Slideshow

The other day I recalled this routine from my father's favorite dead-pan stand-up comic, Jackie Vernon, one which ultimately inspired a poem not from him (as one might expect, given his penchant for writing about old comedians) but myself.


Here's the poem. Mind you, I was 21 at the time, so I can't vouch for the quality.

Going Over Old Times

Aunt Velma schooled us we should run in the field
when we got worked up, so as not to raise dust
in the house, which somehow managed always
to be just swept. So there we were,
playing at jousting, with Petey and Mort
on their invisible steeds they didn't want
to call just horses, holding branch lances
and going for each other like they hadn't
forgotten all the doublescrosses
they'd laid for each other in the past.
The dog and me were referee.


When everyone tired of knights we turned
to the day, like a grocer's thumb
on the earth. Even the trees which burst
out in yellow every so often
(you could smell "caution" on quiet days)
were grey, no buds, like spindly clouds.
I had a dog once looked like that,
the runt; he passed away unnoticed
almost, cause he was barely there
anyway. This was a runty day.


We fooled around the barn a good deal,
swinging on the rope from the rafters.
Mom brought it from Ohio where her Ma and Pa
used to tie it to the porch railing
in winter so you wouldn't get lost walking
from the house to the barn in a blizzard.
We all used it so we wouldn't stray
from the farm into the woods like we were tempted
to do on dumb days. Mom called it
"a headiness" that came over you in there,
so you'd walk for months without flagging,
and Percy and me knew it was the jays
who called you on and on from your home.
Even jays themselves have no home,
they've called each other away, following
those raggy cries up and down
from Salinas to Winnipeg. At any rate,
we kids stayed in the barn till suppertime.


And rain, which had been listening to the arguments
of gravity all the way down, hit
the drainpipe and said "Okay yessiree,"
agreeing to try the dry old earth for a spell.
We heard it during dessert, don't you know.

Sepia Semper Fidelis

Today's Sepia Saturday returns to the Detroit of the 1930s, and to a special edition of my father's hand-crafted Daily Blah, which he produced for many years and posted at his school.

Most often the paper was produced in pencil on oversize newsprint, which, 80 years later, are perhaps unsurprisingly quite yellowed and brittle, crumbling around the edges. Great candidates for preserving electronically!

In 2010 I posted samples of other Daily Blah front pages, on this earlier Eff-Stop sepia post. The following full issue, from late in Nelson's 17th year, memorializes his longtime favorite Airedale, Michelangelo, and as a rare feature includes some photos taken by the editor.

Sepia Saturday: Exposition

My mother, now 90, excitedly phoned me to say she'd stumbled on an envelope full of old postcards in a drawer. They turned out to be my late father's collection, including a few that were sent to his parents in the early 1900s. Here's the first of what promises to be several posts about some of my favorites, by and large hand-tinted. For starters here are some souvenir cards from various exhibitions.

At age 21, my father Nelson uncharacteristically traveled, apparently alone, from rural Michigan to the 1939 World's Fair in New York. I like the abstract schematic nature of this card, partly because it's such an ironically unsatisfying view of the Fair! It looks sort of like a pizza that's been steamrollered.

"Looking up the Esplanade toward the Theme building, the gigantic Perisphere, and its attendant Trylon"

The postcard caption is a bit unclear but it appears that this is a photo of a model of the fair rather than an aerial photo of the actual fairgrounds. On the reverse side you can see his typical flamboyant pencil calligraphy as he updates his mother on his whereabouts.

Late the previous year, his friend Frank visited the same fair. Despite the "welcoming" statuary, I find this facade rather stark and monolithic.

"Her gesture is one of welcome."

Note the post office's admonition to "address your mail to street and number." Frank was good about this but Nelson, as you can see above, not so much.

A few years earlier still, Nelson's baby sister Margaret visited another exposition. I love the Art Deco architecture. I wonder if the blimp was really there or just added by an artist; it lens a rather "Metropolis" air to the picture. This is the year before the Hindenburg disaster...

"It is wonderful."

She refers to "we all" and as she was only 15, I assume she went with their elder sister Dorothy and father George. My grandmother was probably unable to travel due to her chronic tubercular condition and Nelson stayed to care for her.

By the time Nelson got to New York, his friend Frank had traveled to California. Here the architecture seems to meld Deco with Greek and Assyrian, neither of which have much to do with the Pacific Basin!

The names on the buildings aren't very legible but include De Soto, Federmann, Alvarado, Bougainville, La Perousse, and of course Cook.

Note that by this time my father has moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, attending the University.

Be sure to check out the Sepia Saturday site.

Memory and Music

This week's Thursday Theme (not to mention Sepia Saturday) involves Memory. While some will argue that smell is closely tied with memory, I maintain that music is just as strong a signifier of times past.

My father was born in 1918. He grew up with a piano in the house, one of the few luxuries his family could indulge in, and spent his childhood listening to the radio.  As an adult he seemingly had the following songs from his youth running through his head at all times, for he would burst into sentimental song at odd moments. These are all old 78 RPM recordings found on YouTube.








Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra



Far Above Cayuga's Waters (Cornell Alma Mater)