LUNACY AT SOLSTICE 

Mooring Fever Run Amok

I am not at all surprised to learn that a rare Christmas night full moon will light the sky next week.

Last week we were overcome by temporary insanity. It all started when we received, via email, an invitation to a party on December 22 that we very much wanted to attend. The hosts and the guests are among our favorite pals. Their gala evening would sparkle, no question. So we decided to book it. The only hitch is that this gala takes place on North Shore Drive, the favorite pals are our favorite Michigan pals, and we are back in St. Louis.

As noted previously, one of the great charms of The Mooring was its spontaneity, reflecting the personalities of Bob and Charlotte Horner. True, some of the surprises happened in concert with weather. If the wind was up, you dropped everything and went for a sail. Maybe a midnight sail, were Bob so inclined, with swimming in Lake Michigan. If the wind was down, Charlotte came around to announce a turtling expedition. But Bob and Charlotte loved to take off, just for the sheer joy of it. If they could get away from The Mooring for a bit, it was nothing for them to dash on over to Chicago for a session of their favorite jazz combo.

So what could be more of a lark than showing up on our neighbors' doorstep? We decided to do it! We could make a five-day getaway of it! Our calendar would even allow it! Our Michigan house hadn't yet been winterized! We could take the dog-- she would love it! We could stroll through magical, Yuletide downtown Holland! Catch a glimpse of Sinterklaas! And visit our favorite restaurants! And on and on!

Howard and I still associate spur-of-the-moment fun with our Michigan experience, and have even been known, in recent years, to stir up things up. This winter trip was the chance to stir some more. So very ... Mooring.
 
We went to bed happy and excited. However, later in the night during my customary 3 a.m. wakeful spell, second thoughts came buzzing through my brain, roosting like harpies. Really? Make the eight-hour drive twice in five days? In snow season? And walk Molly through the drifts? And shlep food into the house? And hope we could get safely back to St. Louis for Christmas with our family? Hmmm. Was this maybe Mooring Fever gone virulent? Just because we took a notion to pop up on North Shore Drive didn't guarantee that our friends would have time to see much of us during this busiest time of the year. They have their own plans, after all. And on and on.

We decided our impulse was nuts. We're staying put. But please know, Jeff and Cyndy and everyone in the hood: we so wanted to make merry with you! And even though we scrapped the trip, we had a blast imagining the details and all your shining faces. So pop some corks, tell some whoppers, laugh a lot and dance by the light of the moon as the solstice turns us around to face the sun again. We will be celebrating right along with you.

                                                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dia de los muertos

REMEMBERING UNCLE ERNIE

Ten years ago last month, we said goodbye to Uncle Ernie, who has been cited so often in these posts. I had the privilege of speaking at his funeral. Here, in part, is what I said on October 7, 2005:

It is so good to be together with all of you to honor the life of my Uncle Ernie.

Everyone here has their own favorite memories of Ernie, for he was a highly memorable character. Whether you knew him as a husband, a father, a relative, a friend, a healer, baseball star, demon on the tennis court, pinochle player, captain of his own fate, not to mention a series of his own ships, starting with the Klepper...a reunion organizer, lover of German potato salad, maker of chicken soup...you might agree that when they made Ernie, they not only broke the mold -- it exploded in a huge cloud of cigar smoke. 

Tarzan Ernie at Tunnel Park

My memories, of course, are those of a young person growing up in Ernie's orbit. This particular niece remembers his incomparable laugh -- you could usually hear it before you saw him --  and his special way with kids and young people.

Uncle Ernie was a kid magnet. This was most evident at The Mooring, his beloved Michigan vacation paradise. Here he was free to kick back and let his inner Roscoe shine. Maybe you know the story of Roscoe. One of his Michigan buddies was a guy named Dave, who, at The Mooring, was known as Zorba. And somehow Zorba started calling my uncle "Roscoe." It was really Roscoe who thrived in that bracing Michigan air. And at the end of a long and happy day, after clobbering Zorba at tennis and probably getting clobbered himself by the boom of the Klepper [not to mention a G&T or three, it must be stated here ten years hence], Ernie/Roscoe would retire to his cottage, the Wee Scott, and one by one, just about every teen on the property would filter in to spend an evening with Ernie and Suze and Luke and Matt. 

