I first caught sight of her a few years before she became my 8th grade teacher at St. Kevin School. Somebody whispered "That's Irmalita" as she stood calmly at the door of her classroom, watching her 8th-graders file in one-by-one, no doubt checking for grooming mistakes.
8th grade seemed intimidating to me when I was a 5th grader, and even more scary was the prospect of getting Sister Irmalita as the teacher. She was widely hated and feared, and her nickname Irmy the Wormy went back a long way.
She apparently had a magic way of disciplining a coed roomful of 13-year olds, of getting respect and control in a classroom where the 40 girls were inclined to giggle, and the 20 boys were inclined to show off for the 40 girls.
I can't remember why the boy-girl ratio was so imbalanced in my 8th grade class, but Sister Irmalita was well aware of the boy-girl distraction factor and placed all 20 boys in the front of the class, under her very direct scrutiny, with the loveliest of those lovely girls seemingly placed as FAR BACK as possible.
Prior to 8th grade I didn't know what the word "character" meant, but Sister Irmalita used the word all year long. Religious doctrine fell short of what she was trying to do. She was in the business of molding young men and women, with an ethic that seemed to transcend the Ten Commandments.
The JFK assassination happened early in that school year, in November, and she referred to it frequently. JFK was the fallen Catholic saint, and Lee Oswald was the godless fiend, and our big decision in life was to be one or the other.
In February the Beatles made their legendary first appearance on Ed Sullivan's Sunday night show, igniting Beatlemania in the USA. The next morning, Sister Irmalita calmly told everybody to write a short essay on "What I Think of the Beatles"
It was a trap, especially for the unsuspecting girls, most of whom wrote glowingly about Paul, Ringo, cute long hair and great music. With the 60 essays sitting on her desk, Sister Irmalita held forth on why she hated the Beatles. They were unkempt, godless purveyors of noise with evil lyrics, and surely they had no character. I doubt if she succeeded in really turning anybody against the Beatles, but she toned things down in a classroom where transistor radios were in everybody's schoolbag, ready to blast out "Twist and Shout" during a lapse in supervision.
She didn't laugh. At most, she smiled, in a curiously relaxed way. I say "curiously" because she was all business, no nonsense. She was probably in her 50s when I knew her, short in stature, but with the posture and demeanor of someone completely confident in her noble