Saturday, March 26, 2016

MY LIFE IN MUSIC - Folk Songs



With Hal Clark and Jim Deuvendeck at the Heritage of America Festival
Wichita, Kansas,1975


Yes, I get it.  The title "My Life in Music" is absurd.  But even never-was wannabes can have a life in music, and this is part of mine.


When I was around 13 or 14, I bought an upright piano for $5 from the Gibbons, who lived a couple of houses down and across the street from us on Daines Drive in Temple City, California.  I walked over there with my dad’s handle-less handcart (called a “dolly,” but I doubt whether anyone else alive now would know the word in that sense).  Somebody must have helped me lift up the old upright piano while someone else kicked the dolly underneath it.  But once it was balanced precariously on the tiny dolly, I carefully shoved and guided it back home over the bumpy asphalt street and long driveway to our detached garage, where my dad had built in a small room—originally my brother’s bedroom when he was a teen, and then my music practice room after my brother moved out.

This was the best $5 I ever spent in my life.  The sturdy old full upright was a gift from the musical spheres humming through the universe.  Its bass was a rumbling, mellow, resonant thunder, and the upper register was clear, ringing, and bright, but not tinny or obnoxious.  It was a hell of a piano.

About this time, I heard the Weavers’ 1955 Carnegie Hall album (recorded on Christmas Eve, but blessedly devoid of Christmas music).  I don’t know how or why I found that album.  But, inspired by it, I bought a pocket-sized “Burl Ives Songbook” (which had just been published in 1953), a wonderful collection that ranged from the Revolutionary Period (“Heart of oak are our ships”) through the dust bowl days.  At the back of this book, I think, there may have been diagrams on how to construct the chords that decorated the collection’s lead sheets, and that’s how I learned what chords were, how to form them on a piano keyboard, and how they supported a melody.  I worked my way through the Ives book, banging out newly-learned chords on the piano, and singing out with the abandon that comes from knowing you’re alone in a garage.

Eventually I moved on to John Lomax’s epic “Our Singing Country,” which in turn led to the discovery of Smithsonian Institution recordings and especially Folkways Records—Jelly Roll Morton, Sven Bertil Taube (traditional Swedish songs with guitar accompaniment), Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, and the gritty union songs of Pete Seeger.

After a while, I picked up a big collection of the songs of Rodgers and Hart at the Arcadia Public Library, and by playing (and “singing”) through it, I learned the mysteries of the more complicated chords characteristic of the great American songbook--i.e., Broadway show tunes and, to a lesser extent, Tin Pan Alley pop music.  That library also had an LP recording of “The Boys from Syracuse,” which remains my favorite Rodgers and Hart musical comedy.

Back to folk music.  Because of my background in the folk genre, I could sniff fairly dismissively at the Kingston Trio’s relatively slick adaptations of traditional songs—though I did enjoy their modern comic songs, like “The MTA” and “Merry Minuet” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp6dsKleGpU).

Later, when I went to Los Angeles State College, I met two fellow students named Larry Rich (whose wedding several years later I described in my April 1, 2015, blog entry) and Pat Pelfrey.  Both of them grew up just a few blocks from my house, but in a different school district, so that we had never met until we got to college.

As it turned out, Pat Pelfrey’s family taught me quite a bit more about American folk song.  Here’s why.

The Pelfreys, or at least the Pelfrey parents, originally hailed from Four Mile, Kentucky, which is located in Hazard County, the site of much strife in the mills and coal mines of the 1930s and 1940s.  As one of the union songs from that time and place puts it,

They say in Hazard County
There are no neutrals there.
You either are a union man
Or a scab for J. H. Blair.

Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

Out of this desperate milieu, Pat’s father, Paul, became a union organizer.  I’m not sure now which union he worked for, but I seem to remember it involved ceramic and/or brick makers.  He was a member of both the B’nai B’rith and the NAACP, which made him unique in my limited experience of the world.  Later, after I had moved to northern California for graduate school and gradually lost contact with the Pelfrey family (but not Pat), he and Mrs. Pelfrey moved to Mississippi to organize laborers, and I remember Pat telling me that the KKK had burned crosses in their front yard, and they had also suffered in other ways for their politics and cultural values.  

Even so, I regret to say that I was most impressed by the fact that Mr. Pelfrey called everybody—man, woman, boy, or girl—by the name “Jerry.”  I suppose females thought he was saying “Gerry.”  Incredibly, it worked.  In a room crowded with Jerry after Jerry, and/or Gerry after Gerry, we always knew which Jerry/Gerry he was talking to or about.

From time to time, the Pelfreys were visited by family members still living in Kentucky.  These included Uncle Red (a lean, silver-haired, patrician lawyer) and Uncle Harold (a short, bald, rotund school teacher), along with wives and cousins.  Inevitably, they’d gather for a night-time party, and to one of these they invited me, along with their pal Mr. I. W. Harper.

The first time I went to one of these gatherings, I didn’t know a soul except Pat, who was chatting with inquisitive kin, so I sat at the piano and started playing Broadway tunes.  This was early in my life, so I pretty quickly ran out of musical-comedy numbers and started to sing (and bang out on the piano) my pretty sizable repertoire of folk songs.  The first of these that I ever did for them was called “The Longest Train”:

The longest train I ever saw
Ran around Joe Brown’s coal mine.
The headlight passed at six o’clock,
The cab come by at nine.

The prettiest girl I ever saw
Was on that train and gone.
Her skin was fair and her eyes were blue
And her hair, it hung way down.

