What Ever Happened to What'sername?

       By way of introduction to this evening's quill work, A REALLY BIG SHOUT OUT TO MY SON ROSS (DON'T USE PHRASE "IN-LAW") BECAUSE IT'S HIS BIRTHDAY!  HE'S A WONDERFUL, FUN GUY, MARRIED OUR YOUNGEST DAUGHTER AND WAITED AT THE CHURCH FOR OVER AN HOUR BECAUSE THE QUAINT, VINTAGE TROLLEY WE'D RENTED TO TAKE BRIDE, MAIDS AND FAM TO NEIGHBORING CITY CAUGHT FIRE ON THE HIGHWAY, NECESSITATING ASAP  EVACUATION. (PLEASE SEE, "THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS")
       A hardworking family man, he's the guy who's sit straight-faced, tolerating a guest speaker on Dream Interpretation when she says, "Consider your dream world as the true reality, and your ordinary waking life as a dream.", all the while thinking, And then see how popular you are in the corporate structure at board meetings when you admit to a cash flow problem but want to discuss instead a place in the Executive lot for your unicorn. This young man can 'work a situation'.  And at home - King of the BBQ and a rabid Bears fan. Fortunately, already beautiful wife, son and two daughters look great in navy and orange.  Blow it out, today, Ross!
       On to other, lesser matters at hand.  The eldest of our eight grandchildren has reached that 'world-is-my-oyster' age of fourteen.  Lately, family chats turn to issues of sustainess, stability a future success.  His goals are challenging - bloodless orthopedic surgery among them.  His younger sister by two years is set on oceanography.  My husband is a doc, I was a nurse then studied and practiced law and now want only to write (indeed, first love)
       When they see me struggling at the keys, they ask - in a kind way - why I remain one of the 'lesser literary lights'.  Indeed, indeed.  Time to launch into the relationship between talent and industry as they relate to success topped off with examples of some of the 'swells' who 'made it' and the 'could-have-beens' and why.  (This topic often comes up at class reunions and the discussion can get rather feisty.  "Did Whatshername, you know our valedictorian at Georgetown, do OK when she came back from 'camp'?  "Dunno."; "What's it matter?"  "Just saying."  Some sequiturs are perfectly logical and some are non.  Obviously, ole "Whatshername" really had a shot, also had a problem, sought help and got it and there is a classmate present who knows the outcome and isn't giving it up.   I say, "Pass the salt, puleez, and the tripe.)
       We are but sixteen years into this century; change abounds; these kids will have career opportunities in areas not yet discovered.  It is imperative that families and school systems not add stress by exacting a career preference prematurely.  Clearly competing/enjoying sports and the Arts in a coordinating outfit with clear, blushed skin and just the right color, waterproof eyeliner are primo now.  When the time comes to make life choices, success bubbles out of admixture of talent and INDUSTRY.
       While dating, my husband and I were fortunate to see a unique, rare, visiting Rodin exhibit at the Smithsonian.  The artist's industry could provide heat and light to the entire Midwest. A combination of his wife, Zelda and his addictions, contained F. Scott Fitzgerald to half the literary masterpieces within him.  During the same time period, Scribner's editor Sam Perkins handled Thomas Wolfe - a physical giant of a man whose habit, when on a writing streak, was to use a legal pad and the top of the refrigerator as a desk, tearing off pages in a desultory fashion, casting them to the floor.  Sam would diligently climb several flights of steps to Wolfe's unkempt apartment, collect the non-collated pile of yellow paper and return to his neat office so that we could have, Look Homeward, Angel.  A non-fail recipe - that, talent + industry.
       By definition, an introvert takes what the world impresses upon him and makes something of it.  An extrovert, contrastingly imposes his will upon a world situation/issue and makes something of it.  Nothing happened to Whatshername.  She did neither, apparently - either because she didn't have the ability, when opportunity knocked or she did but was lazy.  In a scene from the movie, The Turning Point, Shirley Maclaine, former prima ballerina, says to Anne Bancroft, reigning prima ballerina, of her character Didi's losing the part of Anna Karenina to Bancroft's character, Emma, "You got nineteen curtain calls.".  Emma replies, "You had a baby." Equally talented when the part (and their subsequent lives) were cast, this exchange revealed the point at which each of them knew who they were and what they wanted to be.  Successful.  Twenty years of daily, sweating, grueling work achieved that success for each.  You'll know the moment.
       Don't ask. I'm still working.  Flapper? Bohemian?  Writer?
Later, Lorane. . . .

Glad you waited Birthday Ross

Kindness of Strangers

      

Just Call Me Poppy. . .

