The picnic grounds that later became known as an amusement park occupied a place east of Cincinnati. First known in 1867 as "Ohio Grove, the Coney Island of the West," it was later known as "Coney Island on the Ohio," and eventually just "Coney Island." Between periodic floods in the spring, and having extended the limits of its property, the Taft Broadcasting Company, which acquired the park by the late 1960s saw the need to expand the concept elsewhere. They found a plot 25 miles northeast of the city, near a little town known as Kings Mills. This explains the otherwise-inexplicable name of “Kings Island” for a theme park. Forty years ago today, I neared the end of one adventure, and began another, one that was to change my outlook on life, and on my self-image.
I had worked at the park briefly the previous autumn -- the "post-season" weekends, as they're called -- in the Rides department. I told them I had experience with canoeing, so they put me at a lake helping people get into and out of canoes. When the weather got too cold, they transferred me to the roller coaster. At the end of October, that was the end of that.
But I wanted more. They had a "Live Shows and Entertainment" department. The money was better, and one of my buds from high school, Chris "Seadog" Seipelt, was one of the animal characters. You know, those guys who walk around in the animal costumes and get their pictures taken with little kids and all that. "You should try out, Dave," he told me. "I'll even help you prepare the audition." He had this costume head which I wore as a prop, and with a 45rpm recording of Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes," I passed the audition with a presentation of "Bingo Learns to Dance." (Don't ask.)
And I was in.
The money was certainly better. And being in the Shows department had a certain caché that wasn't shared by, say, the ride operators or those who worked the food concession stands. Wearing jumpsuits for most of the day, the guys in our crew would go out for a half-hour or forty-five minutes in these costumes based on Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters -- Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, you know the type -- escorted by these girls known as "guardettes," who would do the talking (since we weren't allowed) and help arrange the kids for photographs. We also had a performance in "Hanna-Barbera Land" of "The Banana Splits Show," which was a fictional rock band composed of four animal characters, and a popular Saturday morning kids show at the time. We pantomimed to a pre-recording of the characters in action. Even as a rookie, I became renowned for my rendition of "Fleagle," the de facto leader of the pack.
It was hot. It was grueling. It was three or four times a day. It was worth every minute.
But the character for which I became best known, was "Templeton the Rat," from the Hanna-Barbera production of "Charlotte's Web." I actually learned how to make the character appear quite real. Once inside the costume, I would bend over slightly, with my head down, and bow my legs when I walked. That made the torso jiggle back and forth, and people actually could imagine seeing a live rodent trying to walk on his hind legs. I can still remember the uproarious laughter from the crowds as I walked away.
IMAGE: The Banana Splits, in an undated publicity photo.
I modeled for children's fashion magazines, and promotions for consumer products. But for all that, my greatest single achievement was being in a movie. After building Kings Island, Taft Broadcasting decided to build a sister park north of Richmond known as "Kings Dominion." They produced a fifteen-minute preview film to promote it in the Richmond area. Some footage was shot at Kings Island, after which the new park would be modeled, while other footage was shot at the construction site. The Banana Splits were the main cast, and I was "Snorky" the elephant, and the only rookie in the cast. We drove to Richmond to film some of it, and Dudley Taft (a descendant of President William Howard Taft) flew us home in his private jet.
Now, back to the ladies.
These girls who accompanied us came from the Guest Relations department, and were hired for their poise, composure, and -- oh yes, their bodaciousness. In fact, they were just about the hottest babes in the whole park. Not only that, but they were the nicest girls you could ever wanna take home to Mama. Most of the guys in the crew were working their way through college, and a few were pretty sure of themselves, especially when it came to the ladies, these ladies in particular. They struck out more often than not, at least at first, which surprised me at the time. After all, high school was nothing like this. I mean, there were rules, you see. You dated within your predestined social class, and never ventured outside of it. There was this one guy -- Tom, I think his name was -- and he told us that he could use every cliché he could think of and still win over the object of his affection. And it actually worked.
There were plenty of opportunities for Tom, of course, and anyone else so bold. We were young, it was summer, and after working hard, we would play hard. There were parties two or three nights a week, just the Characters and the Guardettes. Unlike them, I was not so bold. And one of the first things I learned, is that the girls liked me best for that reason, that I wasn't constantly on the make, which is why they named me "Character of the Year" in an informal poll. Even so, I dated quite a bit that summer, but I usually went for the younger ones, figuring that was all I could, uh, handle. The guys would get on my case for chasing "jailbait," a term someone actually had to explain more than once. I had no idea what they were talking about. I was far from losing my innocence that summer.
But it didn't matter. You see, I could still remember getting beat up by the kids in the neighborhood only ten years earlier. I was physically bullied all through high school. But that summer, for the first time in my nearly nineteen years of a so-called life, I knew what it was like to be ... popular.
IMAGE: George Clooney, yeah, that George Clooney. I knew his dad, sort of.
One week, "The Nick Clooney Show" was broadcast from the park. That was a local variety and talk show back in the 1970s. My buddy Terry and I actually met Nick after work. He was walking around in the park, and against my protestations, Terry called out, "Hey, Nick, over here!" And we talked shop for about five minutes. One day, he brought his family to the park, including a twelve-year-old boy named George. Nick went on to hosting old movies on the American Movie Classics channel. His son has enjoyed a measure of success as well.