That long steel rail and that short cross-tie,
They carried her away.
‘Twas transportation brought me here,
I’ll be coming home some day.

Well, that’s what I would have sung.  But as soon as I got through the first verse, everybody in the room—and I mean everybody in the room—started to sing with a startling, softly nasal twang:

In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines,
I shivered the whole night through.
You caused me to weep, you caused me to mourn,
You caused me to leave my home.

Little girl, little girl, don’t lie to me,
Tell me where did you stay last night?
In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines
And I shivered the whole night through.

I no longer recall the exact words they sang, since there are dozens and dozens of version of this song—some African-American (as by Leadbelly), some Bluegrass (by everybody from Bill Monroe to Dolly Parton).  But it was the first time in my life in which a whole roomful of adults knew one of the songs that I had learned from the Ives and Lomax books, and could sing it straight through.

Encouraged by the response to “In the Pines,” I started to play and sing dozens of others, and the Pelfrey clan frequently would sing along with me, urge me on with appreciative shouts, or take time from family conversations to politely applaud when I’d finished a ditty.

One night, Mr. Pelfrey (Paul) came up to me while I sat at the piano, put a hand on my shoulder (a common Pelfrey conversational move), and said, “Glenn, play us a song with the sound of marchin’ feet.”

I did “The Banks Are Made of Marble,” and several of the Pelfreys sang the chorus with me:

I’ve seen my brothers working
Throughout this mighty land,
And I’ve prayed we’d get together
And together make a stand.

That we might own those banks of marble
With a guard at every door.
And we might share those vaults of silver
That we all have sweated for.

That was a crowd favorite in a union family (although Uncle Red, the lawyer, always seemed a bit subdued with them, or perhaps amused and tolerant), and they also enjoyed some protest songs about mill owners and such:

Old man Sargeant,
Sittin’ at his desk,
The damned old fool
Won’t give us no rest.
He’d take the nickles
Off a dead man’s eyes
To buy a Coca-Cola
And an Eskimo pie.

—from  “The Winsboro Cotton Mill Blues”

One evening, after I’d finally run out of songs and drunk a bit too much of Mr. Harper’s bourbon to continue without swearing at missed chords and forgotten lyrics, rotund Uncle Harold came up to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said solemnly, “Glenn. . .if you wake up ever’ morning with a bluebird on your shoulder. . .,” and then sat down on the sofa and fell asleep.  Eventually, I decided that this old adage must end “. . .then you’ll have birdshit on your pajamas.” 

But I would never have used such language among the Pelfreys.  They were far too polite for such talk, and in particular, Pat’s mom “Aunt Lacey” would surely give me what for.  One Saturday morning, while Pat and I sat in their house’s darkened living room watching a broadcast of a basketball game on their black-and-white TV (east coast games were then shown as early as 9:00 a.m. on the Pacific Coast), Aunt Lacey came into the room, looked at us, and said “Hmmph.  You boys have straight your raisen.”  This linguistic puzzle stunned me, and even stumped Pat, who after all had grown up with her.  “Ma’am?” he said (being just as country courtly as the rest of that crowd).  She replied, with exaggerated slowness and stress, “You. . .boys. . .have. . .straight. . .your. . .raisen!”  And then she left the room. 

Pat and I looked at each other blankly.  Eventually, after much speculation, we surmised that she was saying (probably) that we had departed from the manner in which we had been reared: we had strayed our raisin’.  Pat went into the kitchen to confirm this with her, and came back nodding his head.  We were amused but abashed.

But the most memorable exchange came with courtly Uncle Red, who was by far the least animated or whimsical of Pelfrey conversers.  “Uncle Red,” I asked him one night as the party happily babbled on around us, “exactly where is Four Mile, Kentucky?”  “Oh,” he replied languidly, “about five miles out of Hazard.”

This was a wonderful family, and I’m grateful to have had the chance to sing with them, and listen to their stories, and hear the sound of a diverse family who enjoyed each other’s company.  And, of course, to learn that folk music could actually be folk music.


* * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * ** * * * * ** * * * * ** * * * * ** * * * * *

 Added factoids: 

(1) I have since learned that one of the original cast members of “The Boys from Syracuse” was Burl Ives.

(2) Pat Pelfrey himself became a successful lawyer, based in Louisville, and even argued a case before the Supreme Court of the United States.

(3)  I never learned how to spell "Deuvendeck."  Quite possibly, I'm not even close.  But he was an incredible banjo player who later moved to San Francisco, I think.  If you know him, please ask him to drop me a line.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

MY LIFE IN MUSIC: Theater Music





Okay, the title is absurd.  People like Aaron Copland, Julian Bream, and Lalo Schiffrin write things called My Life In Music.  People who have had utterly no impact on the world of music do not—or at least should not.  Still, here I am.  Even an unknown wannabe can be in love with music for a lifetime.  For what it’s worth, this is part of mine.

Through the years, I’ve been fortunate to play in pit orchestras for a number of community theater presentations, including Guys and Dolls, Applause, and several others, and also for quite a few locally-produced revues.

Of the latter, my perverse favorite was a slap-dash assemblage of songs and blather far out in the Chicago suburbs, with a band consisting of piano, bass, drums, trumpet, and clarinet.  The producers provided no music.  They’d tell us the name of the song, and we’d work out the key with the performer, and then find a fake book with a lead sheet for any unfamiliar songs.  Though my clarinet was not miked, I was often asked to play more softly.

