Hail to the New Chief

Today we inaugurate a new president. He has a hurculean task ahead of him and there is an important thing we can do to help him.

Pray?

Well, yes. Except that we're in a "no prayer in schools" phase. So what about good thoughts...positive thinking if you will.

Ever since November, I find myself humming "Happy Days Are Here Again." This song was written in 1929 by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen and I believe it is in the public domain. The chorus goes like this:

"Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
Let us sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again
Altogether shout it now!
There's no one who can doubt it now
So let's tell the world about it now
Happy days are here again
Your cares and troubles are gone;
There'll be no more from now on
Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
Let us sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again"

Ok, it's simplistic.

But so are most mantras.

So, in the ensuing times of struggle (and there will be many), run this little song in your head and we will prevail and you'll feel better.

Thank you, Mr. Obama.

Happy days ARE here again.

A Small Sip From The Apocryphal Chalice

You may remember that apocryphal stories are those stories that are not true.  However, some of us are so taken by their sense of poetic justice that we dispense them thinking if we are diligent in our dispersal, they will become factual to at least some percentage of the receptors and that they will attest to the veracity of the story and it will become true by proclamation.  I suspect propaganda works this way.  

I digress.

Ever since we began warring among ourselves and others, we have found it necessary to take trophies from the people we bested.  We started with the valued possessions of our enemies and moved on (I was going to say progressed, but that would be a shameful thing to think) to making slaves of our foes and then to taking their body parts.  The Plains Indians, ever more civilized than we were, began the practice of counting coup (the "p" is silent).   The idea here was to get close enough to one's enemy so that you could touch him or steal something from him.  The more coup counts that could be documented, the more bravery that could be attributed to the warrior doing the "couping."

As time passed and we Americans became more and more enthralled with firearms, our soldiers began taking firearms from the bodies of our enemies and bringing them home as trophies of war.  Now some of these weapons qualified as heavy artillery, so our military leaders, through the use of regulations, made the act of bringing home enemy ordinance a serious crime complete with commensurate punishment.  It is the story of one man's attempt at sending a military trophy home from the front that we will examine in the following apocryphal story.

Sometime during the second world war, one enterprising GI liberated an enemy rifle and stripped it down to as many small pieces as he could.  He then began sending these parts home to his wife.  You need to know that all mail sent from the war zone was censored in the event that the mail was intercepted by the enemy, so our smuggler could not alert his wife as to what he was doing.

Week after week his spouse received all sorts of parts of various sizes and shapes while having no idea what the end result was going to be.  Eventually, the parts stopped coming.  She spread them all out on the dining room table and correctly surmised that it was some kind of rifle.  So, being the dutiful wife, she took it to a local gunsmith who confirmed it was indeed a rifle and told her that he would reassemble it for ten dollars.  The woman thought that was fair price and in about a week she stopped by the gunsmith shop and picked up the reassembled firearm.  From there she went directly to the post office and mailed the gun back to her husband.

I hope that's true.  Don't you?  

Of Kerosene & Pear Juice

My father kept a glass jug of kerosene in our garage. He used the stuff to clean his fishing gear and small outboard motor parts. The gallon container was tucked in the far right corner of the garage so that it was out of the way and would not be accidentally bumped by the car or the child as he played hide and seek or fort or whatever behind the closed doors in the front of the garage.

One day, my mother asked me to sweep out the garage. I protested loudly, but she appealed to the guilt that exists within people both large and small and soon I was heading toward the garage with a broom. Mom's instructions were simple. "Put everything in the driveway, sweep out the garage and then put everything back in the garage."

Every child charged with a task he or she does not want to perform will devise an "easier" way to do it. So, instead of removing everything from the garage so that I would have a complete and uncluttered field to clean, I moved everything to the back of the garage. I did this reasoning that, (1) I could hide some of the leaf accumulation behind the stuff in the back and (2), it would be easier to redistribute the stuff forward rather than schlep everything out to the driveway and then back from the driveway.