"THE Fedora'

Well I was about to say "It's about time!", as nothing seemed to be happening when I pecked at the keyboard, hardly a newsworthy phenomenon, when, well, you've got the picture - AND the copy.
        Today is my husband's birthday - an event grandly feted at the reunion we've just labored through.  Of course telephonic and mailed best wishes poured in all day along with the occasional wry and touching Irish Blessing.  I was among the wishers and 'blessers', to be sure but it occurred to me that
1)  You already know the 'shaman'
2)  I've done 'imortant birthdays' (p/s see august 2011) and
3)  I've never written about my DAD!
        We'll not be able to say that tomorrow.  Joe's birthday was September 1.  Our fourth child, Declan, was born August 31 and I really think Daddy felt slighted that I had dared go into labor on what was most surely HIS appointed day.  No matter.  He brought the 'big broyjher and sisters' to the hospital and joined in the festivities - all the while referring to the infant as "Joey".  (Dad was a quiet kind of fellow but subtlety was a LONG suit.)  Might as well begin at the beginning with 'Joe-the-suiter'.
        Greenpoint, our Brooklyn 'hood, was not the haven of the recherche that I'm told it has become today.  Rather, it was on the 'wrong side' of the "Lake".  A 'point', yes; green, no.  more of a smoky, slate gray.  Riverside, yes;  Manhattan loomed like a Lego cityscape in clear view from OUR side.  In fact, waterway access defined Greenpoint's existence and provided adventure-on-the-docks for athletic little shavers like Joe - tall, lean, fast - a super athlete.  "Leap-Pile" was a favorite.  the game involved jumping from one tarred, pigeon=flecked sunken piling to the next.  The winner was the guy with the best time.  Joe held the record, finally besting good friend Benny-the-Bat one fine day.  That he broke a front tooth, did a lousy job of attempting to glue it back on and didn't get it past his Mom, caused a 'luster loss' for the activity but you could always get a bunch of bored fellas together for a run or two.
        Joe was the eldest of four - only one sister - so his was a 'birthright' pace-setter role.  A devil on skates, metal roller AND ice - his rep was most firmly established an d widely-known in stick ball.  The family (as well as the family of the gal he would woo/pursue) lived on Diamond Street.  Honest.  The big games were played on the last segment of the street which terminated - unfortunately for the diocese - in the huge Gothic, gargoyled magnificence of St. Stanislaus Kostka roman Catholic Church.  (Some might have called it the far center field wall but it was definitely a church.  Stained-glass windows, twenty to thirty feet by roughly fifteen feet indented the sand castle-like mammoth cathedral walls at intervals, beautifully depicting biblical business or stellar, haloed luminaries.  So when Joe hit a homer, which would be the distance of a city block (four sewers; thirty row houses; as many vehicular chrome and white-walled hunks of metal - pick your metaphor), "Holy S___!" was NOT an unusual vocal response/shout of athletic prowess, it SOMEtimes acknowledged yet another 'stained-glass' fatality. 
        He had a vegetable cart business before and after school.  I don't recall whether it had a name but it certainly provided the opportunity for the "Joe and Julie romance story of the times" to begin, flourish and culminate.  Mom was SO impressed with Dad's looks, athleticism and dancing prowess, that ere long, much to Grandma's disapproval, they were an 'item'.

        I COULD have touched that photo up but it was TOO much a part of the love affair.  You see, in the early thirties, you could go to the top of the Empire State Building (a serious date), have a four shot strip of pictures taken in thirty seconds AND record a SONG which, after an hour or so, was presented to you as a genuine 78, playable at home.  Forever.  And the ENTIRE package was yours for a mere FORTY CENTS!

        Having WALKED across the bridge to 'the city' done the lickety-split picture segment of the deal, Joe then gave us his a Capella, croon-tune supreme, "Old Shanty Town":

It was just an old shanty

In 'Old Shanty Town'.

The roof is so slanty

It touches the ground

In an old tumbled down shack

By an old railroad track

Like a millionaire's mansion

Keeps calling me  back.

I'[d give up a palace

If I were a king.

It's more than a palace

It's my evry-thing.

There's a queen waiting there

In a silvery crown,

In a shanty

In old shanty town.

And so it went - many times for us kids when Dad was in a show biz mood.  Which was often - and he was GOOD. 

        You see, after a proper courtship (On one date, they walked across the bridge - in February - sharing a five cent "O Henry's" bar, paid twenty five cents each to get into the Imperial Thee-ay-ter to climb tnhbe three flights of MARBLE steps and sit in the loge section and watch a movie.  Stella (Grandma-who-did-not-like-the-Julie-business) had put mothballs in her 'Joey's' winter coat pocket in the off season.  Joe was not aware of Mom's prophylactic busy-ness, took his coat off in the dark thee-ay-ter, and, while grandly folding it over his super-long arm, inadvertently lifted it high enough in the air so that its pockets gave up the forty or so moth balls which 'clink-lock-hopped' down each of the flights of marble steps.  THIS 'gauche' misadventure was perfectly timed between the Newsreel and the 'Main Feature'.  (I always figured Stella was singing "Who's Sorry Now" THAT night.)

        Julie loved it.  Julie loved Joe.  And was SO excited to show off his high school graduation picture.  She would take his yearbook to work with her (she never had the opportunity of an education beyond eighth grade, having to go to work in a sewing sweatshop to 'help out' at home) and pass it around d to the girls - all proudly garbed in their white, starched uniform dresses provided by the employer - and point to his picture.  The class editor, responsible for captions placed under said head shots, had directed the phrase, "Did You Ever See A Dream Walking?" under Joe's.  Mom naturally (and proudly) pointed the caption out because it obviously referred to his looks.  Turns out what with sports, tap dancing around, selling veggies pre and post school, Joe did a fair share of napping during class.  Oops.

        Their whirlwind pre-nups have me catching my breath - and thinking of those naps.  So rest up, friends, because Joe-on-his-way-to-being-"Poppy" will have you hoppin' like a mothball.  Tomorrow.

Later, Lorane. . .