Ernie and Suze... Doin' the bump in the Wee Scott

 Ernie joked, he teased..but always kindly. I never heard him utter a racial slur or a syllable of bigotry. He loved all kinds of music, especially Dixieland, and knew the words, sort of, to almost any song...campfire songs all the way up to Gary Lewis and the Playboys. He sang lustily and right on key. Ernie also played a mean air trombone.

Those of you who are his contemporaries could share other facets of his personality, citing examples of strength, kindness and integrity. Kids, on the other hand, simply sense these qualities. They're not attracted to adults who lack them.

Ernie and me, 2000

Ernie was by nature an advocate. He listened and remembered. Even in his final days, he could focus on others. As recently as last week, when you visited his hospital room, he'd ask about your tennis game, or how your latest project was going.

Over the past couple of days, I've received emails from former "kids" who are now as gray as I am. Blair, a friend from the early days in Michigan, wrote: "Thanks for letting me know about Ernie. I am really going to miss him. He used to call me at the different holidays and when I went into the hospital, and just make me laugh. We are running out of good people that can just make us laugh."

My cousin, Ernie's nephew Bob, badly wanted to be here today. But he's recovering from surgery at his home in Texas. His son and daughter-in-law, Tom and Julie, are with us though, up from Texas. Bob wrote: "I was telling Julie about the laughing, joking chiropractor who treated pain with adjustments and with laughter (not to mention with great success). I told her that in a way, we were all his patients; he wanted so much to make sure that everyone was comfortable, that everyone had a good laugh, and that everyone felt better. With me, it ALWAYS worked! irreplaceable, a one-of-a-kind gem."

And a couple of years ago, at a family get-together, I glanced over and saw Ernie holding forth with his youngest grand-nephews Matt and Eric. Eric looked up and said, with a big grin: "Uncle Ernie rules!"

Five years ago, Ernie sent me a piece of mail. I don't think this had ever happened before. He had just returned from a trip to Colorado, where he'd had a great time but had seen that his health problems were catching up with him. He also knew that earlier in the year, I had spoken at the memorial service of a mutual friend. Since then, he had mentioned to me a poem called "How Do You Live Your Dash" that had really struck home. So when I opened his envelope, I was not entirely surprised to find a copy of that poem. In the margin, he had added by hand: Some people come into our lives, and quickly go again. Others come and stay awhile and our hearts are forever changed.

Though Ernie didn't say so, and we never alluded to it, I felt he was signaling me that the poem about the dash would be a good thing to pass along if I had occasion to memorialize him.

So that's what I'm going to leave you with. But instead of reading it aloud now, I've brought copies to share. They're in the foyer. That way, you can take a copy with you as you leave here, and when you read it, you'll imagine it in his voice. You might think of it as another little gift from Uncle Ernie, and maybe you'll imagine a trace of cigar smoke, drifting in on the breeze.

Godspeed and amen. 

*****

 How Do You Live Your Dash?

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning….. to the end
He noted that first came the date of her birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years. (1900 – 1970) 

For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on this earth…
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own:
The cars…the house…the cash,
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

        So think about this long and hard….

Are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
That can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough
To consider whats true and real,
And always try to understand
The way other people feel. 

And be less quick to anger
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we’ve never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect,
And more often wear a smile….
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.  

So when your eulogy’s being read
With your life’s actions to rehash
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

             --  Linda Ellis

This article originally appeared in different form in Ford Times magazine, May 1978. Ford Times ceased publication in 1993. “Don’t shoot the piano player” is a saying dating to the American Wild West. It often appeared on signs in saloons of the era.

“Don’t Shoot the Piano Player. He’s doing his best.” reads the sign in our local “ole-tyme” pizza parlor. Presumably the sign was hung there for its ole-tyme amusement value, but in me it arouses a feeling of kinship for the poor devil who inspired the saying in the first place.

Countless times in my brief career of piano accompanist have I taken my place at the bench, cowering under an imagined barrage of rotten eggs. Well, you can duck but you can’t hide, sitting up there at the front of the room. The best you can hope for is a power outage to sabotage the concert and send everyone home in a hurry.