As I pushed my bike into the back corner, the front wheel nudged the kerosene container ever so slightly. It was just a tap with a rubber wheel, but it was just enough to crack the jug and start the flow of kerosene cascading gently toward the door and the piles of stuff I had moved from the sides to the center preparatory to flinging it all to the rear. To this day I don't believe that Kerosene is very viscous, so therefore it must have been my traumatized brain that saw the stuff spreading in slow motion to all corners of the garage. Watching its lava like flow paralyzed me.

Soon my fascination with the molasses like progress of the kerosene was replaced with an urgent need to do something. So I started slogging through the stuff dragging beach chairs, fishing tackle and ruined cardboard toward the door. In record time I had the garage empty and all the parts of our lives that had been relegated to the garage were strewn across the driveway.

Now, what to do about the kerosene? Not knowing anything about water and oil repelling each other, but with full knowledge that kerosene is flammable, I slipped through a basement window that I knew to be unlocked and hauled out the garden hose. I spent what must have been an hour with the hose and the broom washing the kerosene out of the garage, around and through our possessions and into the gutter. There was no rule of thumb to prepare me for knowing how long it takes to dissipate a gallon of kerosene from a garage with a broom and hose.

I was considering calling the police or the fire department when my mother's uncle Fred pulled into the adjoining driveway. He was a rotund bald man who paid me a dime a week during the summer months to get up before he did and roll down the windows in his Buick so that it would be cool when he went drove it to work. I resented him for the pretentious way in which he presented me with the dime each Sunday. The payout was complete with criticism about how early, how late, or how not at all I had performed the task. The only plus to this job was that he did not deduct anything for rainy days. To this day, the sound of morning rain still brings a smile to my face and to my heart.

All of that aside, I was happy to see an adult with whom I could share this disaster. I rushed over to him, and while trying to keep my ten year old heart in its place, I told him what had happened. He gave me the look he reserved for those 90 degree plus mornings when I overslept and agreed to survey the damage. Slowly, he walked by the rubble in the driveway and into the darkness of the garage. He lifted his shiny head and inhaled deeply testing the breeze like a bald lion in a man suit. Then he reached into his pocket and took out a pack of matches. Testing the aroma of the air again, he struck a match and dropped it on the wet floor. I held my breath. The match went out and he pronounced the garage safe for habitation by storables.

To this day, fifty plus years later, I can see him dropping that match in slow motion only this time; we are both vaporized in a fiery ball of exploding kerosene. In this twisted updated version, the police find only some bits and pieces of uncle Fred and me and a few heat fused 1954 dimes.

I've often wondered if Uncle Fred knew what he was doing. I think not. It was years later that I determined that sometimes adults do stupid things. Why? I guess it is because sometimes we just don't think. Sometimes there are things we don't think about because we can never imagine them happening. Several years ago, a friend of mine told me that the plastic that covered one of the family's television screens had become clouded. Upon closer examination, he saw that this plastic protective sun screen with which most portable models of that era were equipped, was not only clouded, but it appeared to have been etched or abraded as if someone had used sandpaper or thrown acid on the screen. After interrogating his children, one of them confessed that she had wiped off the screen with a napkin. Further probing revealed that she had used the same napkin to catch the drippings from a pear she had eaten. The acid in the pear juice had permanently clouded the sun screen of the TV.

So, when we are warning our children of the many dangers that lurk in the world, we must remember to tell them.....now remember, dear, whatever you do, don't wipe down the TV screen with pear juice and don't drop a lighted match into a garage that a ten year old has certified to be free of spilled kerosene.

Apocryphal Now!

Apocryphal stories are defined as stories of doubtful authorship or authenticity.  They are somewhat different from a story a raconteur would tell because apocryphal stories are always false even though they may have some basis in truth.  A raconteur's story may be 100% true. 