This revue was probably the most morally objectionable musical project I’ve ever been involved in, including several for which I wrote, produced, directed, emceed, and/or performed.  Its premise was that a priest was trying to raise funds for repairs to his Catholic church.  He’d ask assorted town-folk for donations, and they'd all turn him downmusically.  My favorite was a rabbi who declined by singing “If I Were a Rich Man.”  Classy.  A black guy sang “Old Man River”not that that had anything to do with the plot, but. . .you know, what else would a black guy sing?  Ultimately, the church was saved by funding from a mafia don.  So every base was covered.  Far and away the best part of the show was that, throughout the opening night performance, the obnoxious writer-producer-director-lead actor’s fly was obviously unzipped.

I would gladly pay to be in another pit orchestra for Guys and Dolls, one of the greatest musicals ever.  I was in the band for a production in the Davis community theater in California, and the actor-singers were just incredibly talented.  We players in the reed section would take turns sitting out musical numbers so we could turn around and watch the actors on stage.

Applause is another matter.  It really has only one good song, and everything sung by the lead was composed with Lauren Bacall in mind.  She’s an attractive actor, of course, but she apparently had a vocal range of about three tones.  So while she essentially spoke her “music,” the orchestra did backflips going rapidly in and out of a hundred keys per song, each generally in 5 sharps or 6 flats, so it would sound like she was “singing.”

When I was a senior in high school, I appeared as an on-stage musician in an Arcadia Community Theater production of Jean Anouilh’s Thieves’ Carnival, which the handbill called “a callithump in one act.”  It was directed by young guy named Stan Cornyn—and I believe this was the same Stan Cornyn who went on to became a Grammy-winning recording industry executive.  A graduate of Monrovia High School (near Arcadia), he was then working on a masters degree in theater at UCLA.  It was a very innovative production, and Cornyn would get the actors into the mood by playing records by Anita O’Day, and once showed a Charlie Chaplin short.  During breaks, the veteran actors (probably in their 20s or 30s) taught me how to play blackjack, or 21 (which they called “casino”).

My role in this play (performed in the round) was to appear onstage in white shoes, white duck trousers, frilly shirt, ice-cream-vendor-style coat with vertical stripes, bright bow tie, and a boater or straw hat.  My cheeks were highly rouged.  I stood around on stage or sat on a high stool and tootled on clarinet from time to time.  Cornyn had me devise theme music for each of the main actors, and I’d play the appropriate ditty as each character entered or left the stage.  I was also directed to provide wry musical comments on the action or on characters’ remarks.  Yes, I was cast because of my ability to play the clarinet sarcastically.  Ahem.

Toward the end of Thieves’ Carnival, I’d go off-stage and change into an Edwardian suit, bowler hat or derby, and obvious fake beard.  When I re-entered, the central character would accuse me of being a fraud and pulled on the beard to prove it.  The false whiskers were drawn away from my face, but quickly flew back into place because of the elastic bands that held it on.  This obviously fraudulent “proof” of authenticity was meekly accepted as convincing by all of the astonished characters.  I resist comparisons to present-day political races.

But the on-stage performance that lives brightest in my memory was in a production at the San Gabriel Civic Auditorium (then called the Mission Playhouse, I think), a very large venue right across the street from the old San Gabriel mission.  This production, aimed at an audience of kids, was called Woodland Fantasy, and was loosely modeled on Peter and the Wolf.  It was written (music, words, and book) by the mother of an Arcadia High School classmate, who recruited us.   Alas, this play seems not to have outlived its initial production, and now survives only in my vivid but sometimes unreliable memory.

My memory is this.  In the play, some kids are lost in a forest.  As they stumble about, they encounter a number of animals who are at first frightening but turn out to be friendly and helpful.  Each animal plays a different music instrument.

For example, my friend Bob Winn, a gifted oboist, played a wise owl.  Dressed (I seem to recall) in some sort of feathered coat with a feathery hat, and wearing over-sized, round-lens horn-rimmed spectacles, he’d speak a few lines and then play a song on his oboe to the delighted kids on stage (and possibly to the hundreds of kids whose parents had brought them to the auditorium).

I, however, played a clarinet-wielding squirrel, and I had an actual costume that the show’s producer had made up.  In other words, and there seems to be no other way to put it, I was dressed in a squirrel suit.  Small openings permitted access of my mouth and hands to the musical instrument.

The squirrel suit was made of an unattractive, ratty brown, but very sturdy fabric.  From my perspective, however, that was not its most salient feature.  Rather, it had been designed and stitched together with a much shorter actor/clarinetist in mind.  So getting into it was very difficult.  Even so, if I crouched over while garbed in this costume, things went tolerably well, and I could totter about the stage and even speak my lines if I tilted my head to one side.  But when I stood up straight in order to play clarinet, the unforgiving suit exerted considerable pressure on what must be referred to as my crotch.  Not really my crotch, exactly, but. . .you know.  Thus, besides producing tones on the clarinet, in front of several hundred young spectators I would simultaneous produce eerie yowls of pain.  Three agonizing performances, as I recall.


As I have said countless times, a life in music is no bed of roses.



The interior of the old San Gabriel Civic Auditorium
(not pictured: the slouching squirrel)

Sunday, July 19, 2015

My Life in Music: 1956





Nothing pleases me more than talking about music, and I’m especially pleased when I’m talking about me . . . and music.  So here’s the start of a new series, which I humbly call “My Life in Music.”  True, Google that phrase, and you’ll find dozens of autobiographical books by successful, big-time musicians in every genre.  But, hey, they don’t own the title.  Well, some of them do, but I’m talking about my life in music, not theirs, so . . . uh . . . nuts to them.  God, I hate propriety.  Anyway, even a mediocre non-professional musician can have a life, and this is mine.  I won’t tell my tales in chronological order, but will follow the unreliable associations that drift in and out of my mind.