No one, least of all me, expected any kind of public life to result from the music lessons I began taking in third grade. Although I enjoyed piano study, early on I formed an intense dislike for recitals and any other kind of command performance.

Left alone, I played like an angel, but the presence of an audience froze my stubby 8-year-old fingers and set even my pigtails aquiver. Clearly, I was destined for a one-to-one relationship with my baby grand, and that was fine with me.

Then came high school. In my junior year I was admitted to the a cappella choir: an unqualified Big Deal because the choir director, Miss Replogle, was highly selective. She could afford to be. One of those legendary figures found in seemingly every tradition-bound community, Esther Replogle had been with the Webster Groves, Missouri school system nearly 40 years. Feared and adored by several generations of students and school officials, she made the choir a memorable experience for every kid lucky enough to be included.

Miss Rep was generous with praise, unsubtle with criticism. “Lousy!” she’d bellow after a weak opening chord, padding across the room in her stocking feet.  And we’d try again--two times, a dozen times--until we got it right.

One day at the close of the hour, Miss Rep said, “Can anyone play piano by ear?” I raised my hand--or rather some poltergeist grabbed it and yanked it into the air. I tried to retrieve it but two late: Miss Rep had spotted me and directed me to report immediately.

What she told me, when I gathered the courage to sidle up to her desk, was destined to reorder my entire high school existence.

Our choir had been asked to perform at the forthcoming Turkey Day pep breakfast. Miss Rep wanted to do a medley of college football songs, which were all in different keys. So all she needed, she explained in the casual tones of one asking to borrow a pencil, was someone to take the music, learn the songs, write a series of musical bridges so the key changes would come off smoothly...and play the whole thing as a piano accompaniment.

“Can you do that?” she asked. And of course I agreed, not because I thought I really could, but because nobody ever said “no” to Esther Replogle without a good reason.

She would have brushed aside my reasons but they seemed perfectly acceptable to me. There was my longstanding shyness about playing in public, and the prospect of 98 voices plus this formidable woman depending me to hit the right notes escalated shyness to terror.

There was another reason. That year my self-confidence was at lower ebb than usual. I was a bizarre stage of orthodontic treatment in which my front teeth had all been pushed forward for proper alignment before being moved back into place. I was scrawny because my teeth often hurt too much to eat. And I was a bookworm, not a football fan. I wasn’t even going to the Turkey Day game.

Pep breakfast  --  NOT

All I wanted that year was to keep a low profile, which was difficult enough with a profile like Bugs Bunny’s. How ludicrous that I should instead have to sit in front of my peers--especially the seniors--whomping out an oompah accompaniment to On Wisconsin!

But I did, and came through it unscathed. I suspect that Miss Replogle, an experienced observer of adolescent angst, had me figured out. She treated me gently and, to my surprise, asked me to learn more songs after the pep breakfast performance.

Slowly during that year, my confidence grew and even though I never overcame an initial rush of panic at the keyboard, I came to enjoy the teamwork with Miss Rep. She brought me a long way. It also helped that I got my braces off that spring.

In my years as choir accompanist, I learned two basic rules.

Never trust your memory. It will fail at the most inopportune moments. During my senior year, I played the accompaniment to This is a Great Country, one of those oompah arrangements for which I was now famous. I had learned the accompaniment by heart and had probably played it 100 times without glancing at the music. On the 101st, my mind went blank during a crucial piano interlude. There was a ghastly silence before Miss Rep and the choir began to guffaw. So did the camera crew who happened to be filming us for a TV special [the infamous “16 in Webster Groves]. After that I continued to memorize but always made sure I had the sheet music handy.

Never trust a strange piano. Old pianos never die, they just get donated to charitable organizations. Miss Rep’s choirs performed for many such groups, and during our busy Christmas season I often encountered as many as five venerable clunkers a week. Esther Replogle’s rules of professionalism prevented me from being seen before a performance checking out the piano, so I never knew what lay ahead until I squared off against my instrument, usually an ancient upright, for the moment of truth. That moment was rarely pleasant. I had arpeggios sabotaged by stuck keys. Suffered near-tendinitis from stomping on balky pedals. I ran amok on mushy keyboards and fairly flogged the sound out of their stiffer sisters. Inevitably on rollers, these old grandes dames would edge farther and farther away so that by the end of a number I’d be playing at arm’s length, which eloquently demonstrated my feelings, anyway.