Ya think?
I can still remember getting off work at 7:30 in the evening, and going out into the park with a buddy, or a girl I was trying to impress. I remember going on the Alpine Sky Ride as the sun was setting, watching the big band play at the head of the fountain under the fake Eiffel Tower, and being one of the "plants" in the audience for the girl singers. I remember watching the fireworks every evening at ten.
Most of all, I remember never wanting it to end. But it did. We all went off to college, or wherever we were going. Some of my pals went up to Miami University, located in a bucolic college town known as Oxford, northwest of the city. Sometimes when I was there on the weekend for a party, I'd call up my friend Mary Margaret. No, she couldn't join me that night, she was studying. That's right, studying on Friday night. I was disappointed, of course, but I shouldn't have been. I later found out she married a classmate of mine, just after graduating from college.
One of the popular kids. Naturally.
I managed to work at the park for one more summer, but it wasn't the same. I found my only-recently-former girlfriend suddenly "pre-engaged" to some creep who spent three months tormenting me, when he wasn't pretending to be my buddy. He knew how to be everybody else's buddy, too, bringing porn films into the trailer where we took breaks. (Two of us usually left.) I spent the first half of the summer upset that things weren't the same. Why didn't time stand still while I was at college? Where was the magic? And who let all these ***holes in here?
I stayed in touch with some of "the gang" for several years afterwords, but eventually most of them faded away. I am still in touch with two of the guys; one of them a Catholic priest in Cincinnati, the other a retiree in Florida who, like me, married a Filipina. I have not spoken to any of the gals since leaving Ohio more than forty years ago.
It must be a very different experience now. Young women now join the young men in wearing the costumes, and the last time I checked, the characters were from the "Peanuts" comic strip, which can't be nearly as much fun. But most of all, they probably don't get away with half the stuff we pulled off. We had this thing we did to initiate the new girls who escorted us, something called "the squeeze play" ...
I guess you had to be there.
+ + +
I think Frank Sinatra said it best: “Life is like the seasons; after winter comes the spring.” In the summer of 1973, I learned that there was life after high school, a world without a label assigned to you, but one you made for your self. It's hard to believe today that such a thing would never have occurred to me. I also learned that nothing in this world lasts forever. You wait long enough, something changes. People move on, life goes on.
I saw the work of one sign painter everywhere in the little town of Milford, Ohio, when I was growing up in the 1960s. It was as if the whole town was his client. I don't know what happened to him. And yet, when I visit about once every other year now -- none of the family lives there anymore, and the home was sold several years ago -- I see the remnant of the unknown sign painter, amidst the growing number of antique stores, gourmet restaurants, and ... of all things, microbreweries!
I was finishing high school in 1973, when Dad took me to "Commercial Square," a side street in downtown Cincinnati with a row of old factory warehouse buildings (since razed for what is now the Procter and Gamble headquarters) to visit what he called "a dying art." There, a couple of men ran a sign-painting business. Dad knew I aspired to go to college, but he didn't believe in accumulating massive debts and living on credit. (In fact, he never owned a credit card in his entire life.) If I could find a profession that didn't require a college education, so much the better. I viewed their work with some interest, but little enthusiasm.
I went on to complete my graphic design studies at the University of Cincinnati, graduating in 1978. Looking through old magazines and art manuals, I had a brief flirtation with calligraphy and hand-painted lettering. In the early 1980s, I did calligraphy for special occasions; family, parish, that sort of thing. I left it behind completely once the computer came to our office, and "desktop publishing" was the next big thing.
I came across a 2017 article in Monocle just recently ...
... and I remembered that brief page of my history. Part of the trend may be a reaction to our slavery to technology, as if to lend credence to Newton's Law. Whatever is ancient is new again.
The total cost of my college education, culminating in 1978, has been estimated at around ten thousand dollars. I managed to recover that cost in short order.
This being Valentine's Day, we had to do something to mark the occasion. This submission is one that could only happen at a place like Brigham Young University, where romance never dies, if only because the Mormons succeed in weeding out all the creepy guys. That's the only explanation as to why the five lads who comprise the á cappella ensemble known as Vocal Point could pull off a stunt like this, even for this week's Friday Afternoon Moment of Whimsy.
The time has come upon us for the Super Bowl, which means that we here at man with black hat review the totally awesome big-@$$ budget commercials. We start with the story behind the scenes of what might have been. After all, Anna Kendrick has been a big favorite of late here at Chez Alexandre, after viewing her at work several dozen times already, in the 2012 collegiate a capella comedy-drama Pitch Perfect.
We have plans to devote the next month to some aspects of both the movie (not all of which are completely decadent by the standards of our target audience), and her musical work, but until then, and until we run down our favorite picks among the Super Bowl ads, here's a conceptual rough cut of the ad for Newcastle beer that got away, but for this week's Friday Afternoon Moment of Whimsy.
By now, a number of the several States have defied the potential challenge from federal courts to legalize marijuana, whether for medicinal use, or for, uh, "medicinal" use. In fact, this writer wanted to procure a stash for his parents for their fiftieth anniversary back in 2002, given Dad's final stages of MS, and Mom's arthritis. The proposal alone was, shall we say, therapeutic.
