escaping from prison and needs her help. Worse, Jack has killed a Mountie. Marie half faints with horror, but family loyalty is too strong. She borrows money from her manager and rushes off to the wilderness with the guide who has brought the message.
At the outpost of Lake Shibuga, Marie's money is stolen by her erstwhile guide. She is terrified of reporting her loss to the Mountie on duty, Sgt. Bruce (Nelson), who has just replaced the murdered officer. Instead she tries singing for tips at the local saloon, but is quickly upstaged by Belle (Gilda Gray), a gyrating local chanteuse who knows what the fellas like. (Watching Jeanette try to "hot" it up in imitation of shimmying Gilda Gray is one of the high points of the film.) Sgt. Bruce watches this singing duel and commiserates with the loser: "You have a beautiful voice. One thing about Belle...if she ever got lumbago, she couldn't sing a note."
Marie tells Sgt. Bruce that her name is "Rose" to account for the "R" on her borrowed suitcase. "Rose...Marie de Flor" he records on his report. He has recognized her.
Sgt. Bruce insists on escorting "Rose Marie" to an Indian festival where she may spot her errant guide. This allows a charming serenade in a canoe ("Rose Marie") and a big production number ("Totem Tom Tom"). She finds her guide and secretly arranges to depart with him. Sgt. Bruce follows them, arriving just in time to rescue Marie from drowning when her guide again flees.
During the days they spend traveling through the woods together, Marie is transformed from prissy tenderfoot to experienced trail hand, and the two fall in love, singing the "Indian Love Call." They reach their destination and part, Marie slipping off to the cabin where her brother is hiding. But Sgt. Bruce (no first name is ever used!) has secretly followed. He arrives and arrests Jack, taking him away to inevitable hanging. Marie tries to call him back with the "Indian Love Call," but duty is too strong. Jack (Jimmy Stewart) has a brief but forceful scene as he tries to explain his life to Sgt. Bruce.
Back in the opera, Marie is performing in Tosca, but the firing squad finale is too much for her. She collapses on stage. In the stage version, the lovers use the "Indian Love Call" to find each other in the wilderness. In the MacDonald/Eddy Rose Marie, it seems like the location budget ran out. Instead of voices echoing dramatically through the pines, we have an unmotivated, sound stage finale. Six months have passed and Marie is still languishing in a nursing home. Suddenly Sgt. Bruce shows up at her bedside and, with snow swirling outside the window, they reunite to a final chorus of "Indian Love Call."

Reviews:
With this second costarring film, the popular press rushed to herald the "team" and Nelson Eddy. "Rose Marie stars make perfect team," wrote Kate Cameron in the New York News. "Judging by the reception accorded him, the tall, blond, and husky concert baritone, Nelson Eddy has become a serious threat to Clark Gable for the honor of being the movies' No. 1 matinee idol," said Rose Pelswick of the New York Journal.
The more staid New York Times also raved: "As blithely melodious and rich in scenic beauty as any picture that has come from Hollywood. To paraphrase Fletcher, let Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy sing an operetta's love songs, and we care not who may write the book. In splendid voice, whether singing solo or in duet, they prove to be fully as delightful a combination here as they were in Naughty Marietta.
Variety praised the new libretto, the director, the stars, and just about every major scene in the film: "A box-office honey." However, they deplored the unflattering effect of the Mountie hat on Eddy. "From Bill Hart down, the kiddies never could quite look very Romeo under that hunk of Stetson."

TWS note: Today’s Story was inspired by Melanie Johnson, of Sparta, Illinois, who had emailed me about the "One Square Inch of the Yukon" story I wrote regarding the Sgt. Preston TV show and the Quaker cereal promotion. It’s funny how one story can lead to another . .

Lorem Ipsum

2005-09-20T22:06:00.000-04:00

© Thomas W. Shawcross 20 Sep 2005

“Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit"
source: Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum

Translation:
"Nobody likes pain for its own sake, or looks for it and wants to have it, just because it is pain....").

Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (Of the Extremes of Good and Evil) in 45 B.C. I suppose most of us have read it by now, although there is always that hard-core minority that waits for the movie to come out.

But seriously, I find it interesting that this excerpt, written by a man who is considered to be the greatest Latin prose stylist, has devolved into what is now the industry standard for dummy text.

On the off chance that you are not familiar with dummy place-holder text, here are two sample paragraphs for your reading pleasure:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Morbi ut quam eget augue mattis ultricies. Nullam eros. Nam dignissim neque ac ligula. Nulla eget eros. Morbi dapibus. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Maecenas vitae est in sem iaculis consectetuer. Donec volutpat felis id justo. Sed interdum feugiat magna. Maecenas semper. Quisque sollicitudin risus condimentum magna. Suspendisse in enim.

Curabitur interdum, velit vitae euismod consectetuer, lorem ante molestie magna, rutrum pretium arcu odio vehicula massa. Donec semper tincidunt nibh. Integer sapien metus, feugiat a, mattis eget, rhoncus at, mi. Suspendisse nisi pede, ornare ac, tincidunt vel, pharetra quis, elit. Maecenas enim metus, dapibus quis, gravida tempor, ornare quis, mi. Proin vel libero ac lacus mollis cursus. Vivamus placerat. Aenean sit amet risus. Quisque tempus felis in orci. In sem lectus, faucibus nec, sagittis sed, porttitor tempor, tellus. Morbi sodales. Aenean eget risus. Nam imperdiet sem non risus.

“But, Tom” you say, “isn’t that an excerpt from Ulysses by James Joyce?”

Ha, Ha! . . . No. It may be equally as incomprehensible as the text in Ulysses, but let me assure you that it is intended to be dummy text. You see, there is a never-ending demand for dummy text in the printing and web-design industries, and Lorem Ipsum is used to satisfy this demand.

Designers have known for many years that using actual text in design mock-ups distracts the reader from looking at the page layout. Instead, the readers spend their time trying to read the content (and maybe find some hidden message in the text). Using phrases such as “content here, content here” doesn’t work either, as the pattern doesn’t look like normal text. Lorem Ipsum looks like normal text. It has nearly the same distribution of letters as English-language text.

“But, Tom” you say, “how do you know that Lorem Ipsum was derived from text written by Cicero?”

Well, I looked it up. According to my research, “Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source.” Good for him. (see http://www.lipsum.com/ )

Lorem Ipsum has been used since the 1500’s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Since gaining that toe hold, Lorem Ipsum has thrived through five centuries, easily making the leap to Letraset electronic typesetting sheets in the 1960’s and, more recently, into desktop publishing software such as Aldus Pagemaker.

I wonder how Cicero would have felt if he had known that some of his gold would later be spun into straw? Industry-standard straw, to be sure, but nevertheless, straw. Then again, how many of us leave the legacies we had hoped to be remembered for? Archimedes, for example, was so chuffed about his discovery that the ratio of the volume of a sphere to that of the smallest right circular cylinder in which it fits is 2:3, that he had it carved on his gravestone. (Note to self: decide which of my favorite discoveries in geometry should be carved on the gravestone pour moi).

I wonder if there is a story behind why “Lorem ipsum” was used as the first two words in the dummy text? It is the shortened form of the Latin words Dolorem and Ipsum. Placed together, they translate as “Pain For Its Own Sake” or possibly “Pain Itself.” Maybe the unknown printer who assembled that eponymous type specimen book in the 1500’s was having a bad day?

Great Ideas

2005-09-11T12:29:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 11 Sep 2005

I keep thinking about the Creative Process and how great ideas occur. I have written about this before, see my story “Popeye” of 25 May 2005 and my story “How I Create” of 22 Apr 2005.

Other than the annoying discrepancy of Nikola Tesla’s “spontaneous” invention of the alternating current motor, it appears to me that the Creative Process is cumulative, and it involves a lot of trial and error. I discovered another example of this last night when, as I suppose we all do at some point in our lives, I was researching the life of William Wrigley, Jr.

Ok, maybe we don’t ALL research William Wrigley, Jr., but I am interested in him, as I have on two occasions blundered into seeing mansions that he once occupied. The first occasion was when I was Best Man at a wedding at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix. From there, I could see a hilltop crowned by the building that had been the last home occupied by William Wrigley, Jr. (who also owned the Arizona Biltmore, where, by the way, Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas” and several other songs while sitting by the pool).

But, I digress. The second occasion was when I first visited Santa Catalina Island. William Wrigley, Jr. had purchased the island and built the most modest of his several homes there, atop a mountain, where it caught the first rays of sun in the morning and the last rays at night. I toured that home, and it was there that I got my first insight into the benefits that Great Ideas can bring.

A windowed dining room at the back of the Catalina mansion looked out over a baseball field far below. It was there that the Chicago Cubs used to conduct their Spring Training (Wrigley owned the Cubs too). I imagined myself as William Wrigley, Jr., sitting in my mansion breakfast nook, looking down upon my Major League baseball team as I enjoyed my second cup of General Foods International Coffee – it was Suisse Mocha, as I recall.

Now you alert readers might say, “But Tom, General Foods did not introduce their crappy line of instant coffees until 1973, and William Wrigley, Jr. died in the bedroom of his Phoenix home in 1932!”

That is a good point, but my fantasies are not bound by strict timelines, and at the time I did like that particular coffee, partly because it was instant and therefore required no “cooking.” Since that time, I have discovered the joys of real coffee . . . albeit not of cooking.

But, I digress again. This story is supposed to be about Great Ideas and How to Get Them. I am not sure what the requirements are for qualifying as a Great Idea, but as a rule of thumb, I would say that if an idea can make you a billionaire then it is a Great Idea, and so Wrigley had a great idea.

As I read about the life of William Wrigley, Jr., I learned that he came to Chicago in April 1891 with just $32 in his pocket but a lot of ability as a salesman and entrepreneur. His father had been a soap manufacturer in Philadelphia, and with some seed money provided by his uncle, he started selling Wrigley’s Scouring Soap. As a premium to help sell the soap, he began offering free cans of baking soda, on the premise that the merchants would be more likely to carry his soap product if they received “a little something for nothing.”

The baking soda proved to be more popular than the soap, so Wrigley began offering the premium of two free packs of chewing gum (made by the Zeno Manufacturing Company) with each can of baking soda. Again, the premium became more popular than the product it was supposed to promote, so in 1892 he began selling gum under his own name.

His first two brands were Lotte and Vassar. I don’t know about you, but I don’t hear much about those brands anymore. But Wrigley persevered, and in 1893 he came up with Juicy Fruit and Spearmint. Now, he had crossed the threshold into Great Idea territory.

This is not to say that from there he coasted into his mansions in Illinois, Wisconsin, California, and Arizona. The company nearly went bankrupt several times, as he fought off a cartel of competitors. But Wrigley had more great ideas. He persuaded restaurant owners to place gum next to their cash registers (and made marketing history by doing so). In the early years, gum was marketed as a product that improved digestion. Later, even more creative ideas were used to sell gum. Note this 1936 ad that advised women to chew gum daily in order to “sculpt” the loveliness of their lips:

“Go to your beauty shop every week - Enjoy Double Mint Gum daily."

Wrigley did not come up with the Great Idea for making chewing gum, and he did not even come up with the Great Idea for making it as his initial product. Furthermore, he was surprised when he discovered that people wanted to buy just the gum and not the baking soda. His Great Ideas were more in the realm of product marketing. By 1911, Wrigley’s Spearmint was the best-selling gum in the US. In 1915, Bill Wrigley mailed four sticks of gum to each of the 1.5 million people who were listed in US phone books. In 1919, he repeated the mailing, this time to 7 million people.

In this 1920 ad, consumers were advised to chew gum after every meal. Note they were also advised to save the Wrigley gum wrappers for valuable premiums. There was a catalogue for ordering the gum premiums, but this time the premiums (razors, scales, etc.) did not become more popular than the product.

By the time of his death in 1932, William Wrigley, Jr. had spent more than $100 million in product marketing, and Wrigley’s dominated the world gum market. To be fair, not all of the success of the present-day company is due to great marketing ideas – a Wrigley employee once told me of her first day on the job, when her manager ordered her to “walk the rack” of a competitor. In the terminology of retail distribution, this means to take the display rack of a competitor outside the store and stomp on it.

(Note to self: include this story in future article with working title “The Seamy Underbelly of Retail").

But, the Wrigley Company remains creative. Last year, it purchased the Altoids ®, Life Savers ®, and Crème Savers ® candy brands from Kraft Foods for $1.4 billion cash.

Was this another Great Idea? Time will tell. What is apparent, however, is that William Wrigley, Jr. had several Great Ideas, and they weren’t the first ones that popped into his head. It seems he never stopped thinking up new ideas, and this may be one of the reasons he was so successful.

Certainly, that seems to be a key component. There may be moments of epiphany, but Really Great Ideas seem to need lots of extra work. Einstein pondered some of his physics problems for years before coming up with the right answers. Most people stop thinking hard after ten or twenty minutes if they haven’t come up with a good idea. Perhaps if they stuck with it, they would have gotten a Great Idea. Did J. K. Rowling ponder for twenty-one minutes and then come up with Harry Potter? Could be . . . I will have to give this some more thought (when I have more time to devote to it).

I will close with an image of my favorite Wrigley’s gum (which is no longer produced using the same formula that it used to have). What’s your favorite?

William Wrigley, Jr. 1861-1932

“When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.”

The Ripple Effect

2005-07-29T10:18:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 29 July 2005

“ Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu, Xi, Omicron, Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi, Psi, Omega.”

- Paul R. Shawcross

Dad used to recite the Greek alphabet. Typically, he did this at the dinner table, and at Mom’s urging, but he always seemed happy to do it. Oh, it’s not as if he did this every evening, he did it only a few times as I recall, but it made a lasting impression on me.

This impression, I see now, is part of Dad’s “ripple effect” by which his actions continue to influence me some four or five decades after the actions occurred.

In this case, I had diverted my attention yesterday from my usual writing, engineering, and philanthropic work, and I was playing online Scrabble against an opponent from California.* My opponent had gotten off to a very good start; he had flopped a 63-point bonus word early in the game, and I had been trailing for most of the game. I didn’t have much hope of winning, but I don’t like to give up. My opponent was an experienced player and had been keeping me on the run by making lots of words that one normally encounters only in a Scrabble game, such as SKEGS and AA.

As we got to the end game, we had each run out of vowels and were making small-point plays of two- or three-letter words wherever we could tack on to an open vowel. One of those two-letter words was a vertical HO. The H of HO was one row below a row that had a triple word spot.

Then, I drew an R. Quickly, I used the R and the blank tile that I had to spell a vertical RHO and a horizontal RACKS, which made a triple word and gave me 34 points and an insurmountable lead! My opponent was stunned. He asked what RHO meant. He had never seen it used in a game. I guess his dad didn’t recite the Greek alphabet at the dinner table.

I realized that, thanks to Dad, who passed away in 1992, I had won an online Scrabble game in 2005. Actually, Mom gets a big assist here, because she was the one who taught me how to play Scrabble. So, in reality, I had felt the ripple effect from both Mom and Dad.

Of course, I feel their influence in many much more significant ways, but those are obvious influences and it takes no great insight to recognize that most people are profoundly influenced by their parents. But, this was something subtler. It was a RHO in a Scrabble game! The ripple effects created by Mom and Dad in the 1960’s had led directly to me winning a game on 28 July 2005. How weird is that?

Of course, one could go back even further. I was feeling the ripple effect from 1930, when Dad had been taught the Greek alphabet at Ritenour high school in Missouri. I suppose one could even say that I had felt the ripple effect of whomever the ancient Greek was who invented the name for the letter Rho. . . .

That’s the problem with studying ripple effects – how far back do they go, and what ripples influenced others? For example, why was Dad taught the Greek alphabet in high school? I wasn’t. Of course, back then the languages used by scholars tended to be Greek and Latin, so that may have led to Dad being exposed to the Greek alphabet. By the time I came along, Greek was no longer offered in the public school curriculum (I did take two years of Latin, however).

I wonder what inadvertent, unplanned ripple effects my life will have on others? I wonder how many other ripple effects affect me every day, without me recognizing them? I wonder why the dinosaurs died? Wait, now I am digressing, unless dinosaurs had a ripple effect too . . .

Note * Actually, the online “Scrabble” game is called “Literati.” It one of the online games available at Yahoo.com and is as close to Scrabble as it can be while still avoiding copyright infringements.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Hershey Bar

2005-06-30T00:08:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 29 June 2005

Left to right: Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, and their portly client

I admire the keen eye and highly developed powers of deduction possessed by Mr. Sherlock Holmes. This excerpt from The Red-Headed League will show what I mean (Dr. Watson begins the narration):

The portly client puffed out his chest with an appearance of
some little pride and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from
the inside pocket of his greatcoat. As he glanced down the
advertisement column, with his head thrust forward and the
paper flattened out upon his knee, I took a good look at the man
and endeavoured, after the fashion of my companion, to read the
indications which might be presented by his dress or appearance.
I did not gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our
visitor bore every mark of being an average commonplace Brit-
ish tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy
gray shepherd's check trousers, a not over-clean black frock-
coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy
brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling
down as an ornament. A frayed top-hat and a faded brown
overcoat with a wrinkled velvet collar lay upon a chair beside
him. Altogether, look as I would, there was nothing remarkable
about the man save his blazing red head, and the expression of
extreme chagrin and discontent upon his features.
Sherlock Holmes's quick eye took in my occupation, and he
shook his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning
glances. "Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time
done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason.
that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable
amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else."
Mr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his forefinger
upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.
"How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?” he asked.

I would love to possess such remarkable powers of observation and deduction! What I wouldn’t give to hear someone ask, “How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Shawcross?” In truth, however, there is a gap between my abilities in this area and those of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. This sad realization was rammed home to me this evening, as I cracked open the wrapper of a Hershey Bar.

I had gone to my local Publix Supermarket to buy some boneless pork chops. Due to my CADD*, my cooking skills are quite limited, but I have figured out how to turn on a Foreman Grill (plug it in) and use the oven timer to cook boneless pork chops for myself. Earlier, this week, my son Michael had visited me and cooked us some stir-fried rice (I don’t know how he did it; I did not pay attention), and he had grumbled because I did not have any peas or onions to add to the rice, eggs, and teriyaki sauce.

So, I made a special search of Publix to find where they hid their onions and their frozen peas, and I decided I would also get some candy bars as a treat for Michael (I knew where Publix hid their candy bars). Well, well, what have we here? Hershey Bars were on a buy-one-get-one-free sale. I bought two boxes of Hershey Bars with almonds.

Returning home, I cooked the pork chops and enjoyed a satisfying dinner of chops and bottled water. Then, I remembered the Hershey Bars. What if they had been poisoned? Remember about twenty years ago when someone poisoned some Tylenol capsules and some unsuspecting customer had died? I had better protect Michael by eating a Hershey Bar to see if it had been poisoned (or maybe two, just to be on the safe side). I had been secretly craving a chocolate bar since writing my story about Côte d’Or chocolate bars (Bread and Chocolate, 5 May 2005), and now I had two boxes of chocolate bars. It was too much to resist.

As I walked over to the pantry to get a box of Hershey Bars, I remembered the Hershey Bars of my youth. I would slide their black and silver paper outer sleeve off the bar, unwrap the foil inner lining, and break off one segment at a time, savoring the chocolaty taste experience to the fullest.

Now, I sliced open a box, took out a bar and carried it over to my computer. I would check my e-mail and eat a Hershey Bar. What fun! But wait a minute . . . this Hershey Bar didn’t have the familiar outer sleeve and inner foil. It had one-piece, self-contained plastic/paper hybrid packaging. I am not sure what the material is – it seems a bit like the packaging used in potato chip bags. And hey! The bar is not pre-formed in breakable segments; it is one piece, stamped with the word HERSHEY’S.

Hmmm . . . well maybe the bar with almonds had always been that way, and it was only the plain milk chocolate bar that had the segmented pieces? But when did the wrapper change? Was that a result of the Tylenol packaging scare?

I couldn’t recall. But, I knew that Sherlock Holmes would have known the answers to my questions, and I felt chagrined.

Then, it got worse. I remembered a conversation I had last month with my brother, Jim Shawcross. I was telling Jim about a flat tire that I recently discovered on my Jeep. I mentioned that the local gas station had repaired the flat by pushing a piece of plastic ribbon into the puncture hole. In passing, I said something like, “the inner tube must not have been punctured.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line. Then Jim said, “Car tires have not had inner tubes for the last forty years.” Jim is an engineer, so he knows things like that.

“What!?,” I shouted. “No inner tubes now?” I could remember patching the inner tube on one of the tires of my 1961 Ford Galaxy when I was in college. I had to fill a large metal tub with water and partially inflate the inner tube, then submerge it in water to see where the air bubbles escaped. Then, I had to patch the spot where the bubbles had come from. Was this a skill I had learned in vain? True, I had not used it since 1965, but it was nice to know I would know what to do if my local gas station was closed and couldn’t fix the tire for me.