                                                    ***

Since those years, the life-changes that occur in our twenties--career, marriage, parenthood--have put me back on a one-to-one basis with my piano. I am fortunate to have in my home the same baby grand I grew up with, and except for an occasional “musicale” with friends, I play strictly for my own pleasure.

The day may come, however, when the baby grand submits to the efforts of another budding performer. Last year, I gave birth to our first child, whose generously proportioned features were a source of wonderment to all who came to see him.

“Look at the spread on those hands!” his Auntie Nan exclaimed. “He’s going to be a great piano player.”

Better learn to duck, Charlie. It's a reflex that no piano player can live without.

                                              ****

[Note: young Charlie grew up to be not a piano player, but a stand-up comic. As such, he has raised the technique of artful dodging to a level his mother never dreamed of.]

Thanks to Carolyn [Braun] McIntire for permission to reproduce the illustrations.

The following entry was posted in October 2015. I'm rerunning it here to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the airing of "16 in Webster Groves," on February 25, 1966. 
 ~  csp 2/19/2016



"16" BEHIND THE SCENE ~
How a community was leveled in sixty minutes

Fifty years ago during the autumn of 1965, CBS News sent a team to Webster Groves High School, where I was a senior, to begin filming a documentary titled “16 in Webster Groves.” 

Webster Groves High School

Our 16-year-olds, mostly juniors, had been chosen, they told us, to represent typical, upper middle class suburban teenagers; CBS wanted to explore the zeitgeist (they didn’t use that word) of the community and its teenagers, during what even a yurt-bound isolationist could see was a turning point in our nation’s history.

The result wasn’t pretty. Did they find, as they expected, unrest? Questioning?  Insurrection?  Mass demonstrations on behalf of civil rights?  A desire to overturn the comfy status quo and run Back to the Earth?  No. The students were portrayed, largely, as status-conscious, complacent, shallow, blinkered, casually racist and materialistic airheads, aside from a few awakening souls featured at the film’s conclusion. If the students looked pathetic, their parents looked appalling: dismissive, blowhard fathers, cipher mothers -- except for the one at the dinner table -- oblivious to any possibility of idealism, hopes, dreams, or aspirations, such as they were, on the part of their offspring.

The ensuing roar echoed from Webster Groves to CBS offices in New York City.  Unfair! Biased! Shameless manipulation! Willful omission of anything or anyone suggesting intellect, kindness, social awareness or embrace of a wider world view. 

Fully expecting this response, the CBS crew came back to Webster Groves during the night that “16 in Webster Groves” aired nationally -- February 25, 1966 -- to film Websterites watching the program, and to record their reactions in a follow-up, “Webster Groves Revisited.” The second show aired about a month later.                     .

16  in Webster Groves, CBS News, 1966. Arthur Barron, producer. Charles Kuralt, narrator.

Webster Groves still talks about “16.” It has had unfortunate staying power. Nationally, the film was a staple in sociology curriculum for decades. It is still shown in documentary and filmmaking college courses. I got my own early indicator of its ubiquity six months after the airing, as I sat in a freshman orientation session at my college, some 300 miles from St. Louis. We were asked, one by one, to state the name of our high school. When I gave my answer, Tom H of Louisville, Kentucky, said “Webster Groves? That place in the TV show? Bleccchhh! ”

No use countering that I wasn’t even in the demographic: 17 at the time of filming, and a resident of Rock Hill, a considerably more modest adjoining suburb.  Clearly there would be no escaping the stigma.

I thought about all this last night while making notes for my next blog post, “Don’t Shoot the Piano Player.” It will include an oblique mention of the “16“ debacle, and the weird way in which I played a tiny part. But I had never Googled the film. What would I find?

First I found the film itself, unavailable for years, but now online with its companion piece, “Webster Groves Revisited,” in blurry print. 


To see it, click here.    
 