In the face of New Hampshire's own attempt to give the go to the grass being (potentially?) blocked in federal appeals court, Steven Crowder paid a visit to the Granite State (where the motto is “Live Free or Die”) to find out what people on the street thought of the idea. The results couldn't be better for this week's Friday Afternoon Moment of Whimsy.
One of them posted the link thereto, and I got over 500 visits today, which is about as much as I get in about four days -- weekdays, mind you. (H/T to New Advent.) C S Lewis once said he wrote the things that he wished others would write. I try to do likewise. Most writers will compose either a glowing encomium or a bitter screed. Neither would do justice to my father's story, so I simply wrote the truth. He was an imperfect man, who only reached perfection by Grace, in a life that just as easily could have turned out much differently, but for a decision made at an early age. A pedestal would have been too much even for him.
Since that time, he has passed into eternity, so here's what happened next.
That's my Dad in the picture to the right, from his days in seminary. He would have been eighteen-and-a-half in the spring of 1944. By this time, he would have already received tonsure (the ritual cutting of a lock of the hair, symbolizing admission to candidacy), allowing him the privilege of wearing the cassock outside of ceremonial duties. He would leave the seminary two years later.
Closer to the present, today's homily was about fathers and fatherhood. As master of ceremonies for the Latin Mass today, my place was near the celebrant, which included being seated near the pulpit, so if I had a problem keeping my composure, it would have been hard to miss.
Meanwhile, my son decided to post his own tribute to his dad.
… which is not quite what happened. I should explain.
My son recently graduated from the über-prestigious Savannah College of Art and Design, with a BFA in Interactive Media and Game Development, and a GPA of 3.4. Thirty-five years earlier, I graduated from an equally-über-prestigious program at the University of Cincinnati, with a BS in Graphic Design, and a GPA of 3.0. I simply pointed out that he did better than I did, which is even more remarkable when you consider that his high school GPA was … well, not so remarkable. But somehow, possibly from the after effects of an alcohol-and-drug-induced adolescence (so it's not really his fault, you see), this observation was embellished to take its present form.
So, we'll be having another one of those little talks when he gets back to DC next month. You see, you never stop being a father, especially when some punk-ass kid never stops being a little twit. But he's my little twit, and I love him for it.
The picnic grounds that later became known as an amusement park occupied a place east of the city. First known in 1867 as "Ohio Grove, the Coney Island of the West," it was later known as "Coney Island on the Ohio," and eventually just "Coney Island." Between periodic floods in the spring, and having extended the limits of its property, the Taft Broadcasting Company, which acquired the park by the late 1960s saw the need to expand the concept elsewhere. They found a plot 25 miles northeast of the city, near a little town known as Kings Mills. This explains the otherwise-inexplicable name of “Kings Island” for a theme park. Forty years ago today, I neared the end of one adventure, and began another, one that was to change my outlook on life, and on my self-image.
I had worked at the park briefly the previous autumn -- the "post-season" weekends, as they're called -- in the Rides department. I told them I had experience with canoeing, so they put me at a lake helping people get into and out of canoes. When the weather got too cold, they transferred me to the roller coaster. At the end of October, that was the end of that.
But I wanted more. They had a "Live Shows and Entertainment" department. The money was better, and one of my buds from high school, Chris "Seadog" Seipelt, was one of the animal characters. You know, those guys who walk around in the animal costumes and get their pictures taken with little kids and all that. "You should try out, Dave," he told me. "I'll even help you prepare the audition." He had this costume head which I wore as a prop, and with a 45rpm recording of Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes," I passed the audition with a presentation of "Bingo Learns to Dance." (Don't ask.)
And I was in.
The money was certainly better. And being in the Shows department had a certain caché that wasn't shared by, say, the ride operators or those who worked the food concession stands. Wearing jumpsuits for most of the day, the guys in our crew would go out for a half-hour or forty-five minutes in these costumes based on Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters -- Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, you know the type -- escorted by these girls known as "guardettes," who would do the talking (since we weren't allowed) and help arrange the kids for photographs. We also had a performance in "Hanna-Barbera Land" of "The Banana Splits Show," which was a fictional rock band composed of four animal characters, and a popular Saturday morning kids show at the time. We pantomimed to a pre-recording of the characters in action. Even as a rookie, I became renowned for my rendition of "Fleagle," the de facto leader of the pack.
It was hot. It was grueling. It was three or four times a day. It was worth every minute.
But the character for which I became best known, was "Templeton the Rat," from the Hanna-Barbera production of "Charlotte's Web." I actually learned how to make the character appear quite real. Once inside the costume, I would bend over slightly, with my head down, and bow my legs when I walked. That made the torso jiggle back and forth, and people actually could imagine seeing a live rodent trying to walk on his hind legs. I can still remember the uproarious laughter from the crowds as I walked away.
IMAGE: The Banana Splits, in an undated publicity photo.
I modeled for children's fashion magazines, and promotions for consumer products. But for all that, my greatest single achievement was being in a movie. After building Kings Island, Taft Broadcasting decided to build a sister park north of Richmond known as "Kings Dominion." They produced a fifteen-minute preview film to promote it in the Richmond area. Some footage was shot at Kings Island, after which the new park would be modeled, while other footage was shot at the construction site. The Banana Splits were the main cast, and I was "Snorky" the elephant, and the only rookie in the cast. We drove to Richmond to film some of it, and Dudley Taft (a descendant of President William Howard Taft) flew us home in his private jet.