Oh, yeah, that gorgeous girl with the guitar is my singer-pianist-guitarist-songwriter-granddaughter Riley.


In 1956, when we were attending Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Junior High School in Arcadia, California, my friend Einar and I organized a rhythm-and-blues quartet for our eighth-grade graduation assembly, which took place in the school’s cafetorium  in the mid-morning before the mid-afternoon graduation ceremony.  Our quartet included a singer-guitarist who did an impressive (to us) cover of Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” (with appropriate footwear and gyrations), and then Einar and I vocally harmonized on “Hey, Mrs. Jones” and “Cherry Pie.” 




The last of these finally broke into the consciousness of the lunching school administrators, who were of course officially shocked, and there was briefly hell to pay, including a threat to keep us from going through the graduation ceremony.  Their perfervid reaction may seem mystifying today, given the open salaciousness of current rap lyrics, but the smirking slyness and insinuating double-entendre of “Cherry Pie” seemed like a big deal at a junior high in 1956—as of course we hoped it would.  Luckily for society, or at least for Einar and me, cooler heads eventually prevailed, and in the afternoon we were reluctantly but officially allowed to graduate.

Later in 1956, during the first semester of our freshman year at Arcadia High School, Einar and I created a “modern jazz” group, with him on piano and me on clarinet.   We actually scored a gig at his sister's sorority house at the University of Southern California, and we felt we needed a bass player.   To help us out, our junior high band teacher, Mr. Jacoby, set us up with a kid who lived way over on the west side of Los Angeles.  This kid turned out to be the little brother of Carson Smith.  Carson was a famous bassist with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, the Chico Hamilton Quintet, and several other great West Coast bands.  The little brother’s name was (or later became) Putter, and he too had a long, very successful career as a jazz bassist on the West Coast.

At the time of the sorority event, however, we were 14 or 15 years old, so we had to be driven to the gig at USC, and along the way we picked up young Putter.  Why is this significant, you ask?  Patience, Grasshopper, patience.

At the sorority house, we were supposed to play for two hours.  We played about 10 minutes, 15 at most, and then they asked us to take a break while they made announcements.  When the announcements were over, everyone (including our band) was invited outside to eat fresh pineapple dipped in honey while watching a full eclipse of the moon.  One thing led to another, and we never did  play again that night.  In terms of compensation per minute of playing, I think this was the biggest payoff of my whole career.  Yes, as I explained earlier, I call it a career.

Many, many years after the sorority gig, around 1995, I saw Putter Smith in Mendocino, California, playing at a small jazz concert produced by local pianist and jazz guru Kent Glenn.  After the group finished playing and stood around chatting, I went up to Smith and mentioned that we'd once played a gig together.  Not surprisingly, he said he couldn’t recall that, and pretty clearly he doubted whether we had. 

"When we came to pick you up,” I told him, “an old lady who lived next door to you started yelling and screaming at us, accusing us of projecting pornographic movies onto the side of her house." 

"Hey," he said, "I guess we did play a gig.  Nice to see you again, man." 

I love jazz musicians.  So flexible.


The word “cafetorium” is not used nearly enough.

And it was definitely 1956.  I looked up "lunar eclipses" on the Mount Wilson Observatory webpage.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

FISHING - Dusy Basin, My First Backpacking Trip



For a relatively recent  birthday, my life-long friend Bob Winn sent me a picture (above) of our backpacking trip to Dusy Basin in the High Sierras around 1956, when we were fourteen.  Shown from left are Mr. Winn, me, Bob, and Joe Green, a friend of Bob's brother Bill (far right, with strikingly handy hatchet).  Mrs. Winn (Francis) took the picture. 

Dusy Basin ranges from 10,000 to 11,000 feet in elevation. It is far above the timberline, so the landscape is very sparse and dramatic. A hat is required at that altitude because of UV rays.  Please note that my hat is not molded into a stylish funnel, like Bob’s, but is doofus flat to provide maximum protection from the sun, and also to document that I didn't know how to mold a hat brim.

The trail into the basin, Bishop Pass, has an elevation of 11,900 feet—all switchbacks, and very tiring for a punk.  I had a headache for the first 72 hours.  

For a few days, we fly-fished in Upper Dusy Basin’s seven or eight lakes for rare golden trout (which breed only at 10,000 feet or higher). 

Mr. Winn daily caught enough fish to feed us all by strolling down to the boring lake next to our campsite and casting off.  The results were tasty, but maddening to those of us whose  fishing expertise emphasized curiosity, flexibility, intrepidity, and most of all endurance—meaning a lot of hiking to far-off places without a noticeable population of fish.

After a day or two, while Bob and I were out together scouring the hinterlands for fishy pools, we decided to swim across a tarn or very small lake.  Hey, fourteen years old, what do you expect? 

Since we weren’t stupid, at least theoretically, we devised a safety plan.  First, we’d test the water temperature.  I jumped in, and with what I felt might be my last words ever, shouted to Bob that it was fine, jump on in, so he jumped on in.  This exemplifies the mental edge that I feel I’ve maintained over him for nearly 70 years. 

It may perhaps be that he jumped in first and then sucker-talked me in.  But it’s a long time ago.  Why argue about it now?  I’m confident that I jumped in first, demonstrating that I was the smart one.