I wasn’t ready to let this go so easily. “But Jim,” I entreated, “what about those “float trips” in which kids would sit in an inner tube and float down a river? Don’t they do that anymore?”

“No.”

Jim has always had a way of getting right to the point, while making it understandable at the same time. So, it was now apparent to me that inner tubes had not been around for nearly half a century, but I, with my keen powers of observation, had not yet picked up on this.

I bet Sherlock Holmes would have. Or Jim. Well, Jim did notice, so there is no need to speculate on that one.

Rats. How unobservant am I, anyway? I don’t know. I haven’t been paying any attention to this.

Ironically, I had been thinking of writing a Sherlock Holmes homage story one day. I suppose I would have to make the clues fairly broad:

My visitor bore every mark of being an average commonplace British super model. She wore a white cotton blouse, a black, pleated skirt, dark nylons and black patent-leather high heels. A single strand of pink pearls complemented her graceful neck. I thought I could detect a soupcon of Chanel No. 5 mixing with the aroma of coffee and bacon that was wafting into my office from the diner across the street.

“I suppose you will require a retainer fee,” she blushed. She reached into her purse, pulled out a Hershey Bar, and then a checkbook.

“You are a woman,” I said. “A beautiful woman who likes chocolate, if I am not mistaken. And, the tires of your car do not have inner tubes.”

"How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Shawcross?” she asked.

* TWS note: CADD is the medical acronym for Cooking Attention Deficit Disorder. I have written about this affliction of mine in several stories.

Périgueux

2005-06-28T23:35:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 28 June 2005

I stayed in Room 32, Hotel De France,
and I have the brass key fob to prove it.

In the summer of 1979, I toured Southern Europe with Isabelle. We started in Madrid, moved on to Toledo, and then traveled across France and Italy by train. We saw some spectacular sights along the valley of the Dordogne River, and we visited charming little French towns with names like Sarlat and Domme. Actually, the names weren’t like Sarlat and Domme, they were Sarlat and Domme. And Périgueux.

To this day, Périgueux is one of my favorite places. I vowed to return some day, but so far I haven’t. Coincidentally, I was 32 years old when I was there, a coincidence that convinced Isabelle to steal the metal token that had been attached to our room key. When she presented it to me later, far from Périgueux, I was shocked, but now I am glad that she took it, as it is a prized souvenir for me now.

Périgueux was one of those happy accidents that can happen while traveling. It was not a planned stop. We had some planned stops, of course, including a week in Toulon, and visits to Lyon, Monaco, Florence, and Venice, but Périgueux came during one of the unplanned portions of the trip. We just got off the train at Périgueux, found a hotel, had dinner there, did some sightseeing, and got on the train again the following day (the advantages of the Eurail Pass).

Périgueux is an attractive little town in the Perigord region of France, which is the region that is famous for the production of goose pate. It was there that I learned the subtle differences between duck pate and goose pate (unfortunately, I have never been able to find a social situation in which I can impress people with this bit of arcane knowledge, but I keep hoping).

This is what Périgueux looks like:

Périgueux, France

I think of Périgueux often, as I have three key associations with it:

1. It was a very pleasant and attractive small town (about 30,000 people), and I really like small towns. Also, the hotel restaurant served a great dinner, and the overall ambience of the town was just so French!

2. It was the first place that really made me aware of how young America is versus other parts of the world (more on this later).

3. I associate it with the PBS television show Connections, which had a major impact on my worldview. I will discuss that first . . .

Connections is a three-part PBS television series narrated by James Burke (who wrote the book). In it, he explores historical “coincidences” and how they connect to each other, for example:
“How the popularity of underwear in the 12th century led to the invention of the printing press” or “How the arrival of the cannon led to the development of movies.”
source: http://www.roycecarlton.com/speakers/burke.html

Anyway, one of the stories told in Connections has to do with the impact that mass-production has had on our lives (versus the old days, when all objects were “hand-made” and one-of-a-kind). The narrator urged viewers to empty their pockets and see how many items they had that were mass-produced versus hand made. The narrator demonstrated this by extracting some coins, a small black rubber comb, and a machine-woven handkerchief from his pocket. All mass-produced. Nothing unique or “special.”

As I lay on my couch at that moment in Birmingham, Michigan, I decided to take the test. In my pocket, I had some keys and coins (machine-made and not one-of-a-kind) BUT I also had my Hotel de France key fob, and it was definitely hand-made. At least, it had a hand-made part where the room number, 32, had been stamped. This in itself presented an interesting challenge. After all, the modern implication was that “hand-made” items were special, as skilled artisans had crafted those items that have survived the test of time. But look at my key fob. It has one of the most inept stampings I have ever seen! But, I like it anyway. It occurs to me that my fob may now be two-of-a-kind, as the hotel has presumably had a replacement fob made, but it seemed the stamper they employed was probably one of the apes at the local zoo, so it was unlikely that the replacement was a clone of my fob.

The narrator assumed that I had nothing special in my pockets, but after all, who would have guessed I had a Périgueux key fob? The narrator went on to explain that I shouldn’t feel badly (I didn’t) because mass-produced items had a definite upside – they lowered the cost of items. He noted that if the television set on which I was watching the show had been hand-made, I probably could not have afforded to buy it. Well, he was right on that count.

Another reason that I think of Périgueux so often is that it was here that I realized how old Europe is. Of course, intellectually, I already knew that, but knowing something intellectually is not the same as receiving the “hot kiss at the end of a wet fist” blow of reality. Before dinner, Isabelle and I had walked about the town for a while and happened to come across what was obviously a very ancient ruin. It was a tower, about eighty feet tall, and it looked like an ancient castle keep tower. Later, at the hotel restaurant, I spoke in my best Franglais and inquired about that castle tower. Franglais, by the way, is the argot in which one uses French words for the easy words and English words for the hard ones, as in the English phrase “Please give me some wine, bread, and artichoke hearts,” which translates into Franglais as “S’il vous plait, donnez-moi du vin, le pain, et artichoke hearts.”

It turned out that the “castle keep” was actually the ruin of a two-thousand-year old Roman temple! Whoa! Two thousand years old? The town I live in now, Delray Beach, Florida, was founded in 1895, and the next town to the south, Boca Raton, was just scenery until 1926!

Vésonne Tower in Périgueux is older than Delray Beach

Actually, I have a fourth association with Périgueux now. Kurt Culbertson sent me a draft of his book “Landschaft und Gartenkunst: The German Influence on the Development of American Landscape Architecture,” and on page 144 it mentions a controversial practice of constructing artificial ruins in public parks: “For example, one of the chief horticultural journals of Germany has recently devoted many pages to the praise of artificially constructed ruins, and has given illustrations to show how they may best be constructed. Most travelers believe, we fancy, that these artificial ruins are creations of the earlier years of our century, when sentimentalism ran riot in Germany, and expressed itself in a thousand other ludicrous ways."

I suspect that the idea of having artificial ruins would not have occurred to American landscape architects who were not used to seeing two-thousand-year-old real ruins scattered around their home towns. Kurt’s book is very interesting, and I may write an essay about it some day.

Lorenzo Dow

2005-06-26T14:45:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 26 June 2005

Lately, I have been pondering the communication system that led to so many American parents of the 19th century naming their sons in honor of the eccentric itinerant preacher, Lorenzo Dow.

Lorenzo Dow (1777-1834)

In what seems to me to be a related story, Jerry E. Strahan, manager of Lucky Dogs, Inc., writes of the underground communication system that he uses to communicate with the transients who work for him as hot dog vendors:

source: “Managing Ignatius,” pub. 1998, page 77
“ . . . Wealthy travelers stay at four-star accommodations. Businessmen frequent nationally known hotel and motel chains. Transients hit the road and spend the night at relief missions and flophouses, where they find cheap clean beds and free meals. Information travels with these drifters at the speed of a Greyhound bus or as fast as their thumbs can carry them . . . The transients’ communication system is not technologically advanced, but it is highly efficient. On several occasions people passing through New Orleans have dropped by the shop to say, “So-and-so asked me to tell you that he’ll be back in about six weeks, so save him a good corner.” Other times it was I who needed to pass on information to ex-vendors . . . I would simply ask the next vendor heading out of town to spread my message wherever he traveled. Usually within a couple of weeks I’d get a call: “I heard you wanted to talk to me.” The success rate of this system was incredible.”

So, was there a similar sort of underground communication system that existed in the American wilderness of the early 1800’s? Pickett, in his "History of Alabama," notes that Lorenzo Dow was the earliest Protestant preacher in that State:

"Down to this period-in 1803-no Protestant preacher had ever raised his voice to remind the Tombigbee and Tensaw settlers of their duty to the Most High. Hundreds, born and bred in the wilderness, and now adult men and women, had never seen a preacher. The mysterious and eccentric Lorenzo Dow one day suddenly appeared at the boat yard. He came from Georgia, across the Creek nation, encountering its dangers almost alone. He proclaimed the truths of the gospel here to a large audience, crossed over the Alabama and preached two sermons to the 'Bibgee settlers,' and went from thence to the Natchez settlements, where he also exhorted the people to turn from the error of their ways. He then visited the Cumberland region and Kentucky, and came back to the Tombibbee, filling his appointments to the very day. Again plunging into the Creek nation this holy man of God once more appeared among the people of Georgia."

It seems that Lorenzo Dow was widely regarded as an eccentric (putting it mildly), but he was also admired for his labors and his speaking ability. Perhaps if Johnny Appleseed had been as good a speaker as he was an eccentric, we would have had many thousands of American boys named Johnny Appleseed (Surname) as we had Lorenzo Dow (Surname).

Here are some Lorenzo Dow anecdotes that I gleaned from the world wide web:
source: http://www.curbstone.org/index.cfm?webpage=56

He was distinguished for his eccentricities and labors. He commenced preaching in the Methodist connection. He traveled through the United States, from New England to the extremities of the Union, at least from 15 to 20 times. Occasionally he went into Canada, and once to the West Indies. He also made three voyages to England and Ireland, where he drew crowds around him. 'It is thought, and not without reason, that during the 38 years of his public life, he must have traveled two hundred thousand miles.' He wrote a number of books, besides his 'Journal', or Life: the titles are usually as eccentric as their author. He died at Georgetown, (D.C.) Feb. 2nd, 1834.
For all his passion for objectivity, even historian Barber could not avoid commenting (twice) on his contemporary's spectacular eccentricity -- and for good reason. For if ever there was a man who feverishly rowed his boat through the waters of life with only one oar in the water, it was "Crazy Lorenzo" Dow.
Yet, there was another side to the Rev. Dow, one that comes through in Barber's brief biography, when he talks about the preacher's "labors" and the monumental mileage which Dow ran up in the cause of saving souls. There can be little question that along with his bizarre, legend-inspiring personality, the evangelist was totally committed to his mission, absolutely indefatigable in the pursuit of it and brilliantly ingenious in devising effective methods of bringing it to the fallen world through which he traveled. In truth, the Lorenzo Dow legends probably circulated as widely and as long as they did because people secretly admired the man more than they publicly ridiculed his behavior. If all this suggests that Lorenzo Dow was one of America's most talented and effective traveling salesmen, then so be it.
Dow apparently began his roving ministry while still in his teens, and made his first reputation as a charismatic, hell-fire-and-brimstone orator in areas near his birthplace, like the Hope Valley, in those early years of riding the circuit in eastern Connecticut, where he was one of the first evangelists. It is entirely possible that here he began developing some of the tricks of showmanship for which he became world-famous. Such was the one, for example, reported by the noted humorist Charles F. Browne, better-known as "Artemus Ward:" On one occasion he [Dow] took a text from Paul, 'I can do all things.' The preacher paused, took off his spectacles, laid them on the open Bible, and said, 'No, Paul, you are mistaken for once; I'll bet you five dollars you can't, and stake the money.' At the same time putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a five-dollar bill, laid it on the Bible, took up his spectacles again, and read, 'Through Jesus Christ our Lord,' 'Ah, Paul!' exclaimed Dow, snatching up the five-dollar bill, and returning it to his pocket, 'that's a very different matter; the bet's withdrawn.'
As odd in his appearance as he was in his behavior, Lorenzo was described by almost every eyewitness to his preaching as not only uncouth in his person, but endowed with a harsh, raspy voice and hard, jerky movements and gestures. Someone who saw him preach in Ridgefield when Dow was about thirty years old wrote, "He was thin and weather-beaten, and appeared haggard and ill-favored, partly on account of his reddish, dusty beard, some six inches long...." Despite his unattractive qualities, however, he had a remarkable, intuitive understanding of the tastes, prejudices and weaknesses of common, country people; he possessed an unerring knack for adapting his speaking style to such audiences.
A tall, bony stork of a man, not unlike Washington Irving's Ichabod Crane, he affected oddity in almost every aspect of his life. He liked to appear unexpectedly, surprising his audience into attention, and on a number of occasions, having made an appointment to preach a year in advance, he would suddenly materialize, like an apparition, at the very minute set. He often used scraps of Biblical text, extracting from them (as in the example of Paul, cited above) an unexpected meaning or startling point, by a play upon words. And if an audience seemed unable to follow the logic of an argument on some moral question, he was always able to pull an illustrative anecdote from his full memory-bag. He knew a story could be more effective than argument with unlettered people -- and he was a master storyteller.
Examples of his unorthodox actions can still be collected from Connecticut informants whose families have passed the stories along from one generation to the next for over a hundred years. One tells about the time he finished one of his four-hour-long performances, snapped his Bible shut with a bang and jumped out an open window directly into the saddle of his waiting horse, before galloping off down the road to his next engagement. A similar story is told about his departure from home before he left on one of his trips to England and Ireland. On the appointed day, Lorenzo was said to have suddenly stood up from the breakfast table, called to his wife, "I shall return in a year," and then taken his leave -- through the kitchen window. Even in private life, "Crazy Lorenzo" had to keep up his image!
There are so many characteristic legends about Lorenzo Dow that it is difficult to decide on where to begin -- and when to stop. Two stories, however, have been repeated so often, both orally and in print, that they could be called "classic" Dow-isms. They bear one more recitation here. Both have been collected from numerous locations throughout the preacher's enormous circuit (they are frequently localized) and indeed, became so well-known that they were often told about evangelists other than Dow, in complete innocence of the original source.
The first, generally called "How Lorenzo Dow Raised the Devil," went something like this: Once there was this crazy preacher named Lorenzo Dow who was traveling in the northern part of Vermont, when he got caught in a terrible snowstorm. He managed to make his way to the only light he could see. After repeated knocking at the door of the humble log house, a woman opened it. He asked if he could stay the night. She told Dow her husband was not home and she could not take in a stranger. But he pleaded with her and she reluctantly let him in. He immediately went to bed, without removing his clothing, in a corner of the room separated from the main living quarters only by a rude partition with many cracks in it.
After he had slept for just a short time, the preacher was awakened by the sounds of giggling and whispering from the main room. Peering through a crack in the partition, he saw that his hostess was entertaining a man not her husband! No sooner had he taken this in, when Dow heard a man's drunken voice shouting and cursing outside the front door, and demanding to be let in. Before admitting her husband (for it was he, returned unexpectedly), the wife motioned her lover to hide in the barrel of tow, a coarse flax ready for spinning, beside the fireplace. Once inside, the suspicious husband quickly sensed that his wife had not been alone, and demanded to know who else was in the house. When the quick-witted wife told him about the Rev. Dow, sleeping in the corner, he was not satisfied. After all, he was not so drunk that he would take his wife's word for the identity of the houseguest.
"Well, now," roared the husband, "I hear tell that parson Dow can raise the devil. I think I'd like to see him do it -- right here and now." Before the devil could shut up her boisterous husband, he had pulled the famous preacher from his bed, where he had pretended to be sound asleep. "Rev'rend," he bellowed, "I want you to raise the devil. I won't take 'no' for an answer." Seeing that he would have to perform, Lorenzo finally said, "Well, if you insist, I will do it, but when he comes, it will be in a flaming fire. You must open the door wide so he will have plenty of room." The husband opened the door. Then, taking a burning coal from the fire with the tongs, Dow dropped it into the tow cask. Instantly the oily contents burst into flame. Howling in pain from the fire which engulfed him, the flaming figure of the man hidden in the barrel leaped out onto the floor and, just as quickly, darted out the open door, trailing ashes and smoke. He ran down the snowy road as if pursued by demons. It is said that the sight of all this not only sobered the drunken husband immediately, but permanently cured his taste for booze. And that was certainly one of the Rev. Dow's major miracles!
Another story about the canny preacher has been told almost as often as the "raising-the-devil" yarn. Usually called "Lorenzo Dow Catches a Thief," the legend has been widely collected from oral tradition and has been printed and reprinted in newspapers and books, sometimes with varying details, but always with the same basic narrative line. One version goes this way: While passing through some dense woods one day, on his way to a scheduled revival meeting, Lorenzo Dow came on two men cutting wood. Mounting a large stump, he announced, "Crazy Dow will preach from this stump six months from today, at two o'clock P. M." Six months later, as a huge crowd awaited him at the appointed spot, Dow encountered a man in great distress on the way to the scene of his sermon. After inquiring what the matter was, the preacher learned that the unhappy man was a poor woodsman whose axe, his only means of making a living, had been stolen. Dow promised the wretched fellow that if he would attend the services scheduled to start shortly, he would locate the axe for him. Before Lorenzo continued on, he leaned down, picked up a stone and put it in his pocket.
In the midst of his powerful sermon, the fiery minister suddenly interrupted his flow of words, reached in his pocket and pulled out the rock. "Brothers and sisters," he rasped, "There is a man in this audience who has had his precious axe stolen. There is also one among you who stole it. I am going to rear back and throw this rock, here, right at the thief's head." So saying, he pretended to throw the stone with all his might. When only one man in the crowd ducked his head down, Dow went over to the fellow and said, "You have the man's axe." And so he had. The thief returned the axe to its owner and never again robbed anyone.

Ephemera

2005-06-23T13:19:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 23 June 2005

Ephemera - Etymology: New Latin, from Greek ephEmera, neuter plural of ephEmeros
1 : something of no lasting significance -- usually used in plural
2 ephemera plural : collectibles (as posters, broadsides, and tickets) not intended to have lasting value
source: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

San Francisco ephemera, 4 Aug 2003 *

My esteemed (by me) ephemera collection includes these directions to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. I acquired it from the woman who created it, while I was having breakfast with my son Michael at Sears. No, not that Sears, I am referring to Sears Fine Food, the legendary San Francisco pancake house that was started by retired circus clown Ben Sears.

Mike and I were in California the first two weeks of August 2003, and when we returned, I created a 176-page trip journal. During our vacation, I saved many items of paper ephemera, and they supplement the story. Here is a photo collage that I made, using a few of the items, such as ticket stubs, receipts, and notes that I had made for use later on in writing the journal:

“California Ephemera”
© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 2003

“But Tom,” you ask, “isn’t ephemera, by definition, of no lasting value? Isn’t it just tres, tres mundane? Is anyone really interested in ephemera?”

Well, don’t say that to the Ephemera Society of America, a non-profit organization devoted to furthering the collection, study, and preservation of ephemera (paper items). You can use Google to find their website, which is one of the 1, 240, 000 sites listed by Google in their “ephemera” search.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about ephemera and the concept of what is mundane, and why these things interest me. The word “mundane” is derived from the Latin word for “world” and is characterized by the practical, transitory, and ordinary (what some people might call boring). Ephemera are the detritus of the mundane, and I view them as time-capsule snapshots of life as it existed at a specific point in time and space.

For me, seeing ephemera is like going back in time. Sometimes, ephemera are all that is left by which we may know of events that have otherwise fallen into the black sinkhole of history.

One item in my ephemera collection is an 80-column punched card that I retrieved from a parking lot near the now-former IBM office on Lindell Boulevard in Midtown St. Louis. For the benefit of my younger readers, I will explain that 80-column cards were used to store data prior to the invention of floppy disks, CD’s, DVD’s and memory sticks. They were the same size as the old US dollar bills (circa the end of the 19th century), and they looked like this:

This image shows an 80-column punched card and a smaller variation of it.

I had almost forgotten about the smaller-sized version of the card! Anyway, here is the story behind my 80-column ephemera card (larger version):

One day in the summer of 1970, an IBM customer was carrying an armload of boxes containing punched cards (2000 cards to a box) into the IBM Data Center (no longer there). Atop the stack of boxes were some metal canisters that held reels of magnetic tape.

As the customer struggled to carry everything at once, one of the tape reels fell off the stack and started rolling down Lindell, toward the Playboy Club (no longer there either). Lindell Boulevard is quite hilly here, and the tape reel was picking up speed as it approached a busy intersection below. Panicking, the customer set the boxes down (on Lindell Boulevard) and began running after the tape reel.