Now, back to the ladies.
These girls who accompanied us came from the Guest Relations department, and were hired for their poise, composure, and -- oh yes, their bodaciousness. In fact, they were just about the hottest babes in the whole park. Not only that, but they were the nicest girls you could ever wanna take home to Mama. Most of the guys in the crew were working their way through college, and a few were pretty sure of themselves, especially when it came to the ladies, these ladies in particular. They struck out more often than not, at least at first, which surprised me at the time. After all, high school was nothing like this. I mean, there were rules, you see. You dated within your predestined social class, and never ventured outside of it. There was this one guy -- Tom, I think his name was -- and he told us that he could use every cliché he could think of and still win over the object of his affection. And it actually worked.
There were plenty of opportunities for Tom, of course, and anyone else so bold. We were young, it was summer, and after working hard, we would play hard. There were parties two or three nights a week, just the Characters and the Guardettes. Unlike them, I was not so bold. And one of the first things I learned, is that the girls liked me best for that reason, that I wasn't constantly on the make, which is why they named me "Character of the Year" in an informal poll. Even so, I dated quite a bit that summer, but I usually went for the younger ones, figuring that was all I could, uh, handle. The guys would get on my case for chasing "jailbait," a term someone actually had to explain more than once. I had no idea what they were talking about. I was far from losing my innocence that summer.
But it didn't matter. You see, I could still remember getting beat up by the kids in the neighborhood only ten years earlier. I was physically bullied all through high school. But that summer, for the first time in my nearly nineteen years of a so-called life, I knew what it was like to be ... popular.
IMAGE: George Clooney, yeah, that George Clooney. I knew his dad, sort of.
One week, "The Nick Clooney Show" was broadcast from the park. That was a local variety and talk show back in the 1970s. My buddy Terry and I actually met Nick after work. He was walking around in the park, and against my protestations, Terry called out, "Hey, Nick, over here!" And we talked shop for about five minutes. One day, he brought his family to the park, including a twelve-year-old boy named George. Nick went on to hosting old movies on the American Movie Classics channel. His son has enjoyed a measure of success as well.
Ya think?
I can still remember getting off work at 7:30 in the evening, and going out into the park with a buddy, or a girl I was trying to impress. I remember going on the Alpine Sky Ride as the sun was setting, watching the big band play at the head of the fountain under the fake Eiffel Tower, and being one of the "plants" in the audience for the girl singers. I remember watching the fireworks every evening at ten.
Most of all, I remember never wanting it to end. But it did. We all went off to college, or wherever we were going. Some of my pals went up to Miami University, located in a bucolic college town known as Oxford, northwest of the city. Sometimes when I was there on the weekend for a party, I'd call up my friend Mary Margaret. No, she couldn't join me that night, she was studying. She always liked to study on the weekends. I was disappointed, of course, but I shouldn't have been. I later found out she married a classmate of mine, just after graduating from college.
One of the popular kids. And so it goes ...
I managed to work at the park for one more summer, but it wasn't the same. I found my only-recently-former girlfriend suddenly "pre-engaged" to some creep who spent three months tormenting me, when he wasn't pretending to be my buddy. He knew how to be everybody else's buddy too, bringing porn films into the trailer where we took breaks. (I and one other guy usually left.) I spent the first half of the summer upset that things weren't the same. Why didn't time stand still while I was at college? Where was the magic? And who let all these ***holes in here? I stayed in touch with some of "the gang" for several years afterwords. I am still in touch with two of the guys; one a Catholic priest in Cincinnati, the other a retiree in Florida who, like me, married a Filipina. I have not spoken to any of the girls since leaving Ohio more than thirty years ago.
It must be a very different experience now. Young women now join the young men in costume the costumes, and the last time I checked, the characters were from the "Peanuts" comic strip ,which can't be nearly as much fun. But most of all, they probably don't get away with half the stuff we pulled off. We had this thing we did to initiate the new girls who escorted us, something called "the squeeze play" ...
I guess you had to be there.
I think Frank Sinatra said it best: “Life is like the seasons; after winter comes the spring.” In the summer of 1973, I learned that there was life after high school, a world without labels assigned to you, but ones you made for your self. It's hard to believe today, that such a thing would never have occurred to me. I also learned that nothing in this world lasts forever. You wait long enough, something changes. People move on, life goes on.
Whenever I walk to Suffern
along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse
with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times,
but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house,
the house with nobody in it.
The place now known as Milford, Ohio, has been someone's home for thousands of years.
During the time of Christ, it was occupied by the mound builders of the Adena people. By the end of the first millennium, it was home to a settlement of the Hopewell Nation, a once-great empire that flourished along the Ohio and mid-Mississippi River valleys. By the time of the European incursion, the nations of "the Woodland period" were forgotten, and the area had already long been the hunting ground of the Miamis. By the dawn of the twentieth century, rows of corn covered the fields east of a village first settled in 1806, carved out of a parcel awarded to a Revolutionary War officer.
John Nancarrow had never personally set foot on the land ... but, that's another story.