The second part of the plan—the nitty-gritty “safety” part—was that he would swim halfway across, and when he reached the middle, I’d start crossing. 

. . . .7, 8, 9, 10.  Wait for it. 

I have no idea why we thought that was our safety plan.  I can see pretty clearly now why I might have thought that it was my safety plan, but I can’t really claim credit for that.

Eventually, the Winns and Joe Green and I descended a couple of thousand feet into LeConte Canyon on the John Muir Trail, passing through Little Pete Meadow and setting up camp at the smaller Big Pete Meadow (western humor). Or maybe we camped at Little Pete Meadow and fished up in Big Pete Meadow. You want a geography lesson, talk to somebody else.

Wherever we were, it was very, very beautiful [see websites below], and we fished for several days (rainbow, brook, and brown trout).  Setting a lifelong trend for a week of effort in the piscatorial arts, I caught one fish, and (also normal) I caught it on the last day before heading back to civilization.

I caught my one John Muir Trail fish in a stream while Bob was off exploring for Fishing Paradise—a lifelong quest, as it turns out.  When I hooked the trout, I yanked the rod up, and as I did so, I managed to fling the fish off of the hook and into a 12x6 foot pool behind me, maybe two feet deep at its deepest, but generally more shallow.  I quickly sealed off the pool’s small exit channel with my knapsack, and then turned to seize the fish.

Meaning, of course, turned to begin trying to seize the fish.  In a battle of wits and skill that surely lasted at least half an hour, possibly a lot longer, I stalked and lunged at that little shithead trout repeatedly, but every time he slipped easily away. 

Though I say “slipped easily away,” I think he was actually working very hard to elude me.  But he had an air of aristocratic ease as he did so.  Renaissance Italians would call it sprezzatura.  I called it “goddamn fucking fish.”

At last, I herded the prey into the narrow, shallowest end of the pond, and reached down to seal its doom.  But it darted past me, and as it did so, I continued to reach for it, thus propelling myself into a fully prone pratfall into the pond.  Actually, at the time, kind of refreshing.

[Yes, relentless volunteer editors, "frontal fall" might be more accurate, but it lacks the humiliating overtones of "pratfall."  And besides, I said "prone."]

But the main point is that I finally stood up with the smirking Machiavellian critter in my hands, and threw it onto a grassy patch next to the pond. From there, it was a relatively easy transfer into my otherwise useless creel.  In this fashion, I began my soggy victorious march back to camp.  

Just the thought of the Winns’ (and Joe Green’s) amazement and, one might say, delighted appreciation when I got there in the deepening evening shadows brings something like tears to my eyes.

Mr. Winn (with a bemused rising inflection):  "Well. . . . "

Mrs. Winn (with a cheery smile and an encouraging but mainly silent giggle): "At least you caught it.  Well, didn't you?"

The Winns.  60 years ago, and I still remember so much of them and my first back-packing trip. What a great family.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *


There's a topographical map of the Dusy Basin at this URL:


Here are some nice pictorial accounts of hike over the Bishop Pass trail into the Dusy Basin and beyond to Big and Little Pete Meadows:




There are some spectacular images of Dusy Basin at this website:



Don Geyer’s photos of Dusy Basin are located here:


Greg Cope’s pictures are here:

You can also see some unrelated but beautiful mountain photographs at my brother's website, 



Hey, he pays me, I keep my word.


*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

One last consideration: over the years, I think Bill Winn could have let me win at least one game of ping-pong.  But nobody's perfect.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

BARS: More about Jack's Nest




Kids will groan when you tell a story, complaining that they've heard it a hundred times.  Then, one day, unaccountably, they'll ask you to tell it again.  Go figure.

Here’s more about Jack’s Nest, a bar near Farmville, Virginia, which I frequented while teaching at Hampden-Sydney College, fourth oldest college in the United States, and at that time (1980-81) still an all-male institution of about 800 students.

On one occasion, Jack announced that a corn-eating contest would be held at the Nest.  This was deeply interesting to me, because I love corn on the cob.  I entered, along with 8 or 9 local guys. 

On the big night, all of the contestants sat facing one another on opposite sides of a couple of tables that had been set up end-to-end, and the corn was brought in and dumped onto the middle of the table in a huge, steaming stack.  As I began to butter, salt, and pepper an ear of corn, a bell rang, and all the other guys tore into the pile of cobs and began gnawing off the piping hot kernels like a pack of vicious dogs. 

Assuming that dogs eat corn on the cob.  I think that our dogs would.

In any case, it was incredible how fast those guys could reduce an ear to a smoldering husk, but the process was clearly painful, even with a good measure of alcoholic preparation. 

Before too long, I may have begun to understand that the goal was to eat as much corn as possible within a given time limit.  But in my heart I was still in it for the long haul: greatest ultimate consumption.  So, having absorbed the lesson of the hare and the tortoise, I calmly continued to eat my first ear.  

As I began to butter and season my second ear of corn, I began to appreciate the point of the contest more fully.  Now, you might think I would say to myself, “Oh, gosh, I’ve misunderstood.  I’d better join in the fun and do as the others.” 

But I have found that, in life, one must be true to one’s inner core of values, and I quietly reasoned to myself, “Wow.  This is a great opportunity to eat a lot of free corn on the cob.”  Loyal to my authentic self, I continued to munch at a leisurely pace.