With the new year will come the Darwin Awards stories from some dark region of the Internet.  These stories, which describe various ways some people, who, through their own stupidity, have caused their own demise.  These incidents usually involve some guy from the south, a shotgun and a beer can or two or three or more.  It is interesting to note that these stories, while billed as new for whatever year they are released,  are 90% the same every year and never involve women.  If these Darwinians are correct, (and I believe they are) women don't do these things.  Sure they may fall prey to accidental death but never with a rocket stolen from the local defense plant that they welded to the top of their car in order to go 300 miles an hour while not having the common sense to ask themselves how am I gonna stop this thing?  Yes, the Darwin awards incidents are apocryphal but always fueled by testosterone.

However, throughout the years, I have heard several apocryphal stories that do not end in someone's death and involve reasonable situations and although you kinda know they are not true, you want them to be.

A few Sundays ago I was watching "Sunday Morning" on CBS.  I am a major fan of this program and it is programmed into our DVR so that I never miss one.  On the Sunday in question, they did a little piece about Emily Post the 1930s New York socialite who wrote several books on etiquette which are still in print.  The CBS profile made me think of an apocryphal story about her that I heard long ago and I want it to be true.

And here it is:

Two guys were attending a black tie dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.  One turns to the other and says,"Do you know the woman you are sitting next to?"

The other guy says, "No, who is she?"

"Emily Post," his friend says.

"The Emily Post, the one who wrote all of the etiquette books?"

"The one and only," his buddy replies.

Later in the meal our guy turns to the woman and says, "Aren't you Emily Post?"

"Yes I am," she said.

"The Emily Post who wrote all of the books on etiquette and table manners?" he asks.

Quite sheepishly she replies, "Why, yes I am."

"You're using my salad fork."

Rim shot, fade to black...the apocryphal story is complete.

Forget the mechanics that if she had been sitting on his right she would have had to reach across his plate to the forks on his left.  Or, if seated to his left, she would have had to pick up the fork with her right hand an act she was forbidden to perform from birth.

But, I don't care.  I want it to be true and if I had to verify it under oath I would.

Happy Holidays!

And mind your manners at the table.

And, depending on the crowd, feel free to dip into the apocryphal chalice in your head and tell the story. 

I'll back you up.

 

 

Another chapter from the Magical Misery Tour

My wife and I never go to the movies. We don't like crowds and we don't like to be required to be in a specific place at a specific time. So, we decided that we can wait for any film to come to a store near us where we can go to purchase it. We watch it, pass it on to Ellen's brother's family and ultimately donate it to the library.

Recently, we sat through "Batman - The Dark Knight." A lot of anticipation over this film in our house as we are big Batman fans and, sadly, big Heath Ledger fans. Well, Heath should win a posthumous Oscar, but the struggle between good and evil that went on in that film was so overwhelming that we began rooting for the forces of evil to win. And, as an aside, what's with Christian Bale's use of the Clint Eastwood stragulated gravel voice whenever he was wearing the cape and cowl?

I mention all of these things as a way of setting up the next installment from the Magical Misery Tour which deals with the many forces of peer pressure which I think do so much to negate heredity as a molder of people.

Read on carefully, Blog Rangers:

Almost all movies deal with the triumph of good over evil. The common twist is that the characters who carry the day are those least likely to do so. Movies perpetuate the idea that there is an inner strength within all of us. No matter how overwhelming the odds, some reserve of moral fortitude is released and the nerd becomes the champion. The artist Andy Warhol may have been talking about this phenomenon when he said, "Everyone is famous for fifteen minutes." Here's what I think: Andy Warhol and the movies are not always right.

I attended an advanced grade school. Everyone there had the potential to be an overachiever and that is why they were selected to be there. I can't comment on the details of the selection process, because it is lost to the ages due to my unwillingness to investigate its origins. However, most of us went on to bigger and better things than algebra, advanced English and woodworking could provide.