By the mid-1950s, the rural expanse to the east of Milford would become the site of homes to families of men, most of whom were just out of the Service. With its developers only aware enough of the land's prehistory to use it as a marketing device, a development known as Indian Knolls was built on the hill overlooking the cornfield below, which had already been developed as Clertoma Village. The streets of both developments were all named for the indigenous nations of the continent long vanquished by the white man -- Choctaw Lane, Mohawk Trail, Powhatton Drive, and so on. The houses were all virtually identical cookie-cutter starter homes, distinguished by exterior finish, but all of the same floor plan, with three bedrooms, one bath, a tiny kitchen, and a separate dining area, all totaling about 850 square feet, not counting the unfinished basement. It was typical of many such communities based on the model that was Levittown, New York. But near a small town in southwestern Ohio, and for only $15,000, a piece of the American dream could belong to a man with a decent living wage, and a family on the way.
I never have seen a haunted house,
but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits,
their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted,
and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely
if it had a ghost or two.
In the summer of 1956, one such young couple with a toddling son, and a daughter as a babe in arms, bought a piece of that dream at 29 Winnebago Drive, and life began from there.
To those who lived in the old and established part of the town, the new development was known pejoratively as "Crackerbox Village." What manner of progress what this? Who were these upstarts, tearing down their quaint drive-in movie theater, replacing it with something called "Rink's Bargain City"? Emerging from the surroundings were not just one, but two new shopping centers, each with something called a "supermarket." It occurred to those firmly planted, that the days of the old A%P store downtown were numbered. Over time, the ancien regime came to accept the inevitable, but for years after it came, they resented this crass intrusion on the picture-postcard setting their new neighbors called home.
I can tell you my very earliest memory in detail. It was a cloudy Saturday, perhaps in the spring. I was about two or three years old. I was walking from the steps of the back porch towards the driveway. My father was washing the car, a muted lime green 1953 Ford sedan. I remember little else of that day, but my consciousness would appear to begin at that moment. I wonder where it was before. But in the months, in the years that followed, many other families with children arrived. The streets, the front yards, and the places in between were their domain. Summer days found them playing baseball in the street, Halloween nights were teeming with hundreds of them in costume, and the Christmas season was ablaze with a wonderland of multi-colored splendor. Everyone knew their neighbors, even those who went each their own way.
It was about 1964. I was playing in the yard with other kids -- so many other kids there were back then -- at a house down the street from mine. The husband and father of the house was a Southern Baptist minister. I didn't give such things very much thought, which is why I was surprised to see his name listed on the mailbox near the front door as: "Rev and Mrs Firsten Lastname." My reaction was a natural one for a precocious little boy, I suppose: "Hey, Beanie, this says your dad's a priest. I didn't know your dad was a priest. How can he be a priest if he's ..." Suddenly the front door opened, and an insistent lady of the house emerged: "He's not a priest, he's a minister, and he's just as important as your priest!" Boom! The door slammed shut, and that was that. Hey, I was nine-and-a-half years old. What the hell did I know about anything? This was the early 1960s, and the times were still relatively innocent. But tensions derived from cultural differences, and the co-existence in the face of the melting pot that was our little world, were still lurking in the dark corners. Children learned to put aside the differences that made adults uncomfortable. America elected a Catholic president, his cohorts in the faith could not be seen proselytizing through the children, and the Freemasons who lived among them could not be seen resenting these self-assured "Catlickers." Eventually these differences subsided, or at least were buried in polite company.
This house on the road to Suffern
needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk
and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles,
and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all
is some people living inside.
By the end of the 1960s, families grew in size, or in expectations, or both, and were leaving behind their humble abodes, with grand visions of four-bedroom split-levels, formal dining rooms, and half-acre lawns gracing the hillside out beyond the village limits. The years came and went, children came of age and sought their fortunes, older couples passed on to Florida, or passed from this life. The trees grew taller, some homes added garages, patios, and other extensions. "Crackerbox Village" was taking on a character of its own. One family, namely the Reverend and his wife and children, moved from the house down the street to the house next door. There were summer nights before the days of central air conditioning, when the windows in our bedrooms were left open to the screens and the cool breezes. My brother and I had the little room at the end of the hall. My bed was near the door. Mom and Dad would want it shut, but I wanted it open at a 45-degree angle, enough to use the full-length mirror to see the goings-on at the other end. As I drifted off to sleep, I could hear the Reverend and his family and friends, gathering around the upright piano, and singing hymns from the Old Baptist Hymnal.
Meanwhile, with each of us ending our grade school years, our parents eschewed the free education at the public high school at the edge of town, for a Catholic high school in an upper-class neighborhood closer to the city. It was a ride on a public school bus ten miles away, but it may as well have been ten thousand miles, as the kids from Milford brushed off the taunting of would-be city-bred sophisticates living near the school, about being a bunch of hicks from a small town. It got old after four years. Fortunately, it was over by then. Time went on, and the place we called home remained.
It was September of 1977. I was interning at a public television station in West Virginia when I got the call from Dad. He had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis only seven years earlier. Procter and Gamble gave him the consideration worthy of a loyal and dedicated company man, transferring him to a less stressful position away from the headquarters building, to the local district sales office. He had been working half-days for several months by now, but it only delayed the inevitable. Come that Friday, on his fifty-second birthday, he would leave on full and permanent disability. I remember Mom's first reaction, that of Dad being in the way all the time. But while Dad ruled the roost, Mom ruled the rooster, and one of the signs of a successful marriage is the ability to renegotiate what one might call "the balance of power" when fortunes change. And so, in many respects, Mom became the "man of the house," taking a more visible role in certain decisions, and being the "handy man" when things needed fixing. Growing up on a farm, pitching hay and driving a tractor by the time she was twelve, all this had prepared her for this role.