Unfortunately, the crowd which had tightly gathered around the table began to notice that, unlike the other competitors, I wasn’t trying to maximize speedy intake by burning off the roof of my mouth.  Incredibly, to them, and also unacceptably, I was simply eating some corn. 

They started to turn on me with a scattering of gibes and curses—pretty common in conversation at some barrooms—but these criticisms gradually increased in pace and volume, until at last I felt that more drunks were shouting at me than were urging on the other competitors.  In time, one or two guys in the crowd began to scream over my shoulders, “Eat corn, you fag!”

Not my greatest moment, perhaps, but not theirs either, I think.

When the allotted time for the contest had passed, and everyone had moved over to the bar for celebratory, consoling, or medicinally cold bottles of Old Milwaukee, I sat alone at the table, finishing off my fourth or fifth ear of corn.

Sic transit gloria.


*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

During one month, the Nest buzzed with anticipation about the up-coming Four County Fair, which I was told was a big deal, and I should be sure to go.  Especially, I was told with smiles and knowing nods, I should check out “the hoochie-coochie girls.”

How quaint, I thought.  These simple yet somehow engaging yokels.

Naturally, I did in fact go to the Four County Fair, taking along a cheap camera which I hung on a cord around my neck, so I could send photos to my stylish friends in the world’s most elegant cosmopolitan urban centers.  For example, Wichita, Kansas.

Once at the fairgrounds, I meandered casually among the various amusements—mainly ring-toss and coin-throw games that you might find at the average PTA fund-raiser.  I took lots of pictures of these manifestations of rustic southern pop culture, and especially of the primitive, primary-colors artwork festooning the premises.

Eventually I worked my way to the back end of the fairgrounds, where I found a big tent with a banner announcing “Hoochie-Coochie Girls.”  I had thought that the gang at Jack’s Nest had been kidding me, but there it was.  So I paid and went in, much as an anthropologist might decide to dwell among a newly discovered Amazonian tribe in order to document its primitive ways.

Inside, a very large group of men, many in bib overalls, were standing in front of the stage.  Before long, recorded music started up, and four or five women climbed onstage and began to gyrate to the music in unexpected yet complicated and interesting ways.  Pretty soon, they were doing so nude. 

Not burlesque house “nude.”  Not Sally Rand Fan Dance with pasties and g-string and artful feathers nude. Nude nude.  Right then and there, a couple of miles outside of Farmville, Virginia, in 1980—years before coeds going wild at wet T-shirt contests on DVDs, before show-us-your-tits-for-a-string-of-beads, before instant porn on your iPhone, before teenagers parading around malls in thongs—young women were totally naked and gyrating in explicit representations of sexual congress at the Four County Fair.  It was like going to a movie house to see “Meet Me in St. Louis” and they show “Debby Does Dallas.”

Eventually, some of the dancers invited physical participation by a couple of members of the audience.  I choose my words carefully.

At the end of the show, I think it accurate to say “dazed and confused,” I left the hoochie-coochie tent—and within four steps found myself face to face with three of my Hampden-Sydney College students.  Heads nodding, we said hello as we passed one another.

The next morning, when I walked into my 8:00 o’clock class, I was stunned to encounter a roomful of fully awake and widely grinning late-adolescent schoolboys.  Soon, one of them broke the silence by politely asking, “Get any good pictures, Doctor Broadhead?”


*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Another of the barmaids at Jack’s Nest was a chatty young woman in her mid-to-late 20s. In contrast with Pernell’s sister-in-law, she was very, very white—freckled, but very pale.   I believe the word “blowsy” was coined on her behalf.  I guess I probably mean “blouse-y,” in the sense of zaftig

In any case, she was very pleasant, and she and her boyfriend once had me to an early dinner and cards at his dairy farm so I could see how such an operation worked in south-central Virginia.  I think that guy was so strong that he didn’t need gates in his fences.  To get a cow into another pasture, he’d just pick her up and toss her.  Nice folks.

Back at the Nest one afternoon, as I started to leave while she was tending bar, I said with what I thought was a comical melodramatic sigh, “Well, I guess I’ll go try to pull together the tattered shreds of my life.” 


“Oh,” she said without a trace of guile, “Doin’ your laundry?”

Monday, May 4, 2015

BARS: Jack's Nest near Farmville, VA





In 1980, I got a job teaching at Hampden-Sydney College, just outside of Farmville, Virginia, which was midway between Richmond and Roanoke, fairly close to the North Carolina border. 

Before I left for that job, I had had a “Southern dinner” with my friends John and Georgie Cooper.  Georgie was one of the most erudite persons I ever knew, and a wonderful musician.  More importantly, in this case, she was from Greenville, Mississippi.  Knowing that I’d never been to the South, she said she wanted me to learn what grits were before I went.  But what she really wanted was to give me some advice.  Here’s the gist—and I truly wish I could replicate her Delta accent, since she always managed to wring about five syllables out of “Glenn.”  That accent gave her advice a shitload of gravitas.

“When you’re in Virginia,” she said, “eat some Smithfield ham.  Have a bowl of Brunswick stew.  It should have squirrel in it, but probably will just have chicken.  And this is really important, kiddo.  If some old red-neck tells you to mind your own bid-ness, you mind it!”

When I got to Farmville, there wasn’t a lot of action for a dashing assistant professor of composition, but pretty soon I managed to find a roadhouse about four miles out of town.  It was called Jack’s Nest, and it was owned and run by an older black man whom everyone called Jack, although his actual name was Pernell.  When I say “older,” I mean he was probably in his 60s.  He had grown up in Newport News, and then made his bundle as a liquor distributor in New Jersey.  To me, this background suggests that he was not intimidated by anything or anyone on earth.  Even so, he was friendly and easy-going, and a lot of fun to talk to if you didn’t mind his occasional looking-away smiles.  I amused him—sometimes as I intended, quite often not.