Then, a bus hit the boxes of cards. It was a windy day. 80-column punched cards made a ticker-tape parade of Midtown St. Louis. For a week or so, afterward, one could find 80-column punched cards scattered throughout the local area. I picked one off the ground at a parking lot that was two blocks from where the accident had taken place.

My point is, for a while, there was a lot of physical evidence of this accident. For a while, it was a popular topic of conversation at the IBM Data Center. Then, it was forgotten. I bet that if the IBM Data Center were still there, the 80-column card incident would not be talked about anymore (unless I was there).

Yes, this was not as spectacular as some of the other events that took place in that era. Why, people still sometimes talk about the Apollo-11 moon landing, and that took place nearly an entire year before the 80-column Card Incident. But, the 80-cCI was something that happened, and oddly enough I remember it better than the moon landing (which I neglected to watch on television, thinking it would be shown over and over, but it hasn’t been).

Why is the mundane so fascinating to me? After all, many people find it boring. But, most of our lives consist of “mundane” events, and the way I look at it, there is an interesting story behind most mundane events and objects. For example, consider something as “mundane” as the connector plug that you see at the end of most appliance cords. Boring, eh? In most US homes, there are only two configurations – a two-prong plug and a three-prong plug. With minor variations, such as one prong being slightly larger than the other (for polarity reasons now – but the older plugs had prongs of the same size), all electric plugs look alike, right? WRONG. As I learned when I began my international travel, not only are there different types (cycles) of electricity throughout the world, there are MANY different ways to configure an electric plug. When I traveled in Mainland China in 1985, I discovered that each major city (I was in four) had its own unique style of electric plug, and that the plug used in one city would not fit in the electric outlet of another.

The duty-free stores at international airports sell a wide range of adaptors for electric plugs (and current cycles). I have amassed a considerable collection of electric plugs from around the world. My point is that even the mundane is special, if one knows enough about how it came to be. Usually, we don’t. I was surprised, for example, to learn that before we had fork-lift trucks we had tiering machines. Who knew?

I found this out accidentally. I was performing a random act of genealogical kindness and helping a woman in researching her family history. One of her ancestors was Walter Krausnick, who was a partner in a St. Louis millinery company. While using Google to look for references to him, I came upon the following item:

UIowa - John Springer Collection of Printing Ephemera
Pratt, Simmons, & Krausnick, St. Louis, Mo. -- 1 p. advertisement for millinery (1895).
Shoninger, Levy & Co., Chicago -- 1 l. showing in color women's ...
www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/ Msc/ToMsc250/MsC202/MsC202.htm - 329k - Cached - Similar pages

What was this about? I clicked on the link and discovered the John Springer Collection of Printing Ephemera. John Springer bequeathed his collection to the University of Iowa in 1937. It “contains more than 1,600 items and more than 400 calling cards -- in excess of 2,000 items in all -- organized into 19 boxes. Items have been grouped by format (e.g., calendars in Box 1, tokens in Box 18), by subject (e.g., paper in Box 3, advertising materials related to food in Box 12) and by events (e.g., 1893 World's Fair in Box 10, Iowa City events in Box 14). Few of these groupings are entirely systematic and related materials, however defined, can often be found in more than one place in the collection.” http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/Msc/ToMsc250/MsC202/MsC202.htm

Clearly, John Springer was a man who appreciated ephemera more than most. A quick scan of his 2,000 items reveals the following:

Heinz's Evaporated Horse Radish -- bottle label

United Indurated Fibre Co., (New Jersey) -- ad card for "Indurated Fibre Ware" parts, tubs, and spittoons

W.E. Hamilton, Chicago -- booklet "The Time-Saver". A book which names and locates "5,000 things at the World's Fair That Visitors should not fail to see." (1893) [111pp.]

"Grand Annual Tour of Booth's Assinine Paradox!" (sideshow freak animal) (n.d.) -- handbill ad

"The Stolen Letters of Senator Phelan How Did He Get Them? The Campaign of Lies/Governor Stephens for Negro Colonization of California", tract by Jno. P. Irish of Oakland, Calif. (n.d. ), 2 copies

Benjamin Harrison -- card criticizing his use of Chinese votes to win him Senate seat and subsequent Congressional vote for bill restricting further immigration (n.d.)

Pope Manufacturing Co., Hartford, Conn. -- catalog of company's Columbia chainless bicycles [32pp.] (1898)

Leibig's Extract of Meat Company, Antwerp, Belgium -- ad card for meat extract -- kaleidoscope card will change pictures when string is pulled (1897)

Cudahy Packing Co., Omaha -- ad card (expandable) depicting products gotten from hogs (n.d.)

Fuller & Fuller Co., Chicago -- ad card with color portrait of Mrs. President Cleveland and advertising "Best" Tonic (n.d.)

Globe Manufacturing. Co., Grinnell, Iowa -- ad flier for Globe Hair Restorative and Dandruff Cure (c.1897)

Dr. Harter Medicine Co., St. Louis -- ad pamphlet for Dr. Harter's Little Liver Pills and Dr. Harter's Wild Cherry Bitters (1887)

C. J. Hood & Co., Lowell, Mass. -- ad pamphlet for Hood's Sarsaparilla (in shape of a pansy flower) (n.d.)

Modern Woodmen of America -- Souvenir and program for 6th annual picnic of Southeastern Iowa Picnic Association [56pp.] (1902)

"The Great Blackstone", magician, to be at Englert Theatre, ad sheet (n.d.)

"Citizens' Ticket" of candidates for office, "Anti-Chinese" and "Anti-Monopoly" for 10th Senatorial District (n.d.)

Economy Baler Co., Ann Arbor, Michigan -- "The Cheapest Experience Is Other People's" [24pp.] (c.1912), booklet, 3 copies

Economy Engineering Co., Chicago -- pamphlet advertising tiering machines (forerunner of fork-lift truck) (n.d.)

Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia -- invitation to formal opening of new office building of newspaper (1894) (in envelope)

"Mark Twain Stamp Banquet" in honor of James A. Farley, Postmaster-General, Hannibal, Mo., 1940 -- commemorative program

Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, Omaha, 1898 -- booklet describing and picturing Cotton Belt Exhibit of Cotton Belt Route RR
10 full-color postcards depicting buildings
souvenir button advertising Ostrich Farm
Gem City Business College, Quincy, Illinois brochure(2 copies in envelope)
Clonbrock Steam Boiler Company, Brooklyn, N.Y. -- souvenir booklet showing boiler plant erected on fair grounds
"Views of the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition held at Omaha, Nebraska, June 1st to November 1st, 1898" pub. by T.A. Rinehart, official photographer booklet of views of Greater America Exposition, Omaha, 1899 -- booklet
"Giant See Saw Omaha, 1898" -- Red, white and blue badge
descriptive booklet

The Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta, Georgia -- letter with card entitling holder to one free glass of Coca-Cola, with envelope

Sioux City Corn Palace, Sioux City, Iowa -- program and description of 5th annual festival, 1891. Includes free pass

The Greystone Club, Denver -- invitation to annual banquet at Hotel Metropole, Denver (1892) (in envelope)

National Democratic Convention of 1884, ticket

Republican National Committee -- election broadside showing aerial photo of Theo. Roosevelt's farm as a plush estate rather than "dirt farm" as he called it (c.1912)

Ancient Free and Accepted Masons: Grand Lodge of Iowa -- memorandum book, 2 copies,one with pencil notes (1891)

Iowa City (1890), invitation to banquet and sociable

El Riad Shrine Temple, Sioux Falls, S.D. (1890), invitation (in envelope) to banquet and ball

El Riad Shrine Temple, Sioux Falls, S.D. (1896), invitation and program in shape of a coffin

Department of Commerce, Washington, D. C. -- poster asking the public to save waste paper and rags to help alleviate paper shortage (1916)

The Bounding Billow, published aboard the U.S.S. Olympia during Spanish-American War (1898), 2 issues

Worlds Fair, St. Louis, Mo. -- gold token advertising Majestic Ranges

In closing, I will note that for me, ephemera collections document the everyday life of ordinary people. In some way, I think they do so more effectively than more traditional collections. The simple fact that ephemera was produced for some immediate, practical purpose, and that there was no intent that it should be preserved, makes the surviving specimens all the more special.

As noted by John C. Dann, in his 1998 article “Ephemera Collecting - A Growing Field, Hard to Define”:

There is no exact catalogue of ephemera's subject matter, but included under the broad umbrella are trade cards, letterheads, die cuts, postcards, broadsides, tickets, menus, timetables, posters, advertising materials of all sorts, rewards of merit, labels, political buttons, and programs. Much of "ephemera" was originally a by-product of exuberant capitalism-largely advertising material made possible by advances in printing technology. Prints, paintings, photographs, manuscripts, stamps, coins and currency, obscurely printed books and pamphlets, children's books or cookbooks, objects as diverse as license plates, toys or curios are all similar enough in many respects to gain admittance to ephemera shows, but they are a bit on the periphery. The British tend to emphasize printed textual material as the only "pure" ephemera, while American collectors and dealers seem to put much greater emphasis upon pictorial content and graphic design.

As I write this essay, I cannot escape the irony that it is a type of ephemera too. I hope it survives and is read some day.

* TWS note: The directions to Golden Gate Park include one minor error. The final turn is RIGHT, not left, after disembarking at 9th & Irving from the North Judah train.

Travel Writing

2005-06-20T18:38:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 20 June 2005

As a Father’s Day present, Lauren and Michael gave me the book “The Best American Travel Writing,” edited by Bill Bryson. In the introduction, Bill Bryson writes of his first trip to Europe (Luxembourg), where he was “astounded to discover there were so many interesting ways to do fundamentally mundane things.”

“I had never seen a zebra crossing before, never seen a tram, never seen an unsliced loaf of bread (never even considered it an option), never seen anyone wearing a beret who expected to be taken seriously, never seen people go to a different shop for each item of dinner or provide their own shopping bags, never seen feathered pheasants and unskinned rabbits hanging in a butcher’s window or a pig’s head grinning on a platter. And the people – why they were Luxembourgers. I don’t know why this amazed me so, but it did. I kept thinking: ‘That man over there, he’s a Luxembourger. And so is that girl. They don’t know anything about the New York Yankees, they don’t know the theme tune to the Mickey Mouse Club, they are from another world.’ It was just wonderful.”
- p. xxv of the introduction to The Best American Travel Writing, previously appearing in Bill Bryson’s book Neither Here Nor There.

The Beatles on a zebra crossing, Abbey Road

As I read Bill Bryson’s words, I realized that I felt exactly the same way about travel. When I travel, I am always looking to see what is different from what I am used to, and I make a particular effort to try to find these things. As Bill Bryson notes, it is easy to find American things when one travels abroad (there is a McDonald’s restaurant in Ulan Bator), and many American tourists travel in groups in which they are shielded from actual contact with any foreign locals. Bill cites an example of a one-week barge tour of Germany, at the conclusion of which he asked a fellow passenger how he found the Germans: “I’m not sure we met any,” was the vaguely troubled response.

I have had the great good fortune to work in thirty-one countries outside of the US, and by the very nature of my visits have been in contact with the local residents. I had expected of course to find major differences in language and culture, but like Bill Bryson, I was continually been amazed at how many different ways there are of doing mundane things.

Here is a small selection of mundane eye-openers, one for each country, which I have spotted during my travels:

Saudi Arabia: Cheese and Jelly sandwiches
I don’t recall ever seeing a C&J sandwich anywhere except in Saudi Arabia, but they are very common there and can be purchased at almost any combination gas station/convenience store. My guess is that the jelly keeps the cheese from drying out in the hot, dry climate. The jelly is usually of a light color – maybe apple? I didn’t try one. Saudi Arabia has more “different” things than anywhere I have ever been, and it merits its own story.

Japan: Pedestrian Signals for the Blind
In Kyoto, I noticed bird-chirping sounds at many crosswalks, but I couldn’t see the bird. Then, I realized that the bird chips were coming from the traffic lights and signaled when it was ok for a pedestrian to cross a road. The path across the intersection was lined with quarter-sized bumps that a blind person could sense as a guide across the intersection. Another sound was made when it was no longer safe to cross. I have forgotten what that sound was.

France: Supermarkets on the basement levels of Department Stores
I had been working in Paris for several months before it occurred to me that I had never seen a grocery store anywhere near my hotel. Surely, the locals did not have to leave Paris to buy groceries? Oh, there were bread shops and wine shops and all kinds of little specialty food shops, but surely there were some grocery stores? One day, while exploring a local Department store, I rode the escalator to the bottom floor and was surprised to find a supermarket down there! I checked some other department stores, and they had them too! Who knew?

Venezuela: No Mas vending machines
OK, there were some Coca-Cola vending machines in the Caracas airport, but they were the only ones I saw. There were many human-operated small food and beverage carts on the streets of Caracas, but no vending machines. One local speculated that it might have something to do with the wild fluctuations in the valuation of the local currency. I don’t know.

Tunisia: Thick tea
There are many coffee/tea houses in Tunisia where one can get some highly caffeinated beverages. I saw a man in Nabeul who was drinking green tea that appeared to be about the same consistency as pea soup.

Netherlands: French Fries
You thought I was going to mention the legalized drugs and prostitution? That would hardly be mundane, would it? No, I am thinking more along the lines of the Frites stands that are everywhere in Amsterdam. They sell French fries, of course, with a wide variety of tasty sauces, served in a paper cone. My favorite topping sauce was aoli. I think it was possible to get ketchup with your fries . . . but most Frites stands offered at least twenty different topping sauces.

Paraguay: Automatic weapons at Parking Garages
I had never seen a Parking Lot attendant armed with an AK-47 before I went shopping in Paraguay. I suppose it helps keep down parking lot crime.

Canada: Electric Outlets in parking lots
In Alberta, Canada, most parking garages provide an electric outlet by each parking space. Many outdoor parking lots have parking-meter-like poles at each parking space, and they house electric outlets where the coin boxes should be. The winters get so cold that engine oil can turn to something resembling Tunisian tea if a car is left exposed to the elements. So, the cars there have oil heaters that are electrically operated. When one parks, one takes an extension cord and plugs one’s vehicle to an electric outlet, thus assuring that the engine oil remains a liquid.

Malaysia: Batik shirts
Casino de Genting in Genting Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia had an interesting dress code when I was there in 1998. Men had to wear either a suit and tie or a long-sleeved Batik shirt. The casino rented Batik shirts (but not suits and ties) to prospective gamblers. I think Batik shirts are Indonesian in origin. They resemble the Hawaiian-style shirts that Tom Selleck wore in his Magnum, P. I. television series, but the designs are not floral.

Batik shirts

My impression was that the long-sleeved Batik shirt was the Malaysian equivalent of the Western suit and tie, but I never saw anyone wearing a Batik shirt except while in the casino. Street wear was more often a Baju Melayu or something like that. Speaking of twists on the mundane, I watched the Malaysian television edition of Wheel of Fortune. The show was conducted in English language, but the words were spelled in Bahasa Melayu! So, the final word comes with a not-so-helpful clue, such as “budak” or “dendam.”

China: Outdoor Entrees
For the ultimate in fresh food, consider dining in Guilin. I had snake soup at a local restaurant there, and I was surprised to find my entrée-to-be caged on the sidewalk, along with the other prospective entrees, such as pigeons and bamboo rats. After selecting my entrée (similar to selecting a lobster from a restaurant tank), it was slaughtered right there on the sidewalk and carried through the dining area back into the kitchen, where it was made into a tasty soup. I suspect the traditional lack of refrigeration facilities led to the practice of keeping live entrees.

Spain: Late night dining
Spain, in 1982, was the first country in which I discovered that many people eat at a later hour than do most Americans. Arriving in Madrid at 5 pm local time, I was surprised to find how empty the restaurants seemed to be. I was also surprised to see the menu did not have any of what I had supposed were the traditional Spanish foods, such as enchiladas, tacos, tostadas, etc. Turns out those are Mexican! Pointing to the fried onion rings that the diner at the next table was having was the first step in my discovery of calamari. I was time-zone weary, so I went back to my hotel for a short nap. Awakening at 11 pm, I hoped I could still find a restaurant that was open. To my surprise, the local restaurants were all packed! Who knew the Spanish dined so late?

Mexico: Late afternoon lunching
The first time I worked in Mexico, I discovered that my Mexican clients seemed to be in a different time zone. I would set up a meeting for 9 am and they would stroll into the office around 10 am, and then they would not want to go to lunch until 2 or 3 pm. One day, I was starving and insisted that we go to lunch at 1 pm. When we got to the restaurant, we had to wait for it to open!

Trinidad: Pepper
I worked in Port of Spain, Trinidad for nine days. During the weekend, my local host took me to a very scenic waterfall, but before going there, we stopped in the city to buy some snacks. I bought what appeared to be dried apricots that had been rolled in sugar. Sugar and Pepper, I discovered. I have never been to a place that had such spicy food. Even the sweets were peppered. At an Indian restaurant, we were told that the three spice bowls contained hot, hotter, and hottest sauce. My colleague put six drops of the hottest on some nan and dahl, took a bite, then tried to prevent the tears from rolling down his face. I touched a tine of my fork to the hottest sauce and placed one drop of it on the center of my tongue. The feeling was similar to the scalding sensation of drinking too-hot cocoa, but without the chocolately taste. The center of my tongue became numb, not unlike the feeling that one gets at a dental office when one’s mouth is “frozen.”

Thailand: Tuk-Tuks

Tuk-Tuks are a fun way to get around in Bangkok. They sort of resemble motorized rickshaws, and they are sometimes faster than regular taxis, as they can weave their way through traffic jams more easily.

Taiwan: Motorcycle taxis
Why have a three-wheeled taxi when two wheels will do? Several Asian cities offer motorcycle taxis. The first ones I saw were in Taipei in 1984.
Here is a photo I found of two motorcycle taxis in Phnom Penh, Cambodia:

Germany: Blue Laws
Travel to Germany from the Eastern time zone in the US, and you will most likely arrive at your final destination around 1 pm. If you arrive on a Saturday or a Sunday, don’t plan to do any shopping – the stores will be closed. The first time I worked in Germany, I arrived on a Saturday, hoping to do a little sightseeing and time-zone adjusting before starting work on Monday. I checked into my hotel at Sindelfingen, and immediately set out on a walk. I was alone on the streets. Everything was closed. The Blue Laws in Germany shut down the stores after 12 noon on Saturday, and they don’t reopen until Monday. I returned to my hotel, which was filled with the mouth-watering aromas of Chinese food. A Chinese circus troupe was staying at my hotel, and all the acrobats must have been cooking in their rooms. It was an odd first impression of Germany. To this day, I still think of Germany when I smell Chinese cooking.

England: Iceland
See my story “Today’s Blog” of 17 April 2005. England has a chain of frozen food stores known as “Iceland.” They sell frozen foods, fridges, and freezers.
I have never seen any other stores that sell only frozen foods and freezing appliances.

Belgium: Chocolate Stores
I have never been anywhere that has as many chocolate stores per capita as does Belgium. In Bruges, they are as popular as Starbucks coffee houses are here. What is it that makes certain places specialize in certain types of food? Detroit has as many Coney Island hot dog shops as Bruges has chocolate shops. Why? And why doesn’t the best chocolate come from the countries where cocoa is a native plant? I have so many unanswered questions . . .

Australia: Meat Pies
And why does Australia have so many meat pies? They are quite good, actually, especially with a topping sauce. I suppose most countries have some sort of meat-filled pastry, pie, pierogi, empanada, bric, ravioli, knish, or whatever they call it.

Jamaica: Poles to keep aircraft from landing
I doubt that anyone else has ever heard of this, but there is a religious sect in Jamaica that worships Haile Selassie, the former Emperor of Ethiopia, as a living god, and this religion advocates the use of marijuana (ganja) for religious purposes. I am just kidding about the “no one else” has heard of this, as I suppose most people have heard of the Rastafarian musician Bob Marley and are aware that marijuana can be found in Jamaica. In fact, it appears there is so much trafficking in ganja there that the authorities have erected telephone poles (without wires on them) along many straight sections of two-lane Jamaican roads, in order to keep drug smugglers from using the roads as landing strips. The poles are erected very near one side of the road only, as they are not needed on both sides to clip the wing of any small plane that tries to land there.

Bahamas: Salty Water
The next time you are in Nassau and drink a cup of coffee, don’t be surprised if it tastes a bit salty. It seems that sea salt has infiltrated the local water supply, and most of the water there is a bit salty. One can observe rain water collecting tanks on most roof tops – this must be an attempt by the locals to acquire salt-free water.

Italy: Train Robbers
The first time I was in Italy, in 1982, I was enjoying the benefits of my Eurail Pass until a young woman seated next to me told how she had been robbed on a recent train ride to Monaco. A thief had chloroformed her to make sure she would not awaken, then took her suitcase to the men’s room, took out what he wanted and threw the rest down the toilet (it goes out onto the tracks). I do not know if that was an isolated incident, but I did not fall asleep that night on the train. About 3 am, a man tried to enter our car, but when I sat up, he quickly exited. Was that significant?