If I had a lot of money
and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work
with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up
the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home
and give it to them free.
By the end of 1980, I left the town where I was "bread and buttered," not for the nearest city, but for one far away. Destiny led me on a very different path from the other three siblings, as I left the city I knew, the town outside of that city, and the house we lived in, for another city. I would return once or twice a year. It seems foolish to imagine it now, but I honestly expected things to stay just as they were when I left. Life doesn't work that way, and those we leave behind are no exception. Our parents get older, our siblings move on, our friends drift away, or we make new ones upon returning. After my marriage fell apart in 1990, I would return more often. I went from annual visits to coming home three or four times a year. Making a social life of my own in Washington proved a challenge, as I found the city to be brimming with self-important people who couldn't give you the time of day without checking their schedules. Cincinnati gave me solace, an escape, the illusion that all would be well without much suffering. I would arrive at the house, and within an hour, the phone would ring, and Mom would hear a woman's voice. It was for me. It always was. I went dancing, to parties, to nightclubs. I made new friends introduced to me by old ones. It went on and on.
At the 1990s came to a close, it was clear that the house we lived in would not accommodate a man becoming increasingly disabled. Getting through the hallways on a wheelchair, going to the bathroom, taking a shower, all proved more difficult. Mom and Dad considered their options, including moving to another house that was better equipped. The chapter that was ours on Winnebago Drive would have come to an end, but not for the decision to subject the house to an extensive renovation. While they moved to a two-bedroom apartment nearby, the kitchen, dining, and back patio areas were completely transformed. A master bedroom with a wheelchair-accessible full bathroom were added. In the process, Mom got the dream kitchen she never imagined she could ever have. The wall that separated one of the bedrooms from the living room was torn down, making way for a larger "great room" which combined a living and formal dining area. After more than a year, and repeated delays, Mom and Dad moved back in.
All was reasonably well for a few years, until January of 2001, when Mom woke up one morning and had a minor stroke. As she was in the hospital, however briefly, the four of us considered what was once an unlikely possibility, that Mom could meet her demise before Dad. Being independent, and having Mom take care of Dad at home, even with some assistance from the family, was beginning to take its toll.
It was then that my own relationship with the house changed. I was coming less often. After more than twenty years away, I was finally making a life for myself back east. It was just as well. Even if I were to stay at the unaffected end of the house, with my own bed and bathroom, it was nonetheless considered likely that I would be in the way. I could no longer stay at the house we lived in. In fact, if I came to visit, I had to call ahead.
Yes, you read it right. I had to call ahead to visit my own parents.
Now, a new house standing empty,
with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish,
like a hat on its block in the store.
But there's nothing mournful about it;
it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it
that it has never known.
That took a while to sink in. My siblings were very matter-of-fact about it, of course. They lived with it every day, and could not understand how one of their own who did not, would react any differently. It's one of those things that, if you have to explain it, you can't, so I didn't. But in fairness, one or the other did open their home to me whenever I was there. Meanwhile, as a geriatric nurse, Mary could advise them on their care, and accompany them to the doctor. Steve had charge of their financial and other affairs, and eventually took over the upkeep of the house, with the assistance of the grandsons. Pat had a very promising career as an administrative assistant to the general manager of a regional transit authority, when she was discovered to have a rare form of cancer, one that only four doctors in the entire country could treat. Fortunately, one of them was in Cincinnati, and she beat the odds. But it was the catalyst for considerable soul searching, and with her husband as a successful sales representative, she gave up a career to look after Mom and Dad. At first, she would come in the morning a couple of times a week to help Mom with Dad's "activities of daily living." As the years went on, she was driving across town at least five times a week. Dad's slow deterioration was being joined by Mom's, as both were slowly falling apart, each in their own way.
Then in September of 2011, it happened. Mom started down the basement stairs, lost her balance, and fell to the bottom. Bleeding from a cut to the head, and a broken neck, she crawled up the stairs to the telephone and dialed 911, while Dad sat helpless in his Lazy-boy. She was taken to the hospital, and into intensive care, while Dad was looked after full time. Mom had to go into rehabilitation, and the family could not care for both in separate locations. A retirement community with a skilled nursing wing was found north of the city, and Mom and Dad were together again. But in the year prior to the accident, it was clear that the current arrangement was coming apart at the seams. Steve would "pop in" every evening after work, and qualified in-home care was difficult to find, and even more difficult to oversee, especially with a woman more accustomed by this time to giving orders than in taking them.
The long goodbye for our father was also coming to a head. I would be in Washington for three weeks, and hurry home for one. I stayed alone in the house we lived in. I awoke at 6 in the morning, went to gym for an hour, and occasionally visited friends. But social calls were few and far between. Most of the time, I was visiting with family. I would go to Skyline Chili for the occasional dose of "comfort food," and the fellowship among strangers that I forgot how much I missed. Old neighbors, old classmates living nearby, all provided a revisiting with my past, a time that time forgot. I would retire at nearly midnight listening to Chopin's Nocturnes, only to be up again six hours later to the sounds of Mozart.