Richie Phillips was a member of our class as was Stephen Solomon. Richie was a redheaded kid with freckles who had the look and smell of a victim about him. Stephen Solomon was extremely short and very anti-social. These two guys had been selected under the same scholastic criteria as the rest of us, but, when a hierarchy is defined, not everyone is equal despite their inclusion in an elite group. Some will populate the top, some the middle and some will live out their stay on the bottom to serve the cruelty needs of the others above them. Richie Phillips and Stephen Solomon were relegated to the lowest rungs of our social hierarchy. I won't delineate the kid tortures we put these two through because memory, embarrassment and taste have banished them from my brain. However, there is no question that my behavior and that of my classmates would bend and shape these two fellows later in life. I think we all agreed that one would be a janitor and the other a child molester. However, we couldn't decide which one would be which.

In 1982, I attended my 20 year high school reunion. Stephen Solomon attended. Richie Phillips did not. Stephen Solomon graduated from high school at 5 feet 5 inches tall. He came to the reunion at just under six feet which was a major surprise and a testament to the medical theory regarding growth spurts in late puberty. Stephen Solomon was rich from the investment banking computer program he alone had written. He had a beautiful wife on his arm. Seeing him bolstered my faith in the movies. Richie Phillips never entered my brain.

The next day, as I was leaving the island where I grew up, I stopped at the toll booth on the causeway and 38 year old Richie Phillips collected my toll. Swallowing my surprise as I handed Richie a quarter, I asked him how he was. He looked right through me as if I wasn't there. It was probably the same look all of us gave him through the formative years whenever he summoned up the courage to speak. He continued his stare and told me he was fine. After an even longer pause, I told him my name. I wanted some sort of recognition although I still don't know why. He feigned recognition but the moment evaporated as the horn from the vehicle behind me broke the inertia holding me and my rented car in front of Richie Phillips.

I have thought about Richie Phillips and Stephen Solomon many times since that day. Did we produce a computer genius and a toll taker? Did we have anything to do with either of their fates? I do believe we abused them both equally. I want to believe that Stephen Solomon succeeded to spite us and, regrettably, I have to believe Richie Phillips succumbed to us. However, I am sure that for that short period of time on the causeway, Richie Phillips, safe in his toll booth, was taking toll of me.

What could he have been thinking?

Magicians Who Can Talk

I grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey. During and immediately after World War II, many of the hotels there were used as recovery hospitals for our troops who were injured in the war. My late father, a Podiatrist and recently discharged from the Merchant Marine, volunteered his services to the hospitals there while he was starting to build his private practice.

There were a lot of entertainers on scene to play the clubs in Atlantic City and many of them spent their spare time entertaining the convalescing troops. One such entertainer was a magician who called himself Hardin. He was the brother of the great escape artist Houdini. My dad was always interested in show business and longed to be a part of it, but the closest he came was helping Hardin to perfect his escape routines. Dad spent many hours tying and chaining Hardin to various heavy objects. (This was quite acceptable behavior in the day as it was before bondage became mainstream.) Anyway, the problem was that often Hardin was unable to extricate himself from my father's elaborate hogtying and his act and their friendship suffered as a result.

In later years when my father would talk about these times he said that Hardin would have done much better if he had been a magician who could talk. What does that mean I would ask. "Well," dad would explain "If Hardin could have developed some sort of rapport with the audience by engaging them in conversation, he could have diverted their attention while he used the tools he had palmed to free himself from his restraints." Sadly, Hardin was not the talkative type and he lived out his life known only has Houdini's brother the one who tried and failed to be a magician. You can see many examples of this phenomenon on "America's Got Talent" or "American Idol." Watch as the magicians allow the illusions to just happen or not happen as they gesticulate wildly and silently.

Hence, the phrase "a magician who could talk" took on great meaning in our house. Dad always tried to teach me that it was important to be able to explain things as you were doing them because the very act of explanation would instill confidence in your viewers and/or listeners. And it wasn't just stage magic he was talking about it was just about any task for which you would be judged. If you have ever seen David Copperfield perform you will note he is a very verbally engaging person and the spectacular magic that occurs around him is so much more amazing because we, the audience whom he has befriended through his conversation with us, feel that we are part of the act. Illusion is accomplished largely through verbal diversion and the really great practitioners of the art are great conversationalists.