Scotland: No Panhandling
Most major metropolitan areas seem to have panhandlers. In Edinburgh, Scotland, I did not see any, and that surprised me. On my last evening in the city, I took a long walk. Suddenly, an attractive young woman, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties, approached and asked if I could give her coins for bus fare (she had forgotten her cell phone, could not call for a ride, etc.). I gave her the coins she requested, and as I did so she jumped forward into me, slamming her body flat against my chest and thus hiding the exchange of coins from any onlookers. That’s when I figured out that it must have been illegal. Taking my coins, she was quickly joined by two other young women and they walked away laughing, presumably in search of a bus stop, although there was one at the corner where we were. At least, she had a plausible scam. Once, a young woman panhandler approached me in Calgary, in the middle of a fairly large city park. She said her car had broken down, and she needed bus money to get home. Well, if her car had broken down, why would she walk several blocks into a city park to ask for bus fare? I would have given her some money if she hadn’t been so inept at scamming.

New Zealand: All Blacks
In the US, where Rugby news seldom makes the front of the Sports page, it would seem unthinkable that a Rugby team would regularly be heralded on the front of the News page, but that’s how it is in New Zealand for their National Rugby team, the All Blacks. The team performs the Haka, a traditional Maori war dance, prior to each international match.

Singapore: Be Good. Be very, very good.
A few years ago, a young American male made international news because he was sentenced to be caned for spraying orange paint on a Porsche. Singapore runs a tight ship. Even chewing gum is prohibited there. After a while, all the restrictions get to you. One day, while in the subway station, I noticed a sign that warned of a giant penalty if you were caught smoking inside the station. Oh no! I hadn’t realized that was against the law! But then I remembered – I don’t smoke. I was getting paranoid in Singapore. It is the most rule-bound place I have ever visited. Once, when trying to enter Malaysia from Singapore, the border guards were flummoxed when they saw that every visa stamp page of my passport had already been used. Where could they put their exit stamp? Helpfully, I suggested that they let one page have five stamps on it instead of the usual four. Oh, no, that would not do! They could not think of a better idea, so eventually they did what I suggested.

Hong Kong: Stores
Hong Kong is part of China again, but when I was last there, in 1985, it was still under lease to Great Britain. I don’t know if things are still the same there, but when I was there in 1984 and in 1985, there was a store of some sort nearly within an arms-reach, everywhere in Hong Kong. One could wander down blind alleys, turn a corner and find a small stand where something was being sold. A city of merchants.

Chile: Stay in the airport
While bouncing around the Southern Cone of South America, I found myself at the Santiago, Chile airport with a five hour layover. Well, maybe I would take a cab into the city and do some sightseeing. No, it would cost $45 just to step outside! I felt as if they were trying to rip me off, so I showed them! I festered in the Santiago airport for the next five hours. I hope they have learned their lesson in Santiago.

Monaco: Small Casino
One hears so much about the casino at Monte Carlo. James Bond played chemin de fer there. Many movie scenes have been shot there. It is actually a rather small, and by today’s standards, not particularly impressive casino. It reminds me of the older casinos that were in downtown Las Vegas and were put in the shade by the Mega-Casinos on the Strip.

Macau: Odd Tourist Attraction
Arguably the biggest tourist attraction in Macau, St. Paul’s Cathedral is in fact not much more than one wall. Built by the Jesuits between 1582 and 1602, it was destroyed by fire during an 1835 typhoon. Somewhere, I have a photo of myself standing in front of it. I think millions of people can say the same thing. But, really, it is just one wall. It puzzles me that it was allowed to remain standing. Shouldn’t it have been either torn down or the entire building rebuilt?

Brazil: Capoeira
Brazil has many interesting sites. On a city tour of Sao Paulo, I saw a python park (lots of fat snakes hanging from trees), visited the grave of a young driver who had died in a Grand Prix, stood on the grass inside an enormous soccer stadium, and watched Capoeira in a public park. Capoeira is a martial art developed by Brazilian slaves. It looks a bit like acrobatic dancing. Often, it is accompanied by music. Here, something as mundane and widespread as martial arts has developed a unique form.

Barbados: Bird Moochers
I had lunch at Sandy Lane Hotel in St. James, Barbados. This is a rather nice facility, a bit too pricey for me (the room rack rates range from $800 to $20,000 per night), but I figured I could do lunch there. Well, the lunch was quite nice, but what I remember most about Sandy Lane are its tiny sparrows. I am not certain if they were sparrows, as they weren’t much larger than hummingbirds, but they looked like little sparrows to me. These tiny moochers were cunning and practiced thieves. At every opportunity, they would swoop in, grab a morsel of bread or fruit or whatever they could lift from a plate, and then zoom off. I wondered if Alfred Hitchcock had dined there before coming up with his idea for “The Birds” movie.

Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet-Laumont

2005-06-15T14:36:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 15 June 2005

Émilie du Châtelet (1706 – 1749)

I feel the full weight of the prejudice which so universally excludes us from the sciences; it is one of the contradictions in life that has always amazed me, seeing that the law allows us to determine the fate of great nations, but that there is no place where we are trained to think ... Let the reader ponder why, at no time in the course of so many centuries, a good tragedy, a good poem, a respected tale, a fine painting, a good book on physics has ever been produced by a woman. Why these creatures whose understanding appears in every way similar to that of men, seem to be stopped by some irresistible force, but until they do, women will have reason to protest against their education. ... I am convinced that many women are either unaware of their talents by reason of the fault in their education or that they bury them on account of prejudice for want of intellectual courage. My own experience confirms this. Chance made me acquainted with men of letters who extended the hand of friendship to me. ... I then began to believe that I was a being with a mind ...
from the Preface of Emilie’s English-to-French translation of Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees

Emilie makes a good point here. As if further proof of discrimination against women were needed, Emilie, who translated into French the Principia of Isaac Newton and corrected his erroneous notation that energy equaled mass times velocity, is known primarily today (if at all) as merely the mistress of Voltaire! And, of course, her e = mc² equation is now associated with Albert Einstein, even though Emilie wrote it in the 18th century . . .

One has to wonder why it was that a young woman who could speak six languages and was capable of dividing nine-digit numbers by nine-digit numbers in her head had ever doubted that she was “a being with a mind.”

It might possibly have had something to do with the repressive attitudes of society in regard to the “proper” roles for women. As a woman, she was not supposed to be a scientist or a mathematician or hardly anything else that she was in real life (OK, her wife, mistress, and mother roles were acceptable, but that was about it).

Jack Handey noted that “the face of a small child says it all, especially the mouth part.” Likewise, I think this illustration says it all for Emilie:

The frontispiece of Elémens de la Philosophie de Newton (1738) depicts Emilie du Châtelet as the goddess of truth, her mirror shining knowledge of the universe onto Voltaire as he transcribes the words of his female muse. Credit: Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

In truth, as Voltaire admitted to a friend, “She dictated and I wrote.” Voltaire put his name on their book, as it was unthinkable for a woman to have written it. Even the mirror reflecting the light from Newton onto Voltaire is held by a Muse goddess and not by a mortal female.

I often think of Emilie du Châtelet. She is an icon of what-might-have-been and symbolizes what society has lost through centuries of female suppression. Her life was a fascinating one, and I recommend further reading about her, but the purpose of this essay is not biographical. She has influenced my thinking, and so I am acknowledging that.

Her life accomplishments were extraordinary, but I find her death to be equally so. As a young wife, she had given birth to three children and thereby fulfilled her societal obligations. She and her husband decided not to live together (it had been an arranged marriage), and she took on Voltaire as her lover. They moved into her country estate and devoted themselves to intellectual and scientific pursuits.

At the age of 43, Emilie was dismayed to find herself pregnant by someone else (not Voltaire and not her husband). By the way, it is of interest to note that Voltaire helped her deceive her husband into thinking the baby was legitimate. Anyway, Emilie knew that a pregnancy at her age was the equivalent of a death sentence. One seldom hears about this anymore, but there used to be a common cause of death known as “childbirth fever.” This fever resulted from the infection that resulted after giving birth. Young women usually had strong enough immune systems to survive, but as they aged and their immune systems weakened, they often succumbed.

Emilie was determined that her translation of Newton’s Principia would be finished before she gave birth. Near the end of her pregnancy, she worked 18 hours a day on it, dipping her hands in ice-cold water to help stay awake. She finished the translation (including the correction of the energy/mass equation), gave birth to a daughter, and died of fever on 10 Sep 1749, several days after giving birth (par for childbirth fever). A trouper, Emilie had been working on the book when her daughter was suddenly born, and the babe was placed on a Quarto book of Geometry as Emilie was taken to her bed. Voltaire wrote to a friend, "It is not a mistress I have lost but half of myself, a soul for which my soul seems to have been made." Her book, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, was published ten years after her death.

TWS note: Newton's equation had been e = mv. Emilie's experiments showed it was e = mv², and Einstein took the velocity part and moved it to the highest velocity possible, i. e. "the speed of light" or "c"

Lawn Ornaments

2005-06-12T12:54:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 11 June 2005

photo credit: Marlene Cornman, Fayetteville, GA

“An empty yard is like an empty coffee table – it cries out for something.”
- Don Featherstone

Joy Green bought a Kodak CX7350 digital camera recently, and she has been posting photos at the Kodak EasyShare Gallery web site. Here is a photo of her garden in Auburn, California:

Note the blue gazing ball behind (and above) the sundial

It had been several years since I had seen a gazing ball, and here is a photo that has two! There is a green one to the left of the blue one. Joy writes that she has a third gazing ball, a purple one, to the left of the fountain.

The unexpected images of gazing balls, after so many years of not seeing them, brought back a flood of memories of seeing them when I was younger.

Gazing balls have a long history. The first ones were Venetian and date back to the end of the 14th century. They were hollow, iridescent glass balls and were a symbol of fertility. Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria called them “dream balls” and decorated the path to his garden pavilion with them.

Here is some historical information I found at:
http://www.ironelegance.com/kugelhistory.htm

They have been known by many names - Gazing Globes, Rose Balls, Good Luck Balls, Victorian Balls, Witch Balls, and Garden Globes. Also called "Globes of Happiness", they have been used symbolically as wedding gifts - said to bring the bride happiness in her new home. In the 16th century Francis Bacon stated that a proper garden would have round colored balls for the sun to play upon. They gained their current widespread popularity during Victorian times; being used both indoor as well as in the garden. One interior use was in dining rooms and on sideboards. Placed in such a way, the servant could gaze discreetly into the ball and see who may need a refill without standing and staring throughout the meal.

When I was a boy, gazing balls looked like this:

The globes came in many colors, but most often they were silver, blue, or green. I guess the glass ones were susceptible to breakage, because after a while, the manufacturers started coming out with metal globes. The stainless steel model seemed to be particularly popular.

But gazing balls are just one of the many options available to the serious lawn and garden decorator.
A quick survey of web sites has revealed the following categories from which to choose:

Gazing Balls
Garden Gnomes
Garden Stones
Garden Statues
Bird Feeders
Bird Baths
Plant Stands
Sun Catchers
Rain Gauges
Garden Thermometers
Sundials
Wind Chimes
Weather Vanes
Garden Fountains
Bird Houses
Toad Houses
Garden Bells
Hummingbird Feeders

Of course, some of these categories can be combined, as in the following garden statue / gazing globe, but I think this is going too far:

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to keep my rabbit statuary separate from my gazing globe collection.

But then, I don’t have a gazing globe collection. I don’t even have a coffee table, and maybe that is why . . . I am one of those rare ascetics who doesn’t feel that an empty yard is crying out for something, other than, perhaps, a nice mowing now and then, or maybe a good watering.

I realize that I am in the minority. Many people are more than willing to spend time and money on lawn and garden decoration. One that comes to mind was Louis XIV of France, a.k.a. The Sun King. When I worked in France, I visited his palace at Versailles three times, and I was always impressed with what he was able to achieve in his back yard with only the resources of one of the most powerful countries in Europe at his disposal. I was particularly impressed with his Grand Canal, The Orangerie, the Grand Trianon, and of course the Petit Trianon was a charming touch.

Versailles: The Fountain of Latona and the Grand Canal in the distance

I am not sure who this statue is, a French Garden Gnome, probably

“But Tom,” you say, “even Louis Quatorze couldn’t afford Versailles! What am I supposed to do on my more limited budget?”

Well, you could do something like Joy Green and my Aunt Dorothy have done – put in a pleasant pool, some hummingbird feeders, a wind chime, and any other decorations that catch your fancy. You really shouldn’t be asking me – a man who does not own a coffee table.

But I can tell you what you should not do. Don’t get carried away. At the opposite extreme from Versailles are those people who just don’t know when to quit. I think we have all seen examples of this. One reads of people who put up so many Christmas decorations, for example, that their home becomes a major tourist attraction, resulting in traffic jams, angry neighbors, and power outages. When I worked in New Orleans, there was a home like that – the pride and joy of a man who owned a national fried chicken franchise and nearly every Christmas light known to man.

Then there is the matter of, how shall I phrase this, good taste. One man’s Petit Trianon is another man’s Pink Plastic Flamingo. The PPF, by the way, was invented by Don Featherstone, who sculpted the original Pink Plastic Flamingo, as well as an estimated 600 to 800 other products, including ducks, garden gnomes, penguins, and about anything else one can think of.

PPFs

Actually, there is no consensus on the Pink Plastic Flamingo. To some people, the PPF epitomizes tackiness. Others think they are hilarious.

As Don says: “I'll bet 90% of the people who buy them just really like them. They feel like I do, that an empty yard is like an empty coffee table – it cries out for something. . . And I'll tell you something about people who put out flamingos: They're friendlier than most people. Remember, they don't do it for themselves – they're doing it to entertain you.”

On the other hand, there are some people who view Don Featherstone as the Thomas Midgely, Jr. of the decorative art world. You remember Thomas Midgely, Jr. – the man who within a span of three days invented the leaded gasoline that poisoned our bloodstreams and dichlorofluoromethane -- the first of the Freon gases that are destroying our protective ozone layer?

Thomas Midgely, Jr. was not a bad man, of course. He was more like a man with good intentions for whom everything seemed to turn out poorly. Its not as if he was some evil genius scientist after all – in fact he invented leaded gasoline only after he tried adding iodine to gas. His thinking was that by adding something red to the gas, it would absorb more heat before it ignited and thereby avoid engine knocking. Well, the iodine worked, although not because it was red. Iodine was too expensive, but it showed that it was possible to prevent knocking, so Midgely started going through the Periodic Table of Elements until he found something else that would work – toxic tetraethyl lead. Who knew that distributing it throughout the land through car emissions would result in such damage? As for using freon gases in refrigeration, that seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time – the freon wasn’t toxic like lead, and it wouldn’t even burn! Who knew it would gobble up our ozone layer? Not surprisingly, Thomas Midgely, Jr. was killed by one of his own well-intentioned inventions. He developed polio at age 51 and lost the use of his legs, so he rigged up an elaborate set of pulleys to help him get in and out of bed. One day, he got tangled and strangled in the pulleys.

One can only wonder, if he had lived, what he might have done with a nice-sized lawn and garden and a generous budget.

Peg O' My Heart

2005-06-10T15:45:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 10 June 2005

Peg o' my heart, I love you
We'll never part I love you
Dear little girl, sweet little girl
Sweeter than the Rose of Erin
It’s the shamrock we’ll be sharing

Words by Alfred Bryan
Music by Fred Fischer
(March 15, 1913)
Recorded by The Harmonicats, 1947 (#1)

It may now be revealed that I have a secret hobby. Simply put, I like to look for connections. This is a fun hobby, so I will share it with you. This is how it works: you take a seemingly “random” event that occurs in your life and then get online and, using Google and Wikipedia, search with bull-dog-like tenacity for previously unknown events that connect with the “random” one.

Perhaps I should provide an example, just to get you started. This morning, I took Nellybelle, my 1995 Jeep Cherokee, to my local Chrysler dealership for service (Nellybelle is pulling to the right). I went into the waiting room and selected a couple of Outdoor magazines from the rack, hoping to find a definitive treatise on how to gut an elk. Also in the waiting room were a young man and his small son, plus an 86 year-old man.

As the young man tried to adjust the waiting room television picture (very grainy), the old man pulled out his harmonica and played a short blast on it. The little boy was engrossed in the television, and so he did not notice it. The old man tried it again, and this time the little boy turned around and stared in wide-eyed wonder. His father told him the old man was playing a harmonica. Encouraged, the old man started playing songs.

I commented that one seldom heard harmonica music on the radio anymore (as if I would know), and that I remembered seeing harmonica bands on television when I was young.

“Oh yes, the Rascals! And the Harmonicats!,” the old man beamed. He explained that when he was a ten-year-old, his grandfather had given him a harmonica, and he has been playing one ever since. It seems the grandfather had come out of retirement to run Mr. Price’s tobacco shop for Mr. Price’s widow (primarily because the grandfather’s wife, Alice, wouldn’t let him smoke cigars at home). The grandfather could sit in a comfy chair in a back room of the store and smoke cigars. The store also sold candy and harmonicas, and that is how the grandson ended up playing the harmonica in the waiting room of the O. C. Taylor Chrysler-Jeep dealership in Delray Beach, Florida on 10 June, 2005 (to save time, I am leaving out how he got here from Delaware).

We had a short conversation about harmonicas. His was a Hohner, but he preferred the Herring, which was a Brazilian version made by a member of the Hohner family. He explained that there were chord harmonicas (very large), double-decker harmonicas, tiny ones, etc. (I am paraphrasing here, as he lost me when he said “chord” – a concept I cannot master).

Then, he started playing another song. It was catchy and olden-sounding. Suddenly, I realized that I knew this song! What was it? Yes! Peg of My Heart! I had not heard this song for many years. I remembered hearing Dad whistle it in 1949, when we lived in the Shawcross boarding house in St. Louis. It had made me want to learn to whistle! I had nearly forgotten that song.

So, what connections could be found for “Peg of My Heart”? Using Google, I quickly learned that the correct title was “Peg O’ My Heart.” Then, I found the first connection.

In 1947, “Peg O’ My Heart” was a number one song. It was on the Hit Parade for twenty weeks, and spent ten weeks as number one. So, that is why Dad was whistling it in 1949! I think I may remember him whistling it when we lived in Olney, IL in 1948, but my memories of Olney are a bit vague. Our black Cocker Spaniel dog was named Peggy, was she named for the song?

Now, the less-committed “connections” man would have quit looking after finding this, but in my experience, there are always more connections to be found, so I kept looking. I have an old trivia book that includes a foreword in which the author states his belief that there are no “trivial” facts – that everything is related (connected) in some way to everything else. I concur.

So, the next step was to research the 1947 hit record of “Peg O’ My Heart.”
It was the first recording by the Harmonicats (who had played for Borrah Minevitch as members of his Harmonica Rascals).

The Harmonicats – Don Les, Jerry Murad, Al Fiore in 1947

Why was harmonica music so popular in 1947? Well, one connection is probably the musician’s strike of 1947. The musician’s union had gone on strike and would not permit its members to record music until the radio stations that aired their records agreed to pay royalties to the musicians.

Fortunately for The Harmonicats, in 1947 the harmonica was not recognized as a musical instrument, so they were allowed to record POMH and their record was one of the very few new recordings of 1947. With such little competition, it should not have taken a crystal ball to predict that their record would become a big hit (it sold more than 1,400,000 copies).

“The four harmonica players in Jerry Murad's Harmonicats recording team bid goodbye to their bass viol and guitar accompanists as the ban on recordings became effective. Since the harmonica is not considered a musical instrument, the Harmonicats will continue to make records . . . sans accompaniment.”

OK, so now I have deduced that the musician’s strike of 1947 (which I had failed to notice at the time) was connected to the popularity of the Harmonicat’s recording of POMH and to Dad whistling it in 1949 and the old man playing it in 2005 (and surely, Mr. Price’s demise had a hand in this too).

But were there more connections? Continuing my search, I found that the song had been revived in 1947 and was a featured song in the 1913 stage production of Ziegfeld’s Follies! Well, Dad was born in 1913, but I doubt that he was whistling POMH because of the showman Florenz Ziegfeld. Still, there could not have been a revival if the song had not been popular once upon a time, so I suppose this is a connection too.

Were there other connections? Marion Davies, the showgirl/actress girlfriend of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst starred in the 1933 movie “Peg O’ My Heart.” Many consider this to have been her finest role, but I doubt that Dad saw any movies in 1933 – it was the Depression.

Marion Davies as Peg and Mutt as Mike

However, this is a good example of what happens when one goes looking for connections. Some things may be directly related, such as the recording made by the Harmonicats, but other things may be connected only coincidentally, as the 1933 movie seems to be.