I was also busy making preparations for a funeral Mass. I knew what Dad would have wanted, and I knew how to bring my influence to bear in getting it. Thankfully, the parish was very accommodating to our wishes. Guidelines from the parish were reviewed by the family, and an assessment was presented to the siblings as part of the proposal. In the end, as with everything, there was consensus.
But a house that has done what a house should do,
a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms
around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh
and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone,
that ever your eyes could meet.
Then, in February, the call came from Steve. Dad was leaving sooner rather than later, and how quickly could I get there? Twenty-four hours, I told him. I arrived on a Tuesday. By Friday evening, Dad stopped taking water. By the evening of Monday, I got the call at the house; it was time. As all were present, and Dad was taking his last desperate breaths, I laid my hand on his forehead, and said the ancient commendation for the dying, the Proficiscere: “Go forth, O Christian soul, out of this world, in the Name of God the Father almighty, Who created you; in the Name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, Who suffered for you; in the Name of the Holy Ghost, Who sanctified you, in the name of the holy and glorious Mary, Virgin and Mother of God; in the name of the angels, archangels, thrones and dominions, cherubim and seraphim; in the name of the patriarchs and prophets, of the holy apostles and evangelists, of the holy martyrs, confessors, monks and hermits, of the holy virgins, and of all the saints of God; may your place be this day in peace, and your abode in Holy Sion ...” There was no movement for a few minutes. I checked his pulse. While waiting for the nurse to confirm what we all knew, I continued: “Subvenite, Sancti Dei, occurrite, Angeli Domini, Suscipientes animan ejus ...”
We could not keep Mom in the house we lived in. No amount of live-in home care would endure her cantankerous nature, and the charge over her own domain. The day after Dad was laid to rest, we moved Mom from the skilled nursing wing into her new one-bedroom apartment on the other side of the complex. She cried when she walked in, seeing the furniture in what seemed as a transplanting of her own abode to another, more accessible place. There were activities during the day, three meals prepared in the dining room, and Mass on Saturday night. Pat or another family member visited her every day. As the months went by, and she awoke "with the chickens" to do her crossword puzzles in the morning paper as she had done for years, she became accustomed to her new surroundings. The question then became, what to do with the house we lived in.
In the wake of Dad's passing, friends and neighbors had come to call. One of them was the man whom we once knew in childhood as "Beanie," the preacher's son, whose father lived next door. His mother had passed away only recently, and his father was getting on in years. For the young man and his wife to live in the same house with him was becoming a challenge. As I gave them a tour of the house, especially the addition in the back, their interest was piqued. And now, several months later, they approached Steve with a proposal.
I would come to stay at the house when I was there; for Father's Day, for the sixtieth wedding anniversary in June, for Mom's first Christmas without Dad. Eventually the cable television was disconnected, and so was the wireless connection. I had to bring the latter on my own, in the form of my iPhone. There was nearly sixty years worth of memories to go through over the past year, nestled in the many corners of the house we lived in. Mom was an incurable packrat, the destination of first and last resort for any school or Scouting project. Everything was meticulously organized, to the point that belied just how much of it there really was. I have to give credit to Steve; for a guy very much "in charge" of things, he managed the process with remarkable collegiality. With a complete inventory of furniture, books, personal records, photographs, and the like, there was consensus all around, and a desire that each of us achieve our satisfaction without the expense of another.
Among other things, I got the silverware, and my paternal grandmother's old clock, now being restored to its former glory.
So whenever I go to Suffern
along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house
without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof
and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor old house
is a house with a broken heart.
There were three visits to Milford in as many months; three round trips of a thousand miles each, as if to say in stages the long goodbye to the town I left behind so many years ago, but which never left me. I drive through its streets, I visit the places I frequented. My conscious mind sees them as they are now. And yet, there is a land of shadows, one in which I see them as I did growing up. Each house cannot be remembered by who lives there now, but who lived there then. It could never belong to those of the present, not in this place that I visit, a place ever present, but never to be seen again.
It was late last month, on a Saturday morning, that I gathered what I could into my 2005 Scion XB, and prepared for the nine-hour journey back to what was now the only home I could call by that name. On this date, after nearly fifty-seven years, with the deal having been signed, sealed, and delivered, the house we lived in at 29 Winnebago Drive is now the home of the Reverend Daryl Poe, pastor of New Harmony Baptist Church, and his devoted wife Jacqueline. Daryl had a long and distinguished career in law enforcement, moving from one assignment to another across the Buckeye State over the years -- a police department here, a sheriff's department there -- before answering the call to follow in his father's footsteps. And so, those who are of the Southern Baptist tradition have a new home, as does the man who serves them. But however beloved it was by those who did so before, however much it is by those who do so now, it is, at the end of the day, not really a home to either.
No, there is another ...
“Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:1-3)
Life goes on, at the house we lived in.
“The House with Nobody in It” was originally published in Trees and Other Poems, a collection of Joyce Kilmer, by the George H Doran Company, New York City, in 1914.
.
By now we've all heard (ad nauseum) about the Notre Dame vs Alabama football game this past weekend. (I'm still hearing about it at the office, from people who spent about as much time on a football field as me. That ain't sayin' much.) We've also heard about how ESPN commentator Brent Musburger went ballistic as Katherine Webb, the girlfriend of Alabama's A J McCarron, and (invariably) the reigning Miss Alabama USA, appeared on the screen.