I have been thinking about this process as I have just finished reading photographer Annie Leibovitz's book "Annie Leibovitz at Work." In this quick read she explains how she does what she does and how her work has evolved. Ansel Adams did the same thing in "Ansel Adams The Making of 40 Photographs." Both of these legendary photographers allowed the reader to take a look at the mental processes that they employed while creating their art. Rhetoric as camouflage be damned, this is how we did it and you can do it too if your head is on straight. You just need to think about what you want to do and do it. After all.....art is magic too.

Oh, and there's a cautionary flag here. Hitler used rhetoric as camouflage as did George Bush, Richard Nixon, Jim Jones, Harold Hill (The Music Man), Charlie Manson and the Wizard of Oz.

Raconteurism

Before we begin this blog I want to respond to the anonymous "BD" who asked, "Is there another word for synonym?"  Yes, BD there is and it is synonyme which is French for synonym proving that all is fair in love and semantics.  It also explains why I am antisemantic.

But, I digress.

Raconteurs are people who tell stories well and with great gusto.  Their stories are also interesting.  I'm sure you can count the times you've sat with someone who rambled on ad infinitum and ad nauseum only to get to the point of the story which was, "And my folks came home at the time they were expected and we put up the storm windows, had a sandwich and went to the movies."

The tag line is usually followed by great peals of laughter from the teller and the temptation to do some peeling of their own from the long suffering and burdened listeners.

Real raconteurs savour that which they relate and even embellish the tale a bit just to make the story a tad more interesting.  They can be forgiven for this as they are performing a public service.  If you know any real raconteurs you will know  that sometimes the things they tell you are 100% factual and some are only 10% factual and the rest fall anywhere along the scale.  But the practiced raconteur will never let you know how much is real and how much is not.  And if you love the story or are amused by it in some small way....who cares?

I tell you all of this because from time to time I'm gonna tell you a story...like this one....

Some jokes are based in truth.  Sometimes they cease to be funny when the truth upon which they are based is discovered.

When I was fourteen years old I became interested in photography.  Since I lived in a small town and worked cheap, I was able to get a job as a "stringer" for most of the local publications.  A "stringer" is a person who is paid for a picture only if it is actually printed by a publication.  At five dollars per shot printed, "photo opportunity" meant much more to me personally then than it does now.

I had been listening to the radio when I heard the announcer break into the music and announce that a man was perched on the eighth story ledge of the town's one hotel and was threatening to jump.  I grabbed my Rolleiflex camera and asked my father to drive me to the hotel.  My mother objected loudly saying that it was no place for a boy of my tender years, but was drowned out by the sound of the slamming door and the car pulling out of the driveway.

My father and I arrived at the hotel in about five minutes and were greeted by John Hess the town's only full time newspaper photographer and another "stringer" known only as "Herman the German."  (Remember the 2nd world war was barely over, so this kind of name calling was permitted.)

"Glad you're here, my boy," said John Hess.  This greeting both puzzled and elated me as I thought I was finally being accepted into the ranks of the pros but couldn't understand this largesse from a man who barely spoke to me at any other time.  But my elation quickly turned sour when I heard the explanation for Hess' hospitable greeting.

"We need three," John explained, "You catch the guy when he leaves the ledge, Herman here will catch him in mid air and I'll shoot him when he hits the ground."  (No motor drives on the cameras back then) Only I was relieved when the potential jumper's parish priest arrived and talked the man back into the hotel.

As I said, most jokes are based in truth.  There is a photographer's joke about one photographer telling another about something he saw on his way to work.  He described a man in tattered, but once elegant clothes, lying in the gutter in front of the photographer's studio.  He had his hand extended "just like that of the guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel" and was imploring the photographer to help.  His friend then asks his co-worker, "Well, what did you give him?"

"The light was pretty good," was the reply, "F16 at 100th of a second."

Not funny after that time I spent focusing my camera and my soul on the hotel ledge and the man who didn't jump. 

Welcome to the magical misery tour.