In the connections hobby, it is not easy to know when one is finished. Are there still more connections to be found? Here is one particularly tantalizing example – a 1947 photo taken at a Sears Roebuck store in St. Louis! Was Dad there that day? I do not see him in the picture, but say, what about those signs for WIRE RECORDERs? I wrote about wire recorders in one of my Everything You Know Is Wrong stories!

(Note to self: Post the EYKIW stories to my blog site)

Is there a wire recorder connection to be found here? Oh, this is a never-ending hobby and lots of fun! But, I digress. Here is the photo:

By the way, I particularly enjoy this photo because of the girl who looking back at the photographer. Note that everyone else seems to be looking at the Harmonicats.

This photo reminds me of Robert Benchley’s essay “Johnny-on-the-Spot.”

If you want to get a good perspective on history in the making, just skim through a collection of news photographs which have been snapped at those very moments when cataclysmic events were taking place throughout the world. In almost every picture you can discover one guy in a derby hat who is looking in exactly the opposite direction from the excitement, totally oblivious to the fact that the world is shaking beneath his feet. That would be me, or at any rate, my agent in that particular part of the world in which the event is taking place.

I have not seen an actual photograph of the shooting of the Austrian Archduke at Sarajevo, but I would be willing to bet, if one is in existence, that you could find, somewhere off in the right foreground, a man in a Serbian derby looking anxiously up the street for a trolley car. And probably right up in the foreground a youth smiling and waving into the camera . . .

. . . I know that if I were on the spot during any important historical event I would not know about it until I read the papers the next day. I am unobservant to the point of being what scientists might call “half-witted.”

. . . I could . . . have been an usher in Ford’s Theatre in Washington . . . “They didn’t finish Our American Cousin tonight,” I might have said. “Some trouble with the lights, I guess.

Robert Benchley, drawn by Gluyas Williams

Dear reader, I suppose by now you are itching to get online and find some connections. One bit of advice: do not let this become an obsession. One connection usually leads to another, and one can wander far afield from one’s original objective. For example, in researching Peg O’ My Heart, I listened online to an old, pre-1947 recording of it. I noticed that the recording began with what seemed to be a totally unrelated song before launching into the familiar sounds of POMH. Then I remembered hearing old Irving Berlin songs that did the same thing. Was this how songs were written once upon a time? Was there some as yet unknown connection to be found? Perhaps I will research this some day, but for now I will close with the original words to Peg O’ My Heart (some the lyrics were modified later).

Oh! my heart's in a whirl over one little girl,
I love her, I love her, yes, I do,
Altho' her heart is far away,
I hope to make her mine some day,
Ev'ry beautiful rose, ev'ry violet knows,
I love her, I love her fond and true,
And her heart fondly sighs, as I sing to her eyes,
Her eyes of blue,
Sweet eyes of blue, my darling!

Peg O' My Heart, I love you,
We'll never part, I love you,
Dear little girl, sweet little girl,
Sweeter than the rose of Erin,
Are your winning smiles endearin',
Peg O' My Heart, your glances
With Irish art entrance me,
Come, be my own, come, make your home in my heart.

When your heart's full of fears,
And your eyes full of tears,
I'll kiss them, I'll kiss them all away;
For, like the gold that's in your hair,
Is all the love for you I bear,
O, believe in me, do,
I'm as lonesome as you,
I miss you, I miss you all the day,
Let the light of live shine from your eyes into mine,
And shine for aye,
Sweetheart for aye, my darling!

They had roofs, then

2005-06-07T18:37:00.000-04:00

©Thomas Wilson Shawcross 28 May 1999

Some fossils can be used to identify the age of the rock strata that contain them, because the creatures that became the fossils lived only during a specific geological time period. In like manner, American architecture has its identifying styles - unique characteristics that are born, flourish, and die within a certain decade or so – that can be used to identify the age of the structures that contain those styles.

An example of such an architectural fossil is the metal-sheathed quonset hut that spread across the American landscape in the post-World-War-II years. Relatively cheap and quick to construct, these half-cylinder buildings were widely used for military and civilian purposes. They appeared to be made by fastening long, covering sheets of galvanized steel to a curved frame. The visual effect was of a giant tin can that has fallen on its side and then sunk halfway into the earth. Quite popular for a while, it seems these buildings are no longer being made, but aging examples can still be found across the US. To me, they are the architectural fossils that mark the time period of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.

Another marker for that time period is the glass-block window. Our family home in Olney, Illinois had such a window. Thick glass blocks surrounded the large window that was located in the living room. The blocks were as thick as the exterior walls of the house, and they measured about six inches square. They were joined together by layers of cement, as if they were bricks. I suppose they were considered a cost-effective means of allowing additional light to enter the room, while still using a relatively small glass window. Later, larger windows (we called them picture windows) were used, and glass block borders disappeared. I was glad of that, as I found them frustrating. The surfaces of the glass blocks were wavy, not smooth, and the light that entered through them was of the distorted, fun-house-mirror sort. Since I was only two years old when we lived in Olney, and therefore rather short, my only clear view of the outside world was limited to the sky and neighboring rooftops. Our front yard could be seen (from my vantage point) only through the wavy glass blocks, so it was a blur, yielding only vague clues such as green, swaying movement when the wind was blowing and the grass was tall and overdue for a mowing. I developed a dislike for those glass blocks that prevented me from seeing the world outside, and it pains me to note that they seem to be making an architectural comeback. My local Home Depot store has erected a sales display of different types of wavy glass blocks. They are even being made in colors now! This reminds me of the warning, “those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.”

The 1950’s brought its own share of time-specific fossils, such as boomerang-formica dinette tables, and tan-colored brick buildings. The 1960’s may be remembered for The Beatles and for the “bloated arrow” business sign.
In the 1960’s in St. Louis, a sudden proliferation of oddly shaped signs began popping up outside small businesses. The translucent plastic signs were lit up from the inside. The name of the business establishment was emblazoned on each side of the sign, which could be read by motorists passing from either direction. Never looking too closely at the signs, (I considered them vaguely as “bad art”) I thought them to be ads for shoe repair shops or shoe stores, as the signs appeared to be in the shape of a Dutch wooden shoe. One day, it occurred to me that there were an awful lot of shoe stores in St. Louis, and I looked more closely at one of the signs. That particular sign was mounted over the entrance to a dry cleaning establishment!

“Why the wooden shoe?” I wondered. Then it dawned on me that the sign did not represent a wooden shoe. Instead, it was a fat, bloated arrow that was intended to point out the business that was located beneath the sign. All kinds of businesses bought this sign. For a while, they were all over St. Louis. I figure the salesman of these signs retired a millionaire. Maybe he retired in Amsterdam and is comfortably padding around in his tulip garden, wearing wooden shoes. Only a few of these signs remain today. I don’t know if the signs failed or the businesses did.

This week, while driving on Douglas Street in Sioux City, Iowa, I saw what might be the most time-specific architectural fossil of all – the decorated shingle roof. I was trying to locate the English Mansion Bed and Breakfast hotel, for which I had the address. Looking for a number on a large house on the left, I suddenly noticed that the roof of the house was decorated with a huge geometric pattern made of differently colored shingles. Each individual shingle was one solid color, and the roofer/artist had laid down a pattern of gray shingles with red ones and yellow ones and black ones and blue ones, (and maybe some other colors that my partially color-blind eyes can’t see) to make a distinctive geometric pattern that covered the entire roof. The pattern looked like a diamond design that might have been copied from a Navajo blanket. I had never seen any roof like that. Then, a couple of houses farther away, I saw the English Mansion, and it had a roof decorated in a similar manner!

As far as I know, there are only two houses in Sioux City (or anywhere else on our planet) with roofs like that. The shingles appear to be old. Surely they were the work of the same artist. Architectural fossils of the "they had roofs, then" era.

TWS note: I have learned that the Quonset-shaped metal buildings are called Nissen huts, They were invented by Canadian Army engineer P. N. Nissen, b. 1871. A pre-fabricated shelter of corrugated metal shaped like a cylinder cut vertically in two and resting on its flat surface, it was first used by the British Army in WW II.

A typical WW II - vintage Nissen Hut

A prefabricated structure of a steel frame clad in corrugated iron. Semi-circular in section they were used as accommodation for the armed forces and, during WWII, as emergency housing for bombed out civilians. Also used for storage.

When William, John, James, George and Thomas met Mary, Sarah, Elizabeth, Nancy, and Martha

2005-06-04T10:55:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 14 June 2003

Have you noticed? It’s not “every Tom, Dick, and Harry” anymore. Everyone knows that “popular” names go in and out of fashion. According to the US Social Security Administration, the most popular baby names in the US in 2002 were:
Boys: Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Matthew, Ethan
Girls: Emily, Madison, Hannah, Emma, Alexis

What names were popular in the days of our g-g-grandparents and their parents?

During a recent visit to the Jackson County Historical Society in Murphysboro, IL,
I purchased a copy of the 1860 Federal Census for Jackson County. The book included two tables showing the ten most popular women’s names and men’s names in Jackson County in 1860. I was surprised to see that more than three-quarters of the Jackson County women were named Mary, Sarah, Elizabeth, Nancy, or Martha and that more than three-quarters of the men were named William, John, James, George, or Thomas.

Perhaps this explains the preponderance of colorful nicknames that my ancestors had back then. I am descended from families in which the men had nicknames such as “Coon,” “Big,” “Little,” “Black,” “Sawmill,” “Doc,” and “Captain.” I have sometimes wondered if my ancestors had been leaders of early Jackson County street gangs.

Of course, in a population where 23.40% of the men were named William and 28.55% of the women were named Mary, it is not hard to see why nicknames were so popular. It is easy to see how some of the nicknames were formed. For Elizabeth (13.68% of the women), the nicknames of Betsy, Lizzie and Liza can be seen as obvious derivatives. However, some nicknames, such as “Sally” for Sarah (14.73%) are not quite so obvious, and I have never understood how “Polly” came to be a nickname for “Mary.”

Some names had their brief taste of success and managed to survive in reduced popularity, while others had their fifteen minutes of fame and then disappeared. In the latter category, I would put the once fairly-popular-but-now-almost-forgotten girls names of America, Dicey, Melvina, and Sophronia. Making the top-ten list in 1890 but now not as common were Rose, Ethel, Florence, Ida, and Bertha. Likewise for boys, the once top-ten names of Tom, Dick, and Harry (actually, Thomas, Richard, and Harry) have fallen out of the top ten but not into near-total disuse, as have the boys names of Connie, Lavern, and Shirley (yes, the girls took them!).

Why is it that some boy’s names become girl’s names, but it never seems to happen the other way around? Perhaps the answer can be found in the song titled “A Boy Named Sue.” Many Americans in the mid-1800’s named their sons for Revolutionary War heroes (soldiers or statesmen). Hence the large numbers of George Washingtons, Benjamin Franklins, Thomas Jeffersons, etc., but there was one RW hero whose name caused consternation for his namesakes: Francis Marion.

Gen. Francis Marion, (who had the cool nickname of “the Swamp Fox”) was a true hero of the Revolutionary War. He was the subject of a very popular biography written by author and preacher Marion Locke Weems, who wrote a series of books about American founding fathers. It was the 1806 version of Weems’ book about George Washington that contained the apocryphal hatchet-and-cherry-tree episode. The Life of General Francis Marion helped inspire many thousands of American parents to name their sons Francis Marion. One of these sons was my g-grandfather Francis Marion Fielder (1841 – 1909). Like most of his fellow-generation Francis Marions, he was keenly aware that both his first and middle names sounded like “girl’s” names Frances and Marian, so he went through life by the nickname of “Frank.”

Looking at online copies of the old hand-written census records offers additional insights and challenges regarding the old names. Spelling was much more casual in the mid-1800’s than it is now, and many names were spelled according to the census-taker’s best phonetic guess. Hence, one sees census records for Barbara and Barbery, Rebecca and Rebekka, Simon and Simeon, Pheobe and Phebe, Herman and Harmon, Aaron and Heron. Further confusion is created in trying to decipher the old script forms of letters in which the “L” looked like an “S” (or vice-versa, so was g-g-g-grandmother named Sara or Lara?). The old script “H” looked like “He” and the double-s ending of “ss” looked like “fs” or even “p.” I have found records of my Shawcross ancestors that have been transcribed to online census indices as Shawcrofs or Shawcrop.

As an amateur genealogist, I have wondered why it was common for individuals to be listed in census records by their “middle” names. Worse yet, many people were listed in some census years by their “first” names but by their “middle” names in other census years. I suspect this confusion was caused by the old German naming convention. In that system, a child was given a spiritual name and secular name. The spiritual name was listed first, but the secular name (which was listed second and hence appears to be a “middle” name) was the name used in everyday reference (unless of course, a person was called “Coon” or “Sawmill” or had some other “cool” nickname). Some parents would have favorite Saints and give many of their children the same “first” name. My Jackson County pioneer ancestor Dr. Conrad Will was the son of German-born parents, and he had brothers named Johann Daniel, Johann Jacob and Johann Adam, and sisters named Maria Elisabeth and Maria Barbara, as well as sisters named Anna Magdalena and Anna Christena,

The German convention of having three names caught on with all Americans, who prior to Revolutionary War days had settled mostly for two-part names, such as Benjamin Franklin or George Washington (or Francis Marion). The only time people were given three names was if the wife’s family was significantly richer than the husband’s such as John Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams, whose mother’s family (the Quincys) was one of the wealthiest families in America. By the mid-1800’s, most Americans were receiving three names, but the Germanic system was not always followed exactly. The first name was not always that of a saint, and sometimes the first name was used as we use the first name today but sometimes the middle name was used as the “first” name. This resulted in some very confusing census records. There were other old naming conventions, but they were less confusing than the German one. Some were actually quite helpful, as they named children in a specific sequence that recycled the names used for the children’s grandparents, parents, uncles, and aunts. Often, this pattern can be used as clues to search for “missing” people in the family tree. Perhaps I will write about other naming conventions in a separate article.

In case you have been wondering, the top ten women’s names in Jackson County, Illinois in 1860 were: Mary, Sarah, Elizabeth, Nancy, Martha, Margaret, Jane, Lucinda, Ellen, and Ann. The top ten men’s names were: William, John, James, George, Thomas, Henry, Samuel, Joseph, Benjamin, and Charles.

One Square Inch of the Yukon

2005-06-04T09:57:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 5 February 2005

Fifty years ago, I yearned to own one square inch of the Yukon Territory.

Yukon Territory, Canada

The Canadian Klondike had been the scene of a gold rush in the 1890’s, and the region became the setting in 1953 for a television show called “Sgt. Preston of the Yukon.” It featured Sgt. Preston, a Royal Canadian Mountie, who, it seemed to me, was single-handedly in charge of keeping order in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Well, ok, he did have the help of his faithful horse Rex and his trusty Husky dog, Yukon King.

Yukon King and Sgt. Preston

I don’t remember what was on the other channel at the time (or maybe we had three channels of television by then), but I do remember that I was a faithful watcher of the show. But my interest peaked to a white-hot frenzy in January of 1955, when the show’s sponsor began including a deed for one square inch of the Yukon in each box of Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice!

This was in the golden era of product premiums, when nearly every product marketed to kids included a toy – I recall a magic decoder ring (that allowed one to decode a message that said to buy more Ovaltine), a miniature atomic submarine that alternately rose and sank when fueled with baking soda, even miniature hand puppets of Snap, Crackle, and Pop. Quaker Puffed Wheat and Quaker Puffed Rice were losing ground to the newer cereals and their alluring toys, until some advertising genius came up with the idea of giving away deeds to “One Square Inch of the Yukon.”

The front of the deed
source: http://www.scripophily.net/klonbiginlan.html

I was eight years old in January of 1955, but already old enough to know that there wasn’t much one could do with one square inch of land. But I had an angle . . . an angle and a hunch, to be precise. The hunch was that if there had been gold in the Yukon, there was probably oil and gas there too, and the gold-crazed miners had forgotten to look for it.

I could center a drill bit on my one square inch of the Yukon and strike Black Gold! Hmmm . . . but wait, I would need four more strategically placed square inches for the corners of my oil rig. No matter! I was sure that once Mom heard my business plan, she would bankroll me on the spot for five boxes of Quaker Puffed Rice!

Imagine my astonishment when Mom turned down my request. I had always thought of her as being pretty bright! But not to see the genius of my plan . . . ?

To my ever-lasting chagrin, Mom and Dad had been brought up during what I understood as a medieval time called “The Depression,” and it seemed they were never able to get over it. What? Buy cereal when Dad can get it for free? Absolutely not.

To my great misfortune, Dad was a traffic manager for a food brokerage firm, and he could have, for free, any of the products that his firm handled. In January of 1955, his firm’s client list included Kellogg’s cereals, but not Quaker’s. Oh, the humanity!

I never got my one square inch(es) of the Yukon, and my life took other directions. But I never forgot about it, either. Years later, I did some research to find out what had happened to those 21 million square inches of Yukon land that had been accumulated by those lucky boys and girls who didn’t get Kellogg’s for free.

The Quaker Oats Company had set up a separate company, the Klondike Big Inch Land Company, as owner of the land (I suppose that was smarter than trying to register 21 million deeds), but they didn’t fund the company. When it didn’t pay a $37.20 tax bill on the land, the Canadian Government took it back! But even though the deeds no longer were connected to any land, the certificates themselves became collector items. There was a time when a One Square Inch deed sold for twice as much as a share of Quaker Oats stock! Pepsi bought Quaker Oats in 2001, so one can no longer compare the price of the deed to the price of the stock.

Although the ads did sell a lot of Quaker cereals, the follow-on promotion didn’t do as well, and the Sgt. Preston television show was cancelled in 1957. The follow-on promotion offered, for 25 cents, one-ounce “pokes,” (bags of Yukon river sand). Well, they might contain some Yukon gold dust, but they might not. I was from Missouri, so they had to show me . . . I wasn’t even interested in that scheme, and anyway, I was still bitter about losing out on all that gas and oil.

In the years that have followed, the Quaker Oats Company, the Yukon Lands Branch, and the Yukon Chamber of Commerce have had to answer thousands of inquiries from people wanting to know what has happened to their land. Allegedly, one man had used the after market to acquire enough deeds for 75 square feet of land, and he wrote to ask that they be consolidated into one big chunk of land “near the water.” I suspect he is eating Kellogg’s now.

Santana

2005-06-02T15:46:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 2 June 2005

Mike called and asked, “Dad, do you want to go the Santana concert with me?”

Well, sure, why not? I wasn’t quite sure who Santana was, although the name did sound familiar. Frankly, I am not up-to-date with the current crop of musicians. This is probably due to the fact that I pretty much stopped listening to current performers by the 1970’s, as popular music seemed to had gone into a serious decline (think “disco”) from which it has never recovered (think “rap”).

I am not certain of the exact moment that I stopped listening, it may even have been in the mid-1960’s. I know that I stopped before the band named Pink Floyd became popular, as my cousin Dolores told me many years ago that she was a Pink Floyd fan, and I remember thinking that I had never heard of them.

Mike said Santana would be performing in Miami, at the American Airlines Arena. I got online to find directions. Hmmm, so this is where the Miami Heat basketball team plays its home games. Parking can be as much as $25? Who does Miami think it is . . . Manhattan?

As the time approached to drive to Miami, I realized I had better get dressed for the concert. What did people wear to concerts nowadays? The last song concert I had attended had been in 1982 – an outdoor performance in Michigan by Linda Ronstadt. I realized I didn’t know much about concert wear, due to my lack of recent participation. The only concerts I had ever attended were the two Linda Ronstadt concerts (the other one was in Sante Fe), a Janis Joplin concert in Edwardsville, IL, several Tanglewood performances in Massachusetts, and a Rickie Lee Jones concert in Royal Oak, Michigan. With the exception of the Rickie Lee Jones concert, which was in a small old movie theater - the type that had a combination stage and movie screen - all of these experiences were outdoors, at night, so one dressed in picnic style as would be appropriate for reclining on a blanket spread out on the grass.

But, tonight’s concert would be indoors, so maybe it was dressier? I considered wearing one of my Thomas Pink shirts, which I had bought in London. No, maybe that was too dressy. How about a simple, long-sleeved blue oxford cotton button-down collar dress shirt, slacks, and black loafers? Simple and casual – should be perfect.

As Michael and I drove the 45 miles south to Miami, we noticed some new construction. Boomers had erected a roller coaster in Ft. Lauderdale. The Velda Farms Dairy had painted their water tower so that it appeared to be filled with milk. The block of old rental homes that had been painted neon yellow (their owner had gotten a good price on neon yellow paint) had disappeared (or repainted).

Exiting I-95 at NW 8th in Miami, we followed the signs to AA Arena. As we approached, we saw signs advertising off-street parking. $5, $10, $15, the signs were increasing in five dollar increments as we approached the arena. Now, we were very close to the AA Garage, and street parking was up to $30. What would it be in the garage? We never found out, as a sign at the garage said it was full. We doubled back two blocks to the $15 parking and walked to the arena, passing panhandlers, ticket scalpers, and slow-walking concert attendees. I turned off my cell phone and advised Michael to do the same. We wouldn’t want to interrupt everyone’s enjoyment of the concert by disrupting it with unexpected in-coming calls.