Everyone thought this was tasteless and boorish, which it probably was. Many also thought that it bought into stereotypes about how star athletes always get the really attractive women, some of whom are (or so the story goes) a little short on intellect. Personally, I can't imagine where such Neanderthal notions originate, but let's go back about forty-some years and give it a try, shall we?
+ + +
Clarisse -- I'd love to use her real name, really I would -- started her first year at my Catholic high school, just as I was beginning my second. She was smart, beautiful, vivacious, and with all that, she was also the girl next door, if by "next door" you still meant the respectable part of the city where the school was situated, as opposed to the podunk town from which I was bussed every day. During my sophomore year, I thought she was unattainable, and so was content with a convivial and platonic friendship. By the following school year, I got past those limitations, and with good reason. The annual Mardi Gras dance was coming up, and when I asked her to be my date, she happily agreed. My high school was a shallow, artificial world, but to my adolescent mind, I was finally moving up in it.
In some respects, my high school was no different than any other in America. If you played intervarsity athletics, was reasonably good at it, was reasonably good looking, and wasn't a complete klutz around the ladies, you could pretty much write your own ticket on the social food chain. (You didn't even have to know how to dance. In the post-hippie, pre-disco era of the early 1970s, I'm not sure anyone knew.) It also helped that you brought honor and glory to the school, which paid off in alumni contributions to the athletic boosters club, and mentions in the daily newspaper. I would not have qualified for this elite caste, but Clarisse hung around with girls who did, in what amounted to a "jocks only" policy when it came to dating.
Now, the Mardi Gras was a time-honored tradition, brought to the school by the order of sisters who ran it, and whose motherhouse was in New Orleans. The event was preceded by the seniors electing a Court of Honor, consisting of two dozen senior men and women, from which a King and Queen were chosen. The other classes voted on attendants to the court. Clarisse made the grade, one of three girls and three boys in her class, the former escorted by any one of the latter. It was here that fate intervened. Clarisse had to break the bad news to me, that her social obligations to this event precluded being my date (which didn't seem to be a problem for others, as I recall), and my invitation was unceremoniously returned. Naturally, I was crushed. She did a great job of pretending to feel bad about it to my sister, who was her classmate. And there wasn't enough time left to ask someone else to be number two on your list. But the order and harmony of the status quo was restored, and all was right with the world, myopic though it may have been.
But take heart, dear reader, for the story had a happy ending. Clarisse ended up "going steady" with the guy who escorted her (who it turns out may have been a very distant cousin of mine), and they married shortly after graduation. Mr Storybook went on to teach at the high school for many years, as he and Mrs Storybook were often feted for their years of service to dear old Alma Mater.
Seven and a half years after leaving that cultural wasteland, I got the hell out of Dodge City, and except for reunions every ten years (where I manage never to run into those two), never looked back. In recent years, my old high school has had the audacity to recognize achievement in other fields of endeavor besides athletics, and with no small amount of enthusiasm. I wish I could congratulate them, but I think Huey Lewis and the News deserve the credit.
(What's that you ask, am I bitter? Why, do I look bitter?)
+ + +
In the book of Proverbs, it is said that “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” (31:30) You have to wonder if the Katherine Webbs of the world ever learn this the hard way, or if they just get tired of everyone telling them how pretty they are. What else can people say? “Hey, loved that term paper you wrote on quantum theory. You should get that published.”
They could also say nothing at all. Part of the reason that women wear head coverings in many cultures and through much of history, especially those who are married, is due to how sensitized they are to the unwanted attentions of men, preferring to save their beauty for someone more worthy, like, oh, their husbands, maybe. This is hardly an endorsement of that practice, so much as a reminder of why it would exist anywhere at all -- especially inside a Catholic church during Holy Mass; now that IS an endorsement! -- and how easily the base elements of our human nature, especially among the male of the species, can be easily provoked.
That being said, there are worse things that can happen to a woman than getting ogled by men, after voluntarily entering a beauty contest and subsequently dating the college football star, don't you think?
At this time, man with black hat is looking for former students of Magdalen College of Warner, New Hampshire.
By 2010, the college had undergone a process of reform to shed its image of severity, and was renamed The College of Saint Mary Magdalen. We are interested in clarifying a number of rumors that emerged about the institution over the years, through the means of a personal account of academic and student life before the transformation.
Our narrator should be able to confirm their having attended the college and received a degree, and provide a story of 500 to 1000 words. We are particularly interested in what was at the time, a policy of standing in loco parentis, through close supervision of students' dress, manners, behavior, and (drumroll, please!) social interaction. Names would be changed to avoid detraction, except where one's association with the institution is prominent enough to render anonymity impossible. Needless to say, the identity of the narrator will be kept anonymous.
We have no interest in doing any harm to the College as it is presently constituted, nor to any of its administration, faculty, staff, and more important, students and alumni. Our only interest is in the truth, so as to distinguish it from falsehood. This should not be cause for objection, don't you think?
IMAGE: A map of Kings Island Amusement Park, as it appeared in 1973.
IMAGE: The Banana Splits, in an undated publicity photo.
IMAGE: George Clooney, yeah, that George Clooney. I knew his dad, sort of.