I then found some information on the filmmaker, Arthur Barron, and a little about cinema history. I’m passing it along now for the diversion of such followers who lived through “16“ right along with me, as well as for others who might have some time on their hands and want to see how a community could be laid waste in just 60 minutes (including commercials). 

Who was Arthur Barron?

Arthur S. Barron, Columbia Daily Spectator, February 1968

Arthur Barron, Ph.D., (1929-2000) was born in Boston. He held bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tulane University, and a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University. As a filmmaker, he would produce varied documentaries: a look at factory workers and their managers, portraits of Johnny Cash and Rita Hayworth, children’s programming for ABC and NET (one of these won him an Emmy). He made a noted cinema verite film called “Birth and Death." He ventured into feature films, and his “Jeremy" (1973, starring Robby Benson) took the award for Best First Work at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1968 he left CBS, formed his own company, Verite Productions, and simultaneously became director of the Columbia University film department.

In 1965, Barron was an employee of CBS News. He was not, however, a journalist, and was disinclined to follow one of the profession’s basic tenets: present a fair and balanced picture, giving voice to all sides of an issue. Hence CBS occasionally ordered him to change or delete program segments they deemed unjournalistic.  Earlier in 1965, he had been severely censored by his superiors when they saw the first cut of his film ”The Berkeley Rebels.”

“For networks the truth has to be recorded, not shaped,” Barron later said in an interview with author Alan Rosenthal (The New Documentary in Action, University of California Press,1972) . “The newsman is a kind of unfeeling, objective, analytic recorder and capturer of reality; he’s not a person who shapes and intensifies reality to evoke a particular response." But to shape and intensify is exactly what Barron wanted to do.

Ron Simon, a curator for the Paley Center for Media, knew Barron in his later life. In a 2011 interview with Thom Powers, artistic director for Stranger Than Fiction, a weekly documentary film series held at IFC Center in Greenwich Village  Simon recalled: “ [Barron] wanted to bring a new sensibility to the documentary. He saw himself as part novelist, a little bit of a poet, and was trying to make a statement in this film....He wanted to give his own viewpoint of what was happening in American society.” (To read the interview, see 16 In Webster-Groves)
 
That’s where Barron was when CBS assigned him a piece about teenagers, which would eventually evolve into “16." But if Barron wanted to avoid being muzzled after the Berkeley Rebels disappointment, he had to base his presentation on fact. So he approached the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and worked with them to develop a 36-page questionnaire, which was then administered to 16-year-olds at Webster Groves High School. Their anonymous answers yielded statistics, which in the eyes of network brass constituted facts...which meant Barron was good to go under the banner of CBS News. “The MacGuffin in this film,” says Simon, “is that sociological questionnaire.”

Barron claims to have been surprised by the results. He took them to the National Opinion Research Center. "They were amazed and horrified,” Barron tells Rosenthal. “[They saw] robotized children, dupes of the values which produced their parents and an American capitalist, middle class, bureaucratic society. Children who were perfectly designed replacement parts for suburban, placid America.”

Well before the study was conducted, Barron had approached the Webster Groves principal and school board for permission to make the film. He tells Rosenthal that he sold school officials on the idea by explaining that mass media had not so far portrayed teenagers accurately, and that CBS wanted to correct that. Barron admits he “wasn’t totally honest” when approaching the school board. “There was, as in so many films, a certain amount of conning and manipulating involved....I agree that I never said to the community or CBS that what we would find was a highly materialistic community whose individuality was crushed, and whose values were absolutely deplorable, but then those were things I didn’t know myself at the time.”

Why didn’t he seek out a broader cross-section of interviewees? “It’s not my job as a filmmaker to be an encyclopedia. I’m not omniscient. “ He goes on to say that he was out to capture the essential truth about a community, “and I wanted to do that in the strongest, most cinematic, most devastating way possible. I feel that the parents (shown) are the perfect embodiment of the dominant value system of that society, and that was my justification.”

Ron Simon told his interviewer that while manipulation was involved, Barron was honest about it. It appears, though, that Barron’s “honesty” came out only when the program was aired. Though Barron told CBS about the survey results early on, it does not appear that he revealed them or his filmmaking intentions to anyone in Webster Groves.