As we passed through the security check and entered the arena, I noticed that most of the attendees were dressed more casually than I – many were wearing shorts and Santana t-shirts. The man behind me was wearing a dress. I guess I shouldn’t have worried about the dress code.

The concert was starting as we arrived, but it was only the opening band, whomever they were, and we had not had time to eat dinner, so I suggested we have hamburgers before going into the seating area. Mike liked that idea. As we waited in line to order, I couldn’t help noticing how loudly the opening act was playing. Bear in mind that we were not yet in the seating area. Were indoor music concerts LOUD? As I carried our cardboard tray of Fuego burgers, French fries, and sodas to the condiment table, I noticed that the cardboard tray was vibrating from the sounds coming from inside the arena. What must it be like inside?

Mike and I stood at a table near the condiment area and ate – the Fuego burgers were good. An animated blonde and two guys were standing at the table next to us. The blonde was wearing a tank top that said “Los Lonely . . . something” I couldn’t read the rest, as whatever followed “Lonely” had disappeared around the hugely ample curvature of her tank top.

As I was wondering what the rest of her shirt said, she did something rather startling. She reached down into her shirt, grabbed as much of her right breast as she could hold in one hand, and hoisted it to upper-deck seating, as it were. Then, she repeated the procedure with the other side, all with the casualness and aplomb of a Michael Jackson crotch grab. She hadn’t even paused in her animated conversation with the two guys at her table. As they exited, she turned, and I saw that the dark side of the moon had said “Boys.” So the message was “Los Lonely Boys,” whatever that meant.

The blonde and the two guys left and were replaced by a guy and a young woman in a blue halter top who was even more dramatically endowed than the blonde. What was in the water in Miami? Not that I was complaining. I wondered if any adjustments would be made, but none were. Michael had gotten some ice cream, but he couldn’t finish it, so we went into the seating area, aisle 112, lower deck row 32, seats 1 and 2.

The opening act was still playing, and were they LOUD! When the bass guitarist got busy, the sound percussions slammed into my chest. For some reason, I thought of Nicola Tesla’s experiments in using pulses of sound to split the earth, which was in his opinion nothing more than a giant acoustic device. Fortunately, the actual splitting of the earth would require exquisitely timed repetitions of sounds, and these were probably not in synch with tonight’s performance. Leaning over to Michael, I shouted that it might not have been necessary to turn off our cell phones.

The opening band included two guitarists, one of whom was whirling like a dervish. He was hopping up and down and spinning in complete circles as he played. Then they stood very close to each other and crab-walked sideways across the stage all the way to one end and then back, playing guitars all the way. Next, they turned their backs to the audience and put their guitars behind them, across the tops of their shoulders, and played as if they were being crucified.

At the conclusion of their act, one of the guitarists rambled on about how playing here, with Santana in Miami, had been a prayer coming true for Los Lonely Boys. What? These were Los Lonely Boys? It was all starting to make sense now . . . how blind I had been.

Now there was an intermission before Santana would appear. Mike wanted to see what was at the Santana Souvenir Stand. Surprisingly, it had t-shirts, pins, and baseball-style caps, emblazoned with logos of Santana or Los Lonely Boys. Mike gazed longingly at the baseball-style Santana hats. Never mind that he has more hats than Imelda Marcos has shoes, Mike is a collector, and I knew that he needed a souvenir hat. $25. This was starting to remind me of those credit card ads on TV . . . “Parking, $15; Fuego burgers, fries, soda and ice cream, $27, yet another souvenir hat, priceless.

There was a long line at the souvenir stand. I suggested that we wait until after the next show had begun. We went back in. Seated directly in front of us was a Latino couple. The woman was young and had been raised on Miami drinking water. The man was older, with pomaded salt-and-pepper hair, combed straight back. Whispering, I asked Michael if he thought I should pomade my hair. He seemed to recoil from the idea, but I thought the look seemed to be working for the guy in front of me. His young girlfriend seemed to agree. I thought of those TV ads for a hair product that hides grey hair from the ladies. The ex-jock commentators in the ads react with glee as the salt-and-pepper man is rejected by some young hottie whom he approaches in a bar.

“No play for Mr. Grey!,” they chortle. Later, Mr. Grey ducks into the men’s room, where he dabs some shoe polish on his whited beard, and upon his return, he is sexually assaulted by the young hottie, who fails to recognize that she had rejected him only moments before. I hate that ad.

Suddenly, I noticed that Mr. Grey and I were definitely in the salt-and-pepper minority tonight. I mentioned this to Michael. No, he could see another white-haired guy over there, motioning vaguely.

“Where?,” I asked.

“ In the orange seats,” Mike said.

“Aren’t all of the seats orange?,” I queried.

“No, we are in the red zone. Our seats are red. Above us, the seats are orange,” he said.

I wonder how many things I miss, being color-challenged. I hadn’t even noticed that there was another level of seats above us, so I guess I can’t blame colors for everything.

Santana and his band came onstage. He was wearing white pants, a white Mexican style loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt, and a black toque. Eight musicians and a singer accompanied him.

Two numbers into their show, the electric organ player hit some catchy beat, and one-by-one the women in the audience were charmed, pied-piper like, out of their seats and they began dancing and writhing rhythmically as they stood. Mr. Grey’s girlfriend could not resist. She was a good dancer, as energetic as she was limber. Now, some of the guys began to stand and dance too.

I pretended that I was about to join in. Mike was horrified. I was just kidding, but he wasn’t so sure.

This seemed to be a good time to buy the souvenir cap. We exited and bought a grey one in a matter of minutes, as the line had disappeared. Returning to our seats, we found a man sitting in one of them. I motioned to him to leave, and he pointed to someplace else where we should sit. I pointed to my ticket and then motioned that he should leave. It was too loud to talk. He departed, and we sat down again. Mike beamed as he adjusted his new Santana cap. He was having a great time.

The concert was a good one. We particularly enjoyed a song called “Smooth,” and another one in which a young woman was exhorted to change her evil ways.

At the end of the show, there was an encore in which Santana introduced each member of his band, and each one played something for us. As this was happening, a man came onstage, walked up to Santana and pointed to himself, as if asking that he be recognized next. Santana seemed to hesitate. Then Security came onstage and hustled the guy off. Recovering his voice, Santana said he wished he had some of whatever that guy was on.

As we exited the AA Arena that night, we had a great view of the Miami skyline. The weather was perfect, and Michael and I were in great moods. Maybe I would start listening to contemporary music again. This Santana guy wasn’t too bad!

Suddenly, I noticed that I couldn’t hear as well as normal. The pounding decibels in the arena had affected my hearing in much the same way as a too-rapid change in airplane cabin pressure, only now I couldn’t fix the problem by “popping” my ears. I assumed the hearing loss was only temporary, and it was.

The drive home was only slightly marred by a bumper-to-bumper slow down between exits 42 and 44 of I-95. As far as I could tell, it was all caused by drivers pausing to rubberneck at some road construction workers who were merely sitting on large cans on the flatbed of a truck.

They’ve got to change their evil ways . . . or just forget about it.

Feather Bowling

2005-05-29T17:17:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 29 May 2005

I am certain that those of you who are regular readers of my blog will be as surprised as I was to learn that my writer buddies Liz and Shiela have been using the e-word regarding my essays. You heard me right. They say the topics I choose are esoteric. Why, I don’t know. But since I have been tarred with that brush, I may as well add a few feathers and write about one of my favorite sports – Feather Bowling – a topic that even I have been known to describe by using the e-word.

First, let me say that I don’t understand why Feather Bowling isn’t more popular than it is. By “more popular” I mean there should be more than one place in Michigan where one can play it! That place, of course, is the Cadieux Café in Detroit, Michigan.

Cadieux Café

Feather Bowling is a game that originated in Belgium, where it was called Rolle Bolle.

It is exactly like American bowling except that it is played on a concave dirt lane instead of a flat wooden one, uses wooden “cheeses” instead of a bowling ball, and its objective is to land atop a feather rather than knock down wooden pins. Oh, and it is scored differently, and each team throws six cheeses, but . . . hmmm, maybe I should use the standard definition here and say it is like a combination of horseshoes and the Italian game of bocce.

When I lived in Michigan, my friends and I passed many a pleasant hour at the Cadieux Café. Our typical evening consisted of two parts: 1. Consume enormous quantities of Belgian beer and steamed mussels in the dining area of the café, and thus fortified, 2. waddle into the adjoining room and enjoy feather bowling on one of the two lanes built there for that purpose.

To explain the nuances of feather bowling, I will use the following images, which I have collected from the web site http://biology.yonsei.ac.kr :

Image 1: The concave lane and pit behind it

Image 1 shows how the dirt lane is concave. It also shows one of the pits that are at the ends of each lane. If a cheese rolls into the pit, it cannot be counted in the scoring. The sharp eyed reader will notice a couple of cheeses in the pit. The even sharper-eyed reader will notice a small, dark, vertical mark in the white spot directly in front of the girl. This is a feather. There is another one at the opposite end of the lane. Usually, these were white feathers, and someone told me they were pigeon feathers. Could be . . .

Image 2 shows a feather bowler and some “cheeses.” The cheeses are wooden disks that resemble cheese wheels. As I can see in this photo, but you probably cannot, some of the cheeses are red and some are green. Now, don’t you wish you were color-blind too? I thought so . . .

Image 2: Some red and green cheeses

The team that starts will roll all six of its red (or green) cheeses at the feather standing upright in the dirt at the opposite end of the lane. Typically, teams will try to place three cheeses as close to the feather as possible, and lag three more in front of them to act as blockers. A cheese can land directly on top of a feather (this is, in fact, hoped for), and it does not hurt the feather, which will spring smartly back into place when the cheese is removed. Typically, it will try to pretend as if nothing had happened. Feathers have their pride.

In the image below, you see the bowler has fired one cheese that appears to be aimed at an opposing team member. This is not a Tanya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan move. This is classic feather strategy! Due to the shape of the cheese and the concavity of the lane, this type of throw results in a sinuous roll that can avoid any blocking cheeses while still taking the bowled cheese to the desired spot. This takes a lot of practice and skill to master, and it may be that the daunting effort demanded is why we don’t see feather bowling more often.

The team that places its cheeses closer to the feather than the other team gets one point for each closer cheese. A game consists of ten points and the score is kept on what looks like a giant cribbage board.

Ironically, although the game originated in Belgium, it doesn’t seem to be very popular there anymore. When I was in Belgium, I looked for a feather bowling establishment, thinking I would find a modern multi-plex with a minimum of 100 lanes, (no waiting) but I could not find even one. All of the Belgian rolle bolle images I find in the web seem to have been made in the 1940’s. I would have thought that with all their chocolate shops and frites stands they could have kept at least one rolle bolle stadium, but I guess not.

Maybe it is too esoteric for their tastes.

Below: Four cheeses and a feather

Delray Beach Dog Walk

2005-05-29T13:16:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 26 May 2005

This evening, I wrote a story about Loretta Young and posted it to my blog. As I was trying to decide whether to print it, I heard heavy panting. This is Peanut’s way of letting me know he thinks it would be a wonderful idea to go out. Peanut is my kids’ Bichon Frise dog. He likes to stay with me. When he wants to go out, he gets so excited that he pants. Power of suggestion, I guess (“Look how much fun we will have! Pant! Pant! Pant!”).

So, I snapped a collar and leash on Peanut and we headed out the door for downtown Delray Beach. It was Thursday, about 10:00 pm, and I knew that Elvis would be performing at Elwood’s Dixie Barbecue.

Elvis, a.k.a. Scott Ringersen, performs twice weekly at Elwood’s

Elwood’s is a former gasoline service station converted into a bar/restaurant. It has a pool table, a stage, a bar and several dining booths and tables. It doesn’t have many exterior walls. The bar and stage and dining area are under a roof, but they have no exterior walls. They are in what was once an outdoor area where the gas pumps stood. The waitperson t-shirts still say “eat our food and get gas.”

Scott Ringersen has two careers. By day, he is a Delray Beach police officer who has been granted a special exemption that allows him to have Elvis Presley sideburns, which he needs for his other job – an Elvis impersonator.

I have seen Scott patrolling Atlantic Avenue on a Segway HT, while on his day job, and that is worth a second look. Here is Dick Cheney on a Segway:

As Peanut and I approached Elwood’s, I could hear Elvis’ throaty rumble. But his voice was accompanied tonight by the singing of two women, who were participating in a call-and-response song with Elvis.

This was not some new feature of his act. This was an impromptu session consisting of Elvis and two young women from the audience. Both women were holding beer bottles as they sang, and it appeared they were not holding them for someone else.

Crossing the railroad tracks with Peanut, I could see that the women were really getting into the performance of Elvis. As they sang with him, they began to shimmy. One of the girls began to shake her black hair from side to side. I believe I saw a few pelvic thrusts and wiggles thrown in too.

Peanut is more of a Beatles fan, so he wanted to keep on walking. We continued a little ways and came upon a young couple and their 14-month old daughter. The little girl was entranced with Peanut and wanted to walk up to him, but she couldn’t quite get her legs to go where she wanted. She would start what appeared to be a high-kicking goose step toward Peanut, but there was no telling where her foot would land. Still she was making some progress. The parents were from Boston, and we chatted for several minutes about some of the Italian restaurants in the north side of Boston. I can usually discuss tourists’ hometowns with them as I have worked in so many places. Also, it is a way for me to keep up with any changes.

I walked Peanut to the Art Gallery on the next corner and then decided to go back the way we had come. I wanted to see how Elvis’ singing/dancing girls were doing. For drunk girls, they could really dance! Presumably caught up in the shouted approvals of their fellow drinkers/diners (as well as the throngs of onlookers who stood along the sidewalk), hair-swinger was now performing a set of moves that would make a Texas cheerleader blush. I am not a dance expert, but I believe her routine consisted of the following choreography moves:

Boogaloo, Chocolate Pony, Get Down Dirty, Tail Feather
Rag Doll, Stuck Zipper, Circle Hump, Hoover
Booty Bomb, Lambada Dip, Full Enchilada, Volcano
Full Nasty, The Otis, Chinese Acrobat, Shiver Shake
Hump-a-lump, Bend-Over, Banana Split, Three-Way
All-night-long, Texas Tommy, Oyster-shucker, Slide-Whistle

Elvis’ only comment was “There must be a full moon out tonight.”

The Boston couple had stopped to gape. Their 14-month old getting caught up in the music too. She was swaying from side to side. Cute. The crowd was becoming divided on whom to watch.

I heard a familiar accent behind me. I turned around and there was a very beautiful young woman who was reaching down to pet Peanut. He gets all the girls. I asked the girl where she was from.

“Rio!” she replied. Uh oh, I had never been to Rio. I asked if she had ever been in Sao Paulo. Yes, she used to live there, so we talked about Sao Paulo for a while. I practiced my Portuguese phrases on her. She was wearing the kind of lipstick that has sparkles in it, jeans, and a tight cotton-shirt. I wished I had learned more Portuguese when I had worked in Sao Paulo.

It was time to walk Peanut back to my apartment. As we walked, I remembered showing Delray Beach to my cousin Tom Wilson and his wife Becky when they visited me here two years ago. They live near Ava, Illinois, population 800. As we walked around downtown Delray Beach, I told them how much I enjoyed living here, and that it was the first time in my life that I had ever lived in a small town. They glanced at each other. Apparently, their definition of a “small town” was not the same as mine, and it did not include any place large enough to have an Elvis impersonator. Delray Beach has a population of about 60,000, but most of the people live west of I-95. I live east, in the old part of Delray Beach, between I-95 and the Atlantic Ocean. There are probably only about 10,000 people in my end of town. It seems pretty small here to me, but then I had gotten used to working in cities like Sao Paulo, where the population is 20 million (about four times the population of Scotland).

Delray Beach girls love Elvis

I have watched Scott Ringersen’s Elvis act many times. He performs it near where I live every Thursday and Friday night – two shows each night. Every time I see him, my thoughts eventually turn to the time that Angela Duffy and I worked in Memphis and made a side visit to Graceland, the former home of Elvis. But, that is another story . . .

Right now, Peanut is panting again. I think he wants to catch the second show. Or maybe he wants a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich?

Oh, and thanks for reading this. Thank you very much.

Microsoft Mary

2005-05-29T11:50:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 29 May 2005

I heard the voice of Microsoft Mary last night. It was my first time, and I will never forget it. I wonder what she is doing now?

I had been listening to the online archives of the This American Life radio programs. In Episode 279, Auto Show, from 10 Dec 2004, David Segal ventures into the world of db (decibels) drag racing. In db drag racing, the cars themselves don’t move - their sound systems compete with each other. The winner is the car with the loudest stereo.

David described how the contests work. A microphone is taped inside a competitor’s car, the doors are closed, and then they play a standard three-second sound known as “the burp.” The winner is the sound system with the most decibels, usually 150+ (much louder than a jet engine).

The radio program recorded one of the contests. As a competition was about to begin, an other-worldly woman’s voice could be heard giving a count-down. David Segal off-handedly identified her as “Microsoft Mary.”

Immediately, I wanted to know more about this Microsoft Mary, but David made no more mention of her. He seemed more interested in wondering why anyone would want to make a car stereo so loud that one could not listen to it. As if that wasn’t obvious. But, what about Microsoft Mary?

Just then, Peanut came up to me, panting. “Say, wouldn’t it be a great idea to go out?” he seemed to be saying in Bichon Frise. So I took Peanut for a walk and forgot about Microsoft Mary.

Then, this morning, I was reading T. M. Shine’s CityLink newspaper column, TimeLine, and the tag line said he had found a way to even the score with technology. He was using the text-to-voice feature of his employer’s computer system to listen to his e-mail via his cell phone. The computer voice seemed to be that of a robot woman, whom he imagined to be “like, Kelly Preston in a foul mood.”

Inspired, Shine started typing love notes to himself (“Terry, I miss you . . .") and listening to them on his cell phone as “Kelly” read them to him. Kind of a turn-on.

Wait, a robot-woman voice? Could his “Kelly” be my Microsoft Mary? Now I had to look this up. Here is what I found out:

Microsoft Mary, Microsoft Mike, and Microsoft Sam are the three “free” voices that come with AT&T’s Natural Voice Reader software. This software is used by the blind to listen to text, and it has many other uses, such as demonstrated by T. M. Shine. Some writers use it to check their own writing for errors, as they can hear things that proofreading might miss.

The free voices are, not surprisingly, less natural-sounding (more Stephen Hawking-ish) than the fee voices that are available. I have learned that the ReadPlease Corporation sells the following more-natural voices:

To listen to an audio sample, please click on the desired voice.
Crystal (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Julia (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Lauren (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Mike (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Mel (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Ray (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Rich (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Anjali - Indian Accent English (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Audrey - UK (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Charles - UK (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Klara - German (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Reiner - German (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Rosa - Spanish (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Alberto - Spanish (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Juliette - French (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma
Alain - French (AT&T) 16k mp3 wav wma

As if having all of these choices isn’t difficult enough, it seems that one can even create a customized voice of one’s own choosing. I wonder if I could make a Sarah Vowell voice to read my blog back to me? That might be interesting. I really like her voice – reminiscent of Betsy Boop with Dorothy Parker undershadings – and I think it would be perfect for narrating some of my essays. Of course, for most of my essays, an elk-gutting manly voice, sort of a Darth Vader – cum – John Wayne voice, would be more appropriate. Obviously, this is a topic worthy of additional research.

Popeye

2005-05-27T20:50:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 27 May 2005

"I bet the one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture, is the story of Popeye.” – Deep Thoughts (by Jack Handey)

As I was walking Peanut (the Bichon) in Delray Beach this afternoon, I started thinking once again about the Creative Process, and I found my thoughts turning, as they often do, to Popeye.

To me, Popeye is the archetypical example of how the Creative Process works. In real life, it seems that really good ideas need time to percolate – an incubation period, as it were. Popeye shows us this. Elzie Segar didn’t come up with Popeye until after he had spent ten years drawing comics.

Oh, I know what you are thinking: “But wait, Tom! Didn’t Nicola Tesla spontaneously invent the alternating current induction motor (and make a stick-on-sand sketch of it) when the setting sun reminded him of Goethe’s famous lines in Faust?":

The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastens, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!

Well, yes, that did happen, but I am not talking about obvious inspirations, such as this connection between Faust and electric motors. Anyone could have done that! Likewise, given the proper inspirational circumstances, I am sure that all of us could have come up with any of his 700 patents. All right, all right, I give the man credit for inventing radio, fluorescent lights, remote control devices, hydro-electric power plants, the wireless transmission of electric current, the discovery of cosmic waves, the Tesla Coil, and, oh yes, the AC electric motor. But these inspired creations do not neatly fit into my “percolate” idea for how Great Ideas are born, so I shall ignore them.