His wife was the nurse at the public high school, which was 99% black.  She was gorgeous, and they had two gorgeous kids, then in their early teens or pre-teens.  After being a nurse all day, she’d come to the Nest and be the waitress in its small dining room.  I would sometimes say to her, “You know, if we left right now, we could drive to New Orleans and get there in time for dinner tomorrow.  What should we have?”  And we’d plan a menu.  It’s my favorite game.  We also pseudo-dined in Chicago, Albuquerque, San Francisco, New York City, and several other exotic places—exotic at least from the perspective of Farmville VA.

Although Jack was black, his customers were 100% white.   It was a strange dynamic, because many of his patrons young and old would treat him like their best pal when he was tending bar, and then, when he was out of the room, would use the word “nigger” freely.  At this stage of my life, I was pretty well aware that people could harbor and act on antithetical attitudes and behaviors; even so, I could never figure out what was actually going on in the social milieu at Jack’s Nest.

At one point, Jack had a black singer/guitarist from Roanoke come in on Saturday nights to play for entertainment and dancing.   I was always impressed at this musician’s repertoire, which was inexhaustible and thoroughly multi-cultural.  He could and would sing any song ever sung by anybody, from a grinding blues to a current, perky, inane pop favorite.  And for dancing, he could set down a throbbing beat that led to outrageous slow dirty-boogie dancing that you had to see to believe. 

[You go on to the next paragraph.  I’m thinking about that dancing.]

The biggest ovation every night would come when he played a rousing country version of “Under the Double Eagle,” whereupon the crowd would happily stomp away deep into the night.

After he’d played at the bar quite a few times, some young black people began to show up, and for couple of months things went pretty well.  I was told that Jack’s Nest was the only bar in Virginia where such mixing occurred, which is hard to believe (now, at least), but it was certainly the only place like that anywhere near Farmville in 1980.  Back then, tensions could be pretty high at these integrated barroom entertainments, and eventually there was a bad scene in the parking lot late one night, and after that there wasn’t a black singer/guitarist on weekends anymore.

It’s important to remember that Jack’s Nest was in Prince Edward County, which gained fame by closing its public schools rather than integrate—and kept them closed until 1969.  Yes, 1969.  At that time, by court order, they created a public school system.  At the same time, they maintained the 100% white Prince Edward Academy.  When I was there, mainly just blacks attended the under-funded public schools (except for a handful of white children whose parents were liberal professors at Hampden-Sydney College), and the all-white Prince Edward Academy continued to flourish.  Since a few Hampden-Sydney faculty members were on the Academy’s school board, this led to some interesting interactions at faculty get-togethers. 

So that was the local atmosphere around the roadhouse called Jack’s Nest.

At one point, Jack had his sister-in-law come in to tend bar.  Though her complexion was nearly jet black, she had striking, naturally red hair, and she was one of two people in south-central Virginia whom I spoke to nearly every day, but felt that I understood only one word out of any two or three.  The other largely unintelligible talker was white.  Both had almost completely impenetrable accents.  I did a lot of nodding in those days.  “Yeah…well…you know…is that so?”

One night, I went into the bar and the sister-in-law was serving—and the only free stool at the counter was next to the white guy whom I couldn’t understand.  He and his pals had pretty clearly knocked down quite a few Old Milwaukees. 

After a while, he said something to the sister-in-law bartender, and she said something back.  This exchange was repeated several times, each time with harsher emphasis, until finally he said, or may have said, “I don’t need the opinion of no red-haired nigger.” 

I was appalled, but quietly continued to drink my beer, feeling, with some justice, that I didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation. 

Eventually, the guy turned to me, having noticed my quietness, and said (possibly) “That don’t mean nothing.  That’s just the way we talk down here.”  I continued to drink beer, let us say, impassively, and a few minutes later the guy said “Really.  We’re okay with it; it’s not a problem.  Isn’t that right?” he said to the sister-in-law bartender.

She replied, or may have replied, “You could die right now and nobody would care.” 

Though the actual sense of their remarks to one another was not at all clear to me, the general import was an obvious and mutual hostility. 

So I continued to drink my beer without responding or even looking at him—just minding my own bid-ness.

Apparently driven by inexpressible doubts about me or perhaps himself, however, he wouldn’t or couldn’t give it a rest, and continued to lecture to me about the natural, traditional, time-honored ways of communication in southern culture, getting more and more vociferous in making his case.  Pretty soon a bunch of his friends were standing around me, too, saying stuff like “Yeah, he’s a good guy, he don’t mean nothing by it, everything’s fine” and so on.  Eventually, their comments led them to some very excited shouts and even some cursing, so I left and went back to my apartment. 

The next day, I got to the bar around 4:30 to have dinner.  Whatever Jack had prepared for the night’s entrĂ©e and side dishes was baking or bubbling unattended, and Jack was behind the bar, cleaning and re-stocking.  I edged onto a stool.

“Pernell,” I said, “the damned-est thing happened last night.” 

He laughed and said, “Yeah, I heard about that.  Don’t worry about it. I told them ‘Don’t be upset, he’s just a white boy from Kansas.’”

Now, to be frank, I could accept the fact that he identified me as the cause of the situation, because I really was an ignorant oddball in the South of that time and place—not that subsequent years and different places have made much improvement.  But, for a native Angeleno, that “from Kansas” really cut to the quick.


*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *


Georgie, though you’re gone and I miss you, I want you to know that I did eat some Smithfield ham, and also had some Brunswick stew with chicken.  As for that third bit of advice, you’ll have to be the judge.




Georgie Cooper with her son Jack

Sunday, April 19, 2015

BARS: Gosh's in Stevens Point, Wisconsin






Kids will groan when you tell a story, complaining that they've heard it a hundred times.  Then, one day, unaccountably, they'll ask you to tell it again.  Go figure.


BARS

Sometime in the 1980s, while we were living in Ames, Iowa, the kids gave me a book for my birthday, though I believe Marlis likely played some part in the selection.  I don’t remember the title, but it was about the 100 best bars in America, two for each state.

From that author’s perspective, a good bar—a bar bar, as he termed it—would be a window-less structure made of concrete blocks, with one thick, padded red door for entering (or possibly leaving).  In the deep murk of the interior, there could be no ferns, no pinball machines, nothing except possibly a fuzzy black-and-white TV.   Basically, it should be a machine for drunks, at least one of whom should be a master at “holding forth”—i.e., delivering long,  rhetorically florid commentaries on matters of little interest to any adult with a brain and at least a minimal experience of life outside of a barroom.

I had been in seven of them.

In my time, I’ve enjoyed quite a few others, too.  Here’s one.


GOSH’S IN STEVENS POINT, WISCONSIN

Back in the mid-1970s, I visited my friends Neal and Abigail in Stevens Point, WI, for a week or so in late December—the season of the year when the radio would daily announce the amount of time it would take for human flesh to freeze.  In this daunting milieu, I took to spending late afternoons at a bar on the town square called Gosh's.

Fronting this town square in Stevens Point were at least 10 or possibly 15 bars, lounges, and liquor-enabled restaurants.  Of these, Gosh’s was a classic neighborhood bar.  As you entered, a long wooden counter and back-bar extended more than halfway down the left side of the room, always tended by a bald gent who looked to be in his 60s.  Only guys sat or stood at the bar.  

On the right side of the room were 10 or 15 tables where husband/wife pairs and the occasional female group of friends or relatives sat.  At the back of the room was a pool table surrounded by a ring of small tables and chairs, all set far enough away that you could actually play pool.  A very decent set-up.

At that time, as my friends had warned me, there was a strong town-and-gown antipathy in Stevens Point, whose economy depended almost entirely on the Lullaby Furniture Company.  So my bearded presence at the bar was aggressively ignored as I sipped my bourbon on the rocks.  However, the place had an ancient jukebox stocked with about 8 million really good polkas and schottisches, which naturally drew my musical and ethnomusicological interest, and I played a bunch of the 45 rpm records each day that I went there—which was basically every day for a week or more.

After several visits, I decided I wanted to play some pool, so I walked to the back of the room and put a quarter down on the pool table’s edge to reserve a place. When my turn came, I inexplicably shot better than I ever had in my life (or ever would again, except maybe for one time in another bar), and as I neared victory I started taking a lot of verbal abuse from the very large mid-20s Polish guy whom I was, against all odds, beating.

The guy was getting pretty hot, I felt, making slurred comments and then glaring at me, and he seemed to have the enthusiastic support of several friends.  After a while, however, an older guy walked back from the front of the bar, drew my opponent’s attention with a beckoning finger, waited for the guy to bend his head down to hear him, and said quietly but firmly, "Old Mr. Gosh says to lay off the kapusti."

The guy immediately backed away from me, but wasn’t happy about it, and stood there muttering. To try to clear the air, I said "Hey, let me buy you a drink." He deliberated and then said okay if I'd have one with him.  I shouted to the bartender, "Two of whatever he's having."

This turned out to be peppermint schnapps.  Yes, “This turned out to be peppermint schnapps.”  There should be room in that sentence somewhere for the F word, at least twice.  Somehow, I managed to chug down the shot like a man, quickly chasing it with a small glass of Point Special beer. After a few more one-ounce slugs of this vile swill (with chasers) and several increasingly hilarious games of pool, which I was careful to lose (by playing at my normal skill level), I paid off my debts, thanked everyone for the games, and then went back to the bar and stood in an open space next to the guy who'd calmed down my opponent.

After a respectful silence, I asked him, “Which person is Old Mr. Gosh?”

“He was here a while, but he left.  That’s his son behind the bar,” he said, nodding toward the old bald guy.

“Ah,” I said, and stood quietly for quite a while, trying not to seem inquisitive.

"What," I asked him at last, "does kapusti mean?"

He thought a few moments, and then said "Cabbage-head."

I nodded.

After a few minutes more, I turned to him again and said, more as a statement than a question, "It doesn't really mean 'cabbage-head,' does it.'"

He looked at me for a moment, and finally said "No."

I took a rest from Gosh’s on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but dropped in the day after, found a stool at the long bar, and ordered peppermint schnapps with a Point Special chaser.

The waitress looked at me and said, "Oh, there you are."  She walked down to a small table-top Christmas tree at the end of the bar, picked up a tiny wrapped present, and brought it back to me.

"From Old Mr. Gosh," she said.  "He says thanks for the polkas."

So kapusti is good with me.


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AFTERWORD:  No, I don’t remember what the gift was.  Probably a key holder, or maybe a church key with “Gosh’s” stamped on it.  I’d like to think it was a tiny bottle of peppermint schnapps.