“Webster Groves Revisited” is the sequel to “16," released about one month after “16“ hit the airwaves. It’s commonly said that the sequel was filmed because of the uproar generated by “16.” Produced and aired out of a sense of fair play, to give Websterites a chance to vent. Charles Kuralt implies it in his narration. Barron says so in his interview with Alan Rosenthal, claiming it was not his idea but CBS forced him to make the sequel. 

I don’t see how that could be the case. I believe Barron planned all along to “revisit”, knowing that his first program would provoke an outcry (“a howl of rage,” as he later described it). Otherwise, why would his crew have been on hand to record the subjects of the film watching themselves?  The Ron Simon interview suggests that doing so pushes the two films into the realm of cinema verite, as we see the camera that records it all, and the (unseen) director watching the interviewees watch themselves.

Fool me once...

As I mentioned earlier, I had a tiny role in the production. One day during that autumn of 1965, Barron and his associates visited our a cappella choir rehearsal to get an idea of what they might want to film. We pulled out every blockbuster in our repertoire, plus a lightweight little Broadway show ditty, “This Is a Great Country” (Irving Berlin, Mr. President, 1962). To my surprise, this is the number they chose to film. As it happened, I was piano accompanist for “Great Country."

"Our land is great, our land is great, our land is great, our land is great"

So there are my fingers, or chords, if you will, providing sound track for “16 in Webster Groves.” And if you watch “16,” you can see how our earnest choral offering was employed--talk about dupes of someone's values--to drive home one of the sociologist’s most cynical film statements.

Starting at 29:30 you see our choir director leading the group. Then the camera briefly pans the singers. But as the musical audio continues, the video switches from the choir to a montage of scenes. First we see a roast turkey, borne aloft straight from the oven by triumphant home ec students. Next, they’re baking pies. (Not apple, surprisingly.) Sprinklers play across a huge residential lawn. A girl practices her golf swing. Same girl, now part of a golf foursome strolling the country club grounds. Close-ups: lawn jockey, whiteface; lawn jockey, blackface. Gracious white two-story house, tasteful front entrance flanked by in-scale pillars. And the finale: a close-up of the rose window atop a local church door, before the camera pulls back to show the congregation spilling forth onto the streets of Webster Groves.  Open the doors, see all the people, song ends, cut to commercial.

Thus is “Great Country” rewritten, Barron style, as a hymn to the Middle Class American dream.

I’m not sure at what point I saw Barron’s intention in that sequence. But even in 1966, five years shy of my journalism degree, I knew something was off in his film. I felt that Barron had got a few things right (years later I would write an essay titled "I Was a Teenage Normie"), but via dishonest tactics. I’ve come to feel that the film is like a kaleidoscope: you can look inside, searching for a definitive stance, the one right way to assess Barron’s work -- fair, foul, truth, sham? -- but you never come to an end. The images and your opinions shift with every twist of the barrel.

My 50th high school reunion takes place next year, along with the 50th anniversary of “16 in Webster Groves.” If it’s like previous anniversary years, oceans of ink, forests of paper and billions of bytes will reconstruct yet again every nuance of Arthur Barron’s oeuvre. It could be interesting to invite Ron Simon of the Paley Center to speak to the community, share insights into Barron and his approach to “16,” moderate a panel discussion with audience feedback.

Oh, wait. Film criticism? Cinema verite? That might be a tad too intellectual for insular, myopic Webster Groves. No.... we’d rather just forget the whole thing.

As if we ever could, or would.

    #######

Next:  Don’t Shoot the Piano Player

    ######

This is a great country, a great country
So let's shout it clear and loud
Take a look in your history book
And you'll see why we should be proud.
Hats off to America
The home of the free and the brave
If this is flag waving, flag waving
Do you know of a better flag to wave?

Irving Berlin, 1962, Mr. President

    

Dear Mac Parker , Part IV

TTFN

A few friends who (remarkably) follow this blog have asked, "When are you going to write the rest of the Mac Parker story?"  They don't say, "You've been foot-dragging," but if they did, they'd be right.

Not that I haven’t tried. But the conclusion of this letter has been difficult. It's not a crowd-pleaser. Not as fizzy -- no beaches, no sailboats, no boppy ‘60s soundtrack. Instead, questions with no answers, never my strong suit. Which is not, as I have learned, such a bad thing, though you couldn’t have told me that 50 years ago.

Anyway, one must finish what one publicly starts. So here, finally, is the rest of the story in a nutshell: we did meet up for one day the summer after that first summer. It didn't quite click, but I don't know why. We never  discussed it; in fact I believe we stopped writing for awhile. Then we resumed. Then we didn't again, now we do. Every Christmas you send a letter; most years, I do, too. I don't know a lot about your life; you are still a private person. I tend to emote freely, so you know much more about mine. We are now in our mid-sixties, so we discuss things like your movie habit, my reactions to grandmotherhood, Social Security.  Maybe a health bulletin here and there. We tend to avoid politics and the Big Issues. Not sure why.

While your mother was still alive, I saw her many summers at The Mooring. We were friends; she was always very nice to me, amazing in so prickly a persona. Your brother was recently here for a visit to the big house; it was a delight to see him again. We had a good long conversation. Perhaps you and I would connect in a good conversation, as well, were you to visit.

But I doubt you will return to Holland, and you know what? It doesn't really matter. In this case, the continuity is the connection, one I find deeply satisfying. I'm happy to think you are still my friend. Fifty years! Now that is something. That is what matters.

For the romantics out there who would like to hear that our summer of  '65 resulted in a 1966 up-a-notch continuation...or perhaps a torrid rekindling 20 years later on the sandy shores of Macatawa  ... I am sorry to disappoint. That version would make an excellent chick-flick, but real life so seldom imitates art. Instead, we come to treasure the reality of what was, and the nuances of what is. The goodness that remains as passions ebb and wisdom flows.

So, for now, as they say: that’s all I got. Signing off, looking forward to next time.

All good wishes,

CC

Dear Mac Parker
Part III 

August 2, 1965

 

In April 1965 my parents bought me a Samsonite Silhouette suitcase in Dover White. The occasion was my junior class trip to Washington, DC. I felt quite the sophisticate-- my first grown-up luggage, my first airplane flight, and very nearly my first public appearance without the braces that had made sophomore and most of junior year a geeky walk of shame. Yep-- Petula Clark notwithstanding, I was an uptown girl for sure.

My next adventure with the capacious sidekick suitcase was, of course, my July bus ride to Holland Michigan. The Silhouette accompanied me, crammed with shorts, tops, sweatshirts, swimsuits, dresses, multiple pairs of shoes, my favorite green and white striped pj’s, make-up, hair dryer, rollers, Straw Hat cologne and a copy of Glamour magazine, autumn college issue. Uncle Ernie, father of two boys, was incredulous. Aunt Suze recognized a kindred creature at last. Even her dog back home was a male.

But now it was August 2. The Mooring was over. I had returned to St. Louis the day before, following an emotional parting with you the night before that. I was vibrating with psychic whiplash: still gliding on crazy-happy vacay vibes, the next moment shocked at so final an ending. Meanwhile, my suitcase stood imperially in our family room, the Mt. Shasta of luggage, waiting to be unpacked. After sleeping late that Tuesday morning, I stumbled out to face the task, joined by my mother and sister. No one, especially me, was prepared for what happened next.

You surely know the power of olfactory memory. Sitting on the floor, I turned the suitcase on its side, popped open the latches, raised the lid, and WHAM -- blown sideways. Here was the Mooring served up anew on piles of wrinkled laundry-- blasting forth the unmistakable old-wood odor and musty ambiance of ancient cottage furniture, overlaid with essence of Straw Hat, Sea n Ski, your aftershave and Uncle Ernie’s cigars. I was right back in the Wee Scott. Except I wasn’t. I flung myself face down into the suitcase, sobbing.

My mother thought I had lost my mind.

And continued to think so during all the pleasant, forward-looking distractions of August. My senior class portrait. Our college campus visits. Meetings with the yearbook staff. And what had become of that hometown boyfriend she and my dad liked so much? If she’d been tuned in to the Teen Top Ten, she would have been singing in my ear, along with Gary Lewis and the Playboys:  Walk along the lake with someone new // Have yourself a summer fling or two // Just remember I’m in love with you, so // Save your heart for me... She was getting the idea that Mac Parker, this dodgy character she was hearing entirely too much about, had eclipsed that boyfriend for good. Her only hope of reinstating the status quo was that you hadn’t written.