So, if Great Ideas, such as Popeye, need to “percolate,” then what does this suggest to you? To me, it suggests that many great ideas were just one twist of the kaleidoscope dial from never falling into place! Scary, eh?

To be sure, that next twist of the kaleidoscope doesn’t always yield gold. Sometimes, instead of Popeye, we get Aquaman. Honestly, what kind of super hero is Aquaman? Ok, he can communicate directly with sea life and swim 100 miles per hour underwater, but how often is there a call for this (besides keeping our oceans safe from Nazis in WW II)?

Elzie Crisler Segar had been drawing the Thimble Theater comic strip for ten years before he got the storyline idea to have Castor Oyl and Ham Gravy travel to Dice Island. But, I am getting ahead of the story. At the time (1929), Thimble Theater was a modestly successful comic strip that ran in the Hearst newspaper syndicate. The “star” of the strip was Olive Oyl.

You see, Castor Oyl (Olive’s brother) and Ham Gravy (Olive’s boyfriend until Popeye came along) had come into the possession of Bernice the Whiffle Hen. Having determined that Bernice was a “lucky hen,” they decided to take her to Mr. Fadewell’s gambling casino on Dice Island.

For six thousand dollars, they bought a boat. As Castor noted to Ham Gravy, it was a fine boat that had only a few holes in its hull, and those were all below the waterline, so they wouldn’t show. All they needed was an experienced sailor “to drive the boat.” They hired Popeye, who made his first appearance in Thimble Theater on January 17, 1929.

Popeye had been invented for just that one story, but he proved to be so popular with the readers of the comic strip that he was brought back, Olive gave the boot to Ham Gravy, and the eventually the strip was renamed for Popeye. What makes this story even more goose-bumpy is that fact that Elzie Segar was sick with a bad cold on the day that he went into his office and drew Popeye for the first time. Mrs. Segar had begged him not to work that day, but he went in anyway. In later years, Elzie often wondered if he ever would have created Popeye if he hadn’t gone to work that day. Given his penchant for day-to-day inspirations (I mean “percolations”), he might have drawn a different sailor on another day.

The real-life model for Popeye was a colorful character from Chester, Illinois named Rocky Feigle. Elzie Crisler Segar had grown up in Chester, and many of his cartoon characters, including Olive Oyl and Wellington Wimpy, were inspired by real-life Chester people. I have been to some of Elzie’s old haunts there, and I feel a special attachment to him, as he is the only famous cartoonist who appears in my Shawcross gedcom file (posted at Rootsweb.com). Many of Elzie’s Crisler ancestors are in my file.

Popeye was undeniably a great invention. The Spinach Industry has credited Popeye with single-handedly increasing the US consumption of spinach by thirty-three percent in the years between 1931 and 1936.

But now I am feeling a little guilty about belittling the inventions of Nicola Tesla in comparison to Popeye, so I will close with this image that was sent to me by Liz Wadsworth, the horse owner and botanical expert who lives in Australia. This image, a satellite photo of the Earth at night, was first published by NASA as the picture of the day for Aug 22, 2004. They called it “Earth by Night.” The Tesla Memorial Society of New York lists it on their web site as “Tesla’s Electric Lights Over Continents.”

Earth by Night
a.k.a. Tesla’s Electric Lights Over Continents

I suppose the title depends on one’s point of view. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover some Russian publication listing this photo as the “Trans-Siberian Railway by Night.”

Apache Dance

2005-05-27T13:05:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 27 May 2005

While performing an exhaustive search for Loretta Young pictures, I re-discovered my November 18, 1946 issue of Life magazine (15¢). It did not contain the Loretta Young beach photo I was looking for, but it did have a photo essay on the Apache Dance. I had forgotten the Apache Dance!

Apache Dancers

Apache Dancers used to be a common feature of nightclub acts, and they were seen in countless movies and television programs. Now, thanks to our current obsession with being “politically correct,” we seldom see this style of “tough dance,” which elevated simple domestic violence to an art form.

Pronounced in French as (“ah-PAHSH”), the Apache depicted a Parisian pimp and his prostitute in an elaborate pantomime in which he slaps her, beats her, tosses her around, drags her by the hair, and dumps her in a corner. Naturally, this causes her to realize how much she loves him, so she comes crawling back to him.

Allegedly, an actual street fight circa 1890 in the Montmartre section of Paris inspired this dance. A newspaper reporter wrote "The fury of a riotous incident between two men and a women rose to the ferocity of savage Apache Indians in battle." Flattered, the denizens of the Montmartre underworld created their own style of dancing which recreated the events of that night. The word “Apache” became synonymous with Parisian street gangs. There was a style of shirt known as Apache, and the Apache Dance was known as “the dance of the Underworld.” The correct attire for performing the Apache Dance was as follows:
Men: cap, neckerchief, tight-fitting shirt, tight-fitting pants, comfy shoes
Women: tight-fitting striped top, slit skirt, mesh hose, garter, high heels

The Apache Dance was as scandalous as it was popular. In 1920, the Smith College student Margaret Mitchell, who would later gain fame writing about Southerners “with gumption” in Gone With The Wind, performed the Apache Dance during her Atlanta debut. The resulting scandal kept her out of the Junior League. So, she stayed home and wrote a book.

Mistinguett, the most popular French music hall entertainer and in her time the most highly-paid female entertainer in the world, popularized the Apache Dance in 1909 with Max Dearly. The dance, also known as the “Valse Chaloupee,” was billed as one “in which the male partner throws and drags his mate around the stage in a sort of domination-theme manner.”

University of California students Alan Carson and Helen Hale

In 1946, Life magazine reported on the annual apache party that was held in the Theta Chi fraternity at the University of California:

“ . . . the girls said they liked being thrown around.” – Life, p.144, 11/18/46

By 1931, the Apache Dance was so well-known that Charlie Chaplin could use it in a comedic scene in his classic film City Lights. Here, the naïve tramp played by Charlie witnesses an Apache performance and tries to come to the aid of the woman dancer. In 1934, George Raft and Carole Lombard did the dance in Bolero. The movie Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) includes a nightclub performance of the Apache Dance. Ironically, Shirley MacLaine performed an Apache Dance in the 1960 film titled Can-Can.

Come to think of it, 1960 was probably the last time I saw an Apache Dance. Since then, it seems the pendulum of political correctness has swung the other way. We can no longer enjoy the time-honored entertainment themes of violence against women, racial and ethnic stereotypes, or making fun of the handicapped.

I should explain now for the benefit of those readers who do not know me, that I am not saying this seriously. I am joking (really).

But, I would enjoy seeing a well-performed Apache Dance again. It was sort of like a Tango on Steroids. It required perfect timing on the part of both dancers to avoid serious injury, but it usually ended with a kiss. Like life is, sometimes.

Loretta Young

2005-05-26T19:40:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 26 May 2005

“Let’s go out tonight, and I’ll be Loretta.” - (Loretta Young to Duny Cashion)

Born 6 Jan 1913 in Salt Lake City, Utah, Gretchen Young changed her name to Loretta Young and became the famous movie and television actress. But she never confused who she was, Gretchen, with her image, Loretta.

It can be revealed now that when I was a younger boy, I had a crush on Loretta Young. It was a source of great angst to me that she was the same age as my father, and so she would probably choose him over me, but then again, Dad seemed pretty happy with Mom, so maybe I stood a chance if I could just get to meet her? Oh, when I stopped to think about it, I knew things would never work out between us – because of our age differences – but I had been introduced to the concept of there being one perfect person for each of us. Loretta seemed to be that girl for me, and in terms of geological time, we had just missed each other! Of course, I am older and wiser now. I no longer see things the way I did then. I know now who my perfect girl really is. She was born in Europe and died of the black plague in the Middle Ages. Still, by geological standards, this was another narrow miss.

Because of that narrow, geological-time-miss thing, I did not learn of Loretta Young until she was in her second career (1953-1961). Her second career was Television Star, but her first career had been Movie Star.

Loretta Young started as a child extra in silent films. She became a major movie star, appearing in nearly 100 films between 1927 and 1953 and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Farmer’s Daughter, a romantic comedy.

Gretchen Michaela Young, a.k.a. Loretta Young

Above: Loretta at age 18 in 1931. Here she appears in one of those regrettably popular publicity shots that shamelessly used beautiful young women as fore drops for what are, obviously, merely exploitative photos of the innocent California beach and ocean.

Fortunately, that was then and this is now, and we men no longer are interested in seeing pictures such as these.

I don’t know why I bothered to include this photo, except from an historical point of view. Certainly, I could have found better use for the hour I spent in looking for it!

Loretta Young moved seamlessly from movie star to television star and was the first person to win an Oscar and an Emmy. Actually, she won three Best Actress Emmys for her dramatic anthology series, The Loretta Young Show.

They don’t make television shows like that anymore. Literally. Her dramatic anthology format was TV’s Neanderthal man equivalent to today’s continuing character series Homo Sapiens. In 1953, we still had larger-than-life movie stars that had been created by the major film studios, and the star power of a Loretta Young was sufficient to launch a television series while at the same time drawing in female viewers.

Come to think of it, female viewers may have been the primary target audience of the Loretta Young show (and not impressionable young men, as I was thinking when I started writing this essay). One of the most memorable parts of the show was Loretta’s fabulous entrance, in which she twirled down some steps in whatever she happened to be wearing at home that day (usually, this was a fashion gown, such as what Cinderella might have kicked back in after returning home from the Prince’s ball). After a while, I wised up to this and would go get a sandwich or something while she was doing her entrance, as I wasn’t into that ball gown scene.

It is difficult to find images of Loretta in these “oh, this old thing?” ball gowns. In the decades after they passed from style, she insisted that these dated fashion images be kept off television, and she sued NBC for a half-million dollars (and won) when it dared to show some of her re-runs.

Loretta Young enters a room

This is too bad, because Loretta Young was really a very talented actress, and now we cannot see her on television. Especially since she died in 2000 . . .

Her dramatic anthology show was different from the television shows of today. She introduced and concluded each show but acted in only about half of them. She was the only big-name star that acted in her shows, and each week the show had different actors (except for Loretta, of course) and would take place in different locations. There were some common themes, however. Often, when Loretta appeared, she played a single, professional woman who finds romance. But sometimes, she was a mother, a daughter, or a wife who had to deal with men. Sometimes this was done with melodrama, and sometimes it was done as romantic comedy.

I vividly remember a Loretta Young Show in which Loretta played what I call a “mature hot babe” (I think the scholarly cinematic term is M.I.L.F.), who has decided to have one last romantic fling before she heads into the sunset. She wasn’t that old actually, but she had just been diagnosed with leprosy. I think we all know how that is. Anyway, she goes to Europe, rents a convertible sports car, and starts trolling for hunky young men. Finally, she finds the perfect one, and is sitting in her white convertible chatting it up with him as she smokes a cigarette. Things seem to be going pretty well until the young hunk notices that the cigarette is burning a hole between her fingers! Wow, they don’t write romance stories like that anymore.

I think about that episode often. Probably more often than I would otherwise, but it so happens that there is a poor fellow with no nose that lives near me, and whenever I see him, I think of that Loretta Young episode. Of course, I never mention that episode to No-Nose, as I am more sensitive than that. By the way, I am not making this up – this is completely true.

Not one to abuse her star power, Loretta usually dressed by herself.

Above: As this stock photo attests, Loretta Young never forgot she was plain old Gretchen Young, a regular person like you and me, who put on her nylons one leg at a time. Well, I put on my pants one leg at a time, but I think you get the idea here. Loretta was a real woman. With two legs! As this photo clearly shows, I think.

Aside from her chiseled cheekbones, her flawless skin, her fabulous figure and her sensual pouting lips (things which I think we have to put up with in women), I think what attracted me was Loretta’s sense of humor. That, and her overall niceness and sweetness. From what I have read about her, she was a very nice person in real life. I wish I had actually known her.

Oh, to be sure, Loretta had her faults. For one thing, the love child she had with Clark Gable . . . but no woman is perfect, and I would have been willing to overlook that. Oh, and her half-sister married Ricardo Montalban, but I could have overlooked that too, in spite of his condescending treatment of Tattoo while they were on Fantasy Island.

Although I have made several light-hearted jests about Loretta Young in this essay, the truth is that I am a big fan of her work and really did have a crush on her circa 1958.

She was a genuine talent, and she is missed, and that is why I am writing about her. I am concerned that, like carbon paper, she is unknown to today’s generation of movie and television watchers.

In Memoriam
Loretta Young, 1913-2000

Before the invention of the miracle drug Botox,
movie stars had to rely on the gauze-over-the-lens
camera trick. (Another historical footnote for my
younger readers to enjoy)

Lucky Dogs

2005-05-24T10:55:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 23 May 2005

Lucky Dogs vendor and cart, New Orleans

Once upon a time (1977), I visited two young women who had recently moved to New Orleans. In their enthusiasm to show me all of the interesting sights in the French Quarter, they gleefully pointed out the Lucky Dogs hotdog carts that roamed the Quarter day and night.

In those days, I sketched frequently, and as a thank you to them for being my “native” guides, I made a fanciful drawing of “Lucky Dogs Through the Years.” In this sketch, I included a pen-and-ink drawing of the current model of the Lucky Dogs cart plus many earlier versions (which I invented).

I wish now that I had made a copy of that drawing. I would like to refresh my memory of it. As I recall, it included about six different “historical” versions of the Lucky Dogs carts. One of the imagined versions included a Lucky Dogs cart with a 1960’s Cadillac tail fin and bumper bullets. I think the oldest version looked a bit liked Henry Ford’s first horseless carriage, but I might have gone back all the way to the stone age and made a Flintstone-like cart with stone wheels. I just don’t remember. I do remember that the girls liked the drawing, a lot, and that I was surprised at their reaction (and flattered).

As I recall, the first time we saw a Lucky Dogs cart, we were standing on Bourbon Street, near the giant poster of the famous stripper Chris Owens. Suddenly, a Lucky Dogs vendor and cart rounded the corner, and it just seemed so incongruous. This neighborhood of New Orleans has been described as housing “every vice that man has ever conceived in his wildest aberrations, including several modern variants made possible through the wonders of science.” This quotation is from John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces, in which the quirky main character Ignatius Reilly sells hot dogs in New Orleans for Paradise Vendors, Inc. (an obvious pseudonym for Lucky Dogs). My daughter Lauren suggested that I read this Pulitzer-prize winning book, and I thank her for that.

As I recall, the salesmanship of the fictional misfit Ignatius Reilly was no match for his girth, and he ate his hotdogs instead of vending them. If so, he did something I haven’t. My two companions and I never did eat any Lucky Dogs. We just looked at the carts.

My understanding is that some New Orleans natives look down their noses at Lucky Dogs. A New Orleans newspaper ran a contest titled “You Know You’re A New Orleans Native If.” Here is one of the entries:

You know better than to drink hurricanes or eat Lucky Dogs.
Murray Tate

However, I have read many online comments (made by tourists, I guess) that rhapsodize about Lucky Dogs. The next time I am in New Orleans, I will try one and decide for myself.

The “New Orleans Native” contest had some interesting entries. Here are two more of them:

You can pronounce "Chop-a-tool-is" but can't spell it.
Larry Barattini

You can pronounce and spell Tchoupitoulas.
Dana Harrison

So, not even New Orleans natives can agree about Tchoupitoulas Street. A New Orleans friend of mine, Tom Woods, once told me that years ago, in the days of horse-drawn street trolleys, a horse had expired while working on Tchoupitoulas, and the reporting police officer had it dragged around the corner to Canal Street so he could avoid having to spell Tchoupitoulas.

But getting back to Lucky Dogs, I suppose that in regard to dining, the New Orleans Native is a bit spoiled. I believe it is not possible to purchase a bad meal in New Orleans. I think even the vending machines in New Orleans are good! In my case, I would rather have one Tenderloin Marchand du Vin at Galatoire’s than a year’s supply of hotdogs (even if they were Lucky). But that is because the Marchand du Vin sauce at Galatoire’s is so good, I could eat a towel if it was dipped in it.

New Orleans Natives are very passionate about their food. On one visit, I listened for two hours to a radio call-in show in which listeners debated where to buy the best po-boys and ralphs and muffalettas, and how these sandwiches should be dressed. Come to think of it, I don’t think they talked about Lucky Dogs . . . maybe that was the topic for another day.

Come the day that I DO sample a Lucky Dog, I know where I will go afterward for dessert: Café du Monde. Laissez les bon temps roulez!

The white stuff on your face is powdered sugar.
J. Hopkins

A plate of beignets, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and a steaming mug of café au lait with chicory – it doesn’t get any better than this!

Beignets and café au lait
Café du Monde, New Orleans

Memory Trick

2005-05-21T18:46:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 21 May 2005

I have a memory trick. It is a good one, and I will sell it to you for a dollar.

Oh, I am not talking about a run-of-the-mill mnemonic device, such as “Every Good Boy Does Fine” (music) or “Can Oscar See Down My Pants Pocket?” (geology). I am not even talking about one of the more sophisticated memory tricks, such as those used by Las Vegas card sharks to “count cards” while playing Blackjack.

No, I am talking about the memory trick equivalent of an Atom Bomb! I am talking about a memory trick that will stupefy your friends and acquaintances – the equivalent of those old advertisements that began:

“They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I began to play . . .”

So far, I have gone through this life selfishly keeping this memory trick to myself. But recent cash-flow embarrassments have motivated me to share my secret with a grateful world, for the low price of one thin dollar. I know what you must be thinking, “if this memory trick is so good, then why would Tom sell it to me so cheaply?”

This is where the magic of the “Rule of Large Numbers” comes in. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the world population is 6 billion people. In truth, it is 6,446,131,400, (I just checked). Now, let us say that only half of these people are regular readers of my blog. Further, let us assume that only half of these readers have the perceptiveness and integrity to recognize my Memory Trick as one of the greatest memory tricks of all time and are willing to pony up the one lousy dollar I am charging. We are still talking about over a million dollars, and “that ain’t hay!“ as J. P. Morgan used to say.

This is a GREAT memory trick, and its only drawback is that there are not frequent occasions when one can use it. I myself have used it only twice. Then again, atomic bombs have been dropped “only twice” in warfare, and you can see the impact this has had. I will now describe the two occasions on which I have used this memory trick. I will begin with the first, the one I now describe as “Little Boy*.”

The “Little Boy*” event occurred in 1973 or 1974 (I don’t have a memory trick for remembering dates). I was living in Evansville, Indiana then but remained a member of the Missouri Air National Guard. This gave me the income to make my rent payments and allowed me to escape Evansville for one weekend a month. So, one weekend a month, I would drive to St. Louis.

One particular weekend, I stopped for a visit with my Mom and Dad. Someone else was there, but I had better not reveal their identity, for reasons I shall not divulge. Anyway, Mom had been telling this other person about a new postage stamp that was scheduled to come out. She said it was in honor of a Scientist whose name began with the letter “P.” She couldn’t recall the name. She and the other person had been puzzling over this for quite a while before I arrived. The other person (O.P.) was a Scientist and had suggested many possible names, but none were the one Mom was looking for.

Immediately, I recognized this as a Golden Opportunity to use my Memory Trick. I had discovered this trick quite by accident, and fairly recently. I had been trying to think of the name of a former co-worker, whose name I was convinced began with a “B.” I described this person to another co-worker, without mentioning the “B” part. They remembered his name. It was Don Le Beau. Oh. Well, the “B” was the letter in his name that got the most emphasis – the loudest sound – so I had somehow mentally filed him under his most significant sound rather than alphabetically. Hmmm. If I did this sometimes, maybe other people did too.

Since the O. P. had not come up with the “P” Scientist’s name, I concluded that this might be another “Don Le Beau.” Perhaps the most heavily accented syllable of the Scientist’s name began with a “P’” but the name itself did not? It was worth a try, especially since I doubted that I knew as many Scientist’s names as did the O. P. So, searching my memory bank for “Scientist sounds that have a ‘P’,” almost instantly I came up with Copernicus. I am not sure how I search on “sound,” but it isn’t very difficult – just let your mind go kind of “fuzzy.”

“Copernicus?,” I asked.

“YES!,” shouted Mom. O.P. nearly fell backwards out of his kitchen chair.

The second occasion on which I used this memory trick, the “Fat Man*” event, was years later. My girlfriend and one of her girl friends had been trying to talk about a man in the French Revolution who had been stabbed to death by a woman while he was in his bathtub. Sounded to me like a good topic for a “chick flick.”

Anyway, my girlfriend had been wracking her brain trying to think of the man’s name.

“It begins with an ‘R’, “ she said.

“Marat?” I replied.