We had exchanged addresses, of course. I knew you’d write. Wouldn’t you? I could hear your voice, if not your exact tone, in a new tune by some hitherto unknowns called Sonny and Cher. When Sonny sang, in his friendly snarl: “Then put your little hand in mine..." I knew it was you speaking directly to me. Yet now it was almost September. “Maybe I should write to him,” I told my mother. “Absolutely not! The boy should always make the first move. If he had really cared about you, he would write.” Hmmph. I disagreed. There had been some real substance to that romance. There was only one thing to be done:  disobey. So, knowing only that you were a Virgo, I made a wild stab at guessing your birthday and sent a card. And finally, you answered. In that first letter, you wrote:  “Carol, I had intended to write earlier and even attempted it but nothing came of it. My brother says it was because I was still sick over your leaving and I defended my honor by taking a swing at him (mostly because he was right).”

Christmas, 1965   (Photo by Bev Allgaier)

Hah! I knew I hadn’t got it wrong. We began a lively correspondence, filled with bantering affection and sprinkled with talk of reuniting the following summer. Letters arrived regularly, and occasionally other surprises. I read selected passages to my mother, usually those dealing with your escapades at school (“not my natural habitat"), who couldn’t help laughing. She was beginning to understand the appeal.

So we wrote. Only 36 weeks till we go back to The Mooring. Only 18 weeks. Only twelve weeks. Only six weeks. Then, early in June, another kind of letter came. I never knew exactly when you found out, but you forestalled telling me to avoid spoiling my high school graduation. The Parkers would not be returning to The Mooring that summer. I later learned that your mother had had a falling out with Bob Horner. The best you could manage was a brief visit. You would drive as far as Chicago, continue to Holland the next morning, and we would have one precious day together before you had to go back. You would spend that night with the Horners -- an arrangement that was accomplished via delicate negotiations, unbeknownst to me -- and leave early the following day. 

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Next: Now what?

MORE FAQ's
Featuring another appearance by the world's most critical reader

Q  How many Mooring people from 1965 read this blog? 
A  The only ones I'm certain are reading are Mac, David, Susie and Ruth. If there are more, I'd love it if they'd drop a line and let me know. As for the previous generation, those still living are 90 or so. I'm still in touch with Al and Aunt Suze, of course.
Most of my blog followers are from the '70s on forward.
 

Q  So you're still in touch with Mac Parker? Is that his real name?
A  Yes, and no

Q  OK ... where is he now?
A   Mac Parker is shielded under the Porter Witness Protection Program. He lives on one of the coasts (though not the Lake Michigan coast).

Q  Can you at least show a picture?
A  No. I have no wish to embarrass anyone. He's a good sport but I don't  want to push it. You'll notice I haven't quoted from his letters, vastly entertaining though they are. However, I may take the liberty of doing so shortly. Time will tell. 

Q  You're toying with us.
A  Wait a minute...it's you again, isn't it? Hostile interviewer...the
world's most critical reader. Can't you just sit back and enjoy the ride?

Q  Not while you string us along. You're just trying to hold on to
readership, aren't you, by drawing out this Mac Parker saga?
A  What worked for Dickens is good enough for me.

Q  Dickens never went to the extremes you do. Are you aware that one of your followers wrote, responding to your most recent post, "Approaching PG 13" ?
What do you have to say for yourself?
A  We aim to please.

Q  You're showing pictures of other people in this blog. What about
embarrassing THEM?
A  When possible, I ask permission to publish. If they're deceased, not so much. Though if I can get in touch with a relative, I like to discuss the possibility. 

Q  Your header says: That place, that summer, and now. When do we get to see the now?
A  After I finish my letter to Mac Parker.

Q  When is that happening? In this lifetime?
A  Patience is a virtue, world's most critical reader. Now, you know what?
From across the lake I can hear a pickle, and it's calling your name. This session is concluded. Bye.


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