I wish I had had a camera to record the looks on their faces. I suspect it would not have surprised them now if I had taken the next opportunity to walk across the nearest body of water. It was if I had read their minds, even though they themselves could not, and despite the fact that they had given me a pretty shoddy clue. I struggled to act as if this were just an everyday thing for a guy like me, the humble possessor of the uncanny ability to read their most secret thoughts!!!

But, the truth was that I knew these girls were pretty sharp, so if the name really had begun with an “R,” then they would have thought of it. It was another perfect opportunity for me to use my memory trick, so I took it. I have no shame.

OK! I am sure you are all anxious to get out there and start looking for ways to use my Memory Trick to amaze your own friends and acquaintances. Just don’t forget to wire one dollar to the secret Swiss bank account that I will set up for this purpose. I don’t want to have all this money traced to me, would you? So far, I have been having difficulty finding a Swiss banker who can think “out of the box” enough to open an account for me without demanding some huge initial deposit, but I will keep working on this, so watch this blog for instructions on where to wire your dollar.

Until then . . . don’t forget, and use your powers for good, not evil!

*Historical note: the first Atomic Bomb was nicknamed “Little Boy” and the second one was “Fat Man.” They were of different experimental designs and looked nothing at all alike. Sort of like the Judd sisters.

Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, 1793

Automatic Human Jukebox

2005-05-19T20:21:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 19 May 2005

The writer Shiela Hanlon e-mailed me recently about a story she is developing about “timing” and how it affects our lives. How are we impacted when we fiddle with the expected “timing” of major life events? For example, what is the difference between completing college in four consecutive years versus having a gap of many years between one’s Junior and Senior years?

Interesting questions, but hard to answer. I gave this some hard thought for about twenty minutes, and when I didn’t come up with an answer, I did what I usually do – I stopped thinking about it. Now you know something about me, and yes, this is why my capsules for human invisibility combined with the power of flight cannot be found on your pharmacy shelves today. I couldn’t crack that nut in twenty minutes of hard thinking, so I quit on it.

However, while I was still thinking about the “timing” question, I did happen to recall something I had not thought about for several years, and that will be the topic for this story.

Shiela had inspired me to think about timing. I was still thinking about this at the Sons of the American Revolution luncheon last Tuesday (see my story about Auckland), when the President of my local S.A.R. chapter told us that donations were needed in order to replace the “Freedom Tree” that had been planted some years ago. It seems the tree, a Live Oak, had been obliterated by Hurricane Frances, and now there was just an empty spot that was accompanied by a brass plaque that said a tree was there. But there was not even a Dead Oak there now – only a lonely plaque remains. Obviously, this is a timing problem. At one time, the tree and the plaque had coexisted in happy cosynchronicity. Don’t bother looking this word up, you are the first to read it – as I just made it up. It means they existed at the same time. Now, however, it was a different time, and the tree and the plaque were no longer to be found together, even though it once had seemed that they would be together always (like Prince Charles and Diana). Timing.

From here, it was just a chip shot to start thinking about timing and The Automatic Human Jukebox. Whenever I visited San Francisco, I saw him.

Tom Shawcross and the Automatic Human Jukebox
San Francisco, California 1974

If I could count on anything in this topsy-turvy world, I knew I could always count on the Automatic Human Jukebox. Whenever I visited San Francisco, he could be counted on to be there. The writer Richard Brautigan told of a friend who always answered his phone whenever Richard would call him, no matter what the time of day, no matter what the season. The Automatic Human Jukebox was like that for me. I knew that I would always find him somewhere along Beach Street. Sometimes he would be by Victoria Park, as he is shown here. Other times, he might be down by the Cannery or closer to Ghirardelli Square. But he was always there.

This is how he operated: He would sit in his phone-booth sized cardboard box. The flap that you see with the musical note would be in the down position, so he was not visible. Helpful instructions printed on the side of the box told the passer-by what to do: 1. Insert coin(s) 2. Select Tune.

Upon the insertion of coins with a minimum value of twenty-five cents, a slide whistle would blow, and the flap would be elevated, exposing the Automatic Human Jukebox and his trumpet. One would then tell him the name of the song that one wanted to hear, and he would play it on his trumpet. The length and the quality of the trumpet playing appeared dependent upon how many coins had been inserted.

One feature that puzzled me was why one side of the box listed the names of tunes that one could suggest. Did that mean he didn’t know any tunes besides those or did it mean that some people had trouble thinking of the names of tunes? I suspect it was the latter, because I never selected any of the suggested tunes, and he always played what I requested.

In the photo shown here, I had just inserted a quarter, and he had raised the flap. What happened next is that I requested “Bye Bye Blackbird.” It was not on his list of suggested tunes. He must have liked this song too, because he played an unusually long (and excellent) version of it. Quite a large crowd gathered as he was playing, and most of us started singing the words to the song: Words & Music by Ray Henderson & Mort Dixon, 1926
Recorded by Eddie Cantor, 1953

Pack up all my cares and woe,
Here I go, singin’ low –
Bye bye blackbird.

Where somebody waits for me,
Sugar’s sweet, and so is she – Bye, bye blackbird.

Bridge:

No one here can love or understand me;
Oh what hard luck stories they all hand me.

Make my bed and light the light,
I’ll arrive late tonight –
Blackbird, bye bye, blackbird, bye bye.

This is a very fond memory for me. I had never seen him draw such a large crowd, and I had never seen so many people sing as he played. He even smiled afterward, and I had never seen him do that. Usually, he just blew the slide whistle again and closed the flap, to await the next request and the next paying customer.

Then, one year, I went to San Francisco and he was not there. I asked around. It seems that someone in the City of San Francisco had decided that there were getting to be too many street performers. There had been a crack down, and the Automatic Human Jukebox was gone.

Later, I read a story about him. As I recall, he had been a schoolteacher. I think he taught eighth-grade English. Then one day, he realized he could make a better living as an Automatic Human Jukebox (note to self: we really should pay our schoolteachers more). I wonder what he is doing now?

Timing is everything.

Auckland, New Zealand

2005-05-18T10:56:00.000-04:00

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 17 May 2005

One Tree Hill

Today, I had lunch at the Sailfish Club in Palm Beach, Florida. The occasion was the monthly meeting of the Sons of the American Revolution. So, of course, the table conversation was about New Zealand.

Well, “of course” may not be the right word. Here is what happened: I was sitting next to a New Jersey man and his wife. His wife told me that they had retired to Palm Beach Gardens. I recognized that as being one of the local communities (my daughter has mentioned going to a mall there), but I admitted that I wasn’t quite sure where it was. I am embarrassed about how little I know about my own “hood,” so I muttered the excuse that my job had required a lot of travel to other countries, and when I was home I tended to stay at home. The wife asked me what country was my favorite. Without hesitation, I answered “New Zealand.”

I had gone to New Zealand on business. When I arrived, it had just finished raining, and a rainbow could be seen above a distant hill. At that time, I did not know it was called One Tree Hill, but I could see one very large tree on the top of the hill, next to a tall obelisk. Note that the image shown here shows an obelisk, but no tree. After my visit, protestors chopped down the tree. I do not know why they did that, but I am sure it had nothing to do with my visit. I wonder if it is called None Tree Hill now? It seems a shame, as it was a very nice-looking tree and was very old and very large. I wonder what it did to anger the protestors so? Personally, I would have blamed the obelisk. Oh, I joke about it, but I think this was a terrible thing to do.

I drove to One Tree Hill and viewed the one tree and the obelisk from up close. I noted then that protestors had already made an attempt on the life of the tree, but they had been caught before completely felling it, and the tree had been bandaged up and supported by guy wires. I figured the tree was safe now, but I underestimated the dark side on that one.

From atop One Tree Hill, I could see Auckland. Auckland is on a surprisingly narrow isthmus of land, and I could see the sparkling waters of the Pacific Ocean on each side of it.

Auckland, New Zealand

I had been working in Sydney, Australia, and I arrived in Auckland on a Friday afternoon. I had no meetings scheduled over the weekend, and I was looking forward to seeing what Auckland was like.

I checked into the Sheraton Auckland and left my rental car in the hotel garage. I had gotten quite used to “driving on the wrong side of the road” while working in Australia, but I thought that a better way to become oriented to the city would be to take a ride on a bus. So, I caught the next bus that was headed downtown. I bought an all-day ticket, as that would let me get off one bus, look around a particular neighborhood, and then board the next bus that came along, eventually returning to where I had started.

The first place I stopped was in a neighborhood that was filled with small shops. I bought a shirt commemorating the America’s Cup sailing event, which was scheduled for Auckland. I really liked that shirt. Later, I wore it out from wearing it so often. The next stop was an Art Gallery. I was impressed by the work done by a local artist, whose name I cannot now recall, much to my dismay. One of his lithographs was of the interior of a cozy motel room. The room had one window, and through the window could be seen the ocean, the beach, and one enormous rock. I really liked that picture, but I did not want to lug it home with me. On impulse, I asked the salesgirl at the gallery if the scene was of a real place or an imagined one.

She informed me that the rock was known as Lion Rock, and it wasn’t very far from the city. I decided I would go there. The salesgirl was very pretty and very friendly. She said she had been to the US once – to Los Angeles. She said she had been a bit overwhelmed by how many people were in Los Angeles (they were everywhere, like ants). She described an experience she had in trying to buy some gold jewelry in Los Angeles. She informed me that in New Zealand it was rather common to find jewelry made of nine carat gold. I knew that pure gold was 24 carats, but pure gold is too soft for jewelry, so it is alloyed with other metals that harden it (and change the color according to local tastes) and reduce the “carat” level from 24 to something less. I am not an expert in this area, but I think most gold jewelry in the US is between 12 and 18 carats. I had never heard of nine carat gold.

Neither had the jewelers in Los Angeles. The situation was not helped by the fact that her New Zealand accent made “NINE” carat gold sound like “NON”carat gold.

Girl: “ Do you have gold jewelry?

Jeweler: “Yes, Ma’am, we have a nice selection.”

Girl: “I would like to see a NON carat gold necklace, please”

Jeweler: “But, all of our gold has carats.”

Girl: “Yes, I understand that all of your gold has carats. I would like to see a gold necklace that has non carats.”

Jeweler: “But all of our gold has carats . . .”

Girl: “Yes, I understand. Now, may I see some non carat gold?”

You get the drift by now. I don’t think she bought any gold jewelry in Los Angeles.

That night, I visited the casino in Auckland. I think it was near the tall, spiky building that can be seen in the center of the Auckland picture. That night I had the only bad luck I ever had in New Zealand. I lost 80 NZ dollars at Blackjack. From then on, I couldn’t lose in New Zealand!

The next morning, I took the rental car from the hotel garage and headed toward Piha Beach, where I was told I could find Lion Rock. As I stated earlier, this part of New Zealand is rather narrow, so I figured I didn’t need to waste any time by looking at maps. The place wasn’t that big, so how could I not find what I was looking for? Well, as it turned out, I couldn’t find it. The roads in that part of New Zealand snake around ancient hills that had been formed by volcanic activity (such as One Tree Hill), and I was going in circles. Finally, I stopped at a Petrol station and asked. A customer heard my inquiry and told me to follow his car in mine. We drove around for ten or fifteen minutes, making I don’t know how many turns. Finally, my guide pulled over and motioned for me to take a right at the next road. As I did so, I saw him turn his car around and head back from where we had come. He had driven that far out of his way to help me, a total stranger! I was impressed with the New Zealand hospitality.

The road he led me to flowed directly to Piha Beach.

Piha Beach is a popular weekend resort destination, but since people in New Zealand are not as thick as ants (like they are in Los Angeles), the place seemed surprisingly deserted to me. The first thing I saw was Lion Rock.

The massive Lion Rock (101 meters high) stands out into the sea on the northern side of the estuary of Piha Stream, which flows out through the resort effectively dividing it in two. The beach to the north of Lion Rock is known as North Piha, and to the south of Piha Stream is the South Beach - the south beach is a little more sheltered from the wind and is more popular with holidaymakers as a result. I wanted to visit North Piha and South Piha, but first I was going to see the view from the top of the rock.

Lion Rock at Piha Beach

The view from the top of Lion Rock was awesome. The people on the beach way down below were so small they looked like they were from Los Angeles.

I enjoyed the view for a while and then decided to try to find the motel that I had seen in the lithograph. My guess was that it was in South Piha. I didn’t find any motels, but I did find a beachside restaurant that sold great fish sandwiches! I bought one. Then, I walked on the beach for a while. I came across a local family who invited me to join them, once they learned I was from the US. Again, I was impressed with the New Zealand hospitality.

Lion Rock as seen from South Piha Beach on a crowded day

I have read that people are no longer permitted to climb to the top of Lion Rock. I suppose that safety is the concern. There weren’t any guardrails up there, as I recall.

In addition to being a film location for the movie The Piano, Piha Beach has been used for the New Zealand television series Xena: Warrior Princess.

Lion Rock was for centuries a pa (fortified village) of the local Te Kawerau a Maki tribe, who called it Whakaari. They were driven out in the 1820s by Ngapuhi warriors from Northland who were armed with European muskets.

While I was there, I had the strangest feeling that I had been there before. Later, I learned that Piha Beach had been the location for some of the scenes of a 1993 movie that I had seen!

The movie starred Holly Hunter and was called “The Piano.”

The scene was shot on North Piha, between Lion Rock (which was not shown in the movie) and the rock that is to the north of it. I think it is called Nun’s Rock. This is a very good movie, and I recommend it.

I drove back to Auckland. That night, I went to a movie theater to see the new Stanley Kubrick movie, “Eyes Wide Shut,” starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. I had heard that the movie had some scenes that were considered too sexually explicit for Americans, so the movie had been digitally modified for American audiences. Computer-generated characters were inserted to shield some of the actions that were visible in the original cut of the movie. I saw the original cut in New Zealand. It wasn’t as hard-core as I had been led to expect. The movie wasn’t as good as I had hoped, either – just ok. “The Piano” was much better.

The next day, I decided to explore Auckland some more. My wanderings took me to an area where ferries departed for Waiheke Island. I don’t know what it is about my personal psychology, but I cannot resist going to a place if I have never been there. The next thing I knew, I was sitting on a ferry and watching the skyline of Auckland recede.

A young married couple engaged me in conversation. They were building a home on Waiheke Island, would I like to see it? Sure, why not?

I don’t remember their names. I wish I did, as they were quite nice. I think he was from England, originally, and she was Thai. He called her “boss,” but I don’t think that was her real name. The home they were building was nearly finished. It was a very nice home perched on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I wouldn’t have minded living there! After seeing their home, I bade them goodbye and headed off to see more of the island. It was a quaint and charming place.

Waiheke Island

Oddly, while I was exploring Waiheke Island, I saw the biggest horse I have ever seen. When I first saw him, from a distance, I thought he was some sort of advertising sign. He looked almost as big as a billboard to me, but in the shape of a cutout of a horse. As I walked nearer, my eyes widened, as I saw it move. It was a real horse! I know very little about horses, and I do not know what breed it was. There was no one around, so I couldn’t ask. I still think about that horse from time to time . . .

The reason that New Zealand was my favorite place is that the people there were so friendly to me, and it was so beautiful. Auckland is on what is known as the North Island. People kept asking if I planned to visit the South Island as well, as it is much prettier than the North Island. I decided I had better not go to the South Island. I might never come back . . .

A typical scene on New Zealand’s ugly North Island. The South Island is much prettier.

Swedish Day

2005-05-15T20:44:00.000-04:00

by Thomas Wilson Shawcross 15 May 1005

When I moved to Michigan in January of 1975, I was impressed by the diversity of the people that lived in the Detroit area, and the fact that every week of every summer there was a different "ethnic festival" held downtown along the riverfront.

One weekend a month, I was required to be at Selfridge Air Force Base and be "Captain Shawcross." (I was in the Air National Guard for nine years). One such weekend, I heard some of my fellow National Guard officers, whom I did not yet know very well, discussing the upcoming "Swedish Day." I didn't know there were that many Swedes in the Detroit area, but as I said, the area was culturally and nationally diverse beyond any expectations that I had prior to moving there. One of the guys asked another if he had bought the required chocolates for his wife.

I became curious, so I asked how long the Detroit area had been celebrating "Swedish Day."

"Why, it is a NATIONAL HOLIDAY!," I was told.

They looked at me as if I must be quite simple if I had never heard of Swedish Day.

I assured them that I had occasionally ventured outside my house, read newspapers, etc., but that I had never heard of Swedish Day. In fact, I could state for certain that Swedish Day was not celebrated in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.

It was then that one of the guys noticed how I was pronouncing "Swedish Day," and the story began to become clearer. The result was that the "National Holiday" they had been discussing was "Sweetest Day," not "Swedish Day," and that it was not a NATIONAL HOLIDAY, but merely a holiday observed by several states in the Great Lakes region of the US.

The guy that thought Sweetest Day was a National Holiday had never traveled outside the six or seven states where the "holiday" was observed. He honestly believed it was a National Holiday.

This conversation took place nearly thirty years ago, so please forgive me if I have forgotten some of the details, such as how this holiday came into existence. Whatever the origin, the Great Lakes region candy companies have seized upon this opportunity and have bamboozled countless thousands of husbands and boyfriends into buying gift boxes of chocolates for their significant others.

As I recall, one of the Michigan or Ohio chocolate manufacturing companies spent many dollars every year promoting this "holiday." It might have been Sander's Chocolates.

In Memoriam, Howard Edwin Shawcross, 1918-1996

2005-05-07T12:17:00.000-04:00

Howard Shawcross wrote the following story:

HOW I WON THE BALL GAME

It was the middle of September 1941 and we were home for the last game of the season playing a bunch from Bellview, a community south and east who had given Eckley over by Wray a run for the State champions a few times and they were good.
I had been playing for 4 years and was just beginning to learn how, really, by that I mean the fine points, such as watching the opponent’s eyes, a flick of the hand or the head, how they planted their feet, anything that was a tip off. Someone had the idea I should make a good third baseman. Took a half season to convince them they were wrong -- no problem fielding the ball (most times) but took too long to get set, the ball out of my glove and make a good, on the money, throw to first. So eventually I convinced the manager that center field was the spot. Just loved all that space to roam in or out, right or left, depending on the hitters, especially if I could sneak a few peeks at their batting practice. That day our left fielder couldn’t make it so the manager said I’d play left. Really didn’t mind too much but it wasn’t like home. I got a good look at the Bellview boys at batting practice and here was this hulk of a guy about 6-6 230 pounds and when he hit a ball -- never high in the sky but just a bullet that went and went and went. Found out he was an ex pro who had played on some 3A teams some years before and that he was over 50 and was mostly a coach but played an inning now and then. I had had 2 good seasons with a bat 406 combined with speed so was the lead off man. Power hitter I surely wasn’t -- just tried to hit the ball on the ground and beat it out with inches to spare.
The game went along as games go and at the end of the eighth inning it was 5 to 5. Their first man up in the ninth struck out. The second man poked one over the first baseman’s head and wound up on second, and who decided to bat? The big hulk. I dropped about twenty steps deeper and the first two pitches were balls but the next pitch he hit the ball, which never got over 20 feet high, out my way. I knew it was going to be over my head so I started running deeper watching the ball over my shoulder and when I thought it was about there, leaped like never before and lo and behold when I came down there in the webbing of my glove was the ball. Who was the most surprised -- ME -- the hulk, the guy on second, or the rest of our team? The guy on second was past third and while our shortstop came out to take the relay, he was able to get back to second and tag up and then make third again.
The next guy up hadn’t impressed me much during batting practice so I came way in and he hit a routine pop fly right at me. I waited till it came down, plop right in the old glove only to pop right back out about 10 feet high and 10 feet in front of me. Two quick steps and a lunge and I had the ball for the third out. Boy, did I take a ribbing when we went in the dugout. “Here you catch an uncatchable ball and almost blow a pop fly.”
Our turn to bat -- #9 hitter struck out now its my turn. I had successfully laid down a bunt single earlier in the game, and I noticed the third baseman creeping in so I took a strike -- he came in more -- strike two -- the next pitch was “down the pike” and I swung like a peewee leaguer which popped the ball just over third’s head and by the time the shortstop recovered the ball, it was easy to get on first. Our power hitter was up. I kept watching that pitcher, increasing my lead a little more on each pitch. On the count of 3 and 2 I took off. Gerald hit that ball over first but by that time I was almost to second -- no intention of stopping. When I got to third, the coach was hollering “hold UP,” but I kept going. I’m sure they could have gotten me at home had the throw been to the third base side of the plate instead of the right at the plate. I slid to the back of the plate, raking my left toe barely on the plate. SAFE.
It was the big day for me but the last -- Dec 7 changed it all. O the guys around the Navy base would play a little catch, hit a few flys but no one was interested in getting up a team, even the LT commander in charge of recreation. Wanting everyone to go out for boxing -- me a boxer -- no thanks. Took up bowling instead. Had a lot of fun doing that with a team from Ward Island (radio base). We’d bowl downtown, losers bought hamburgers and a coke afterwards. Swell guys and we came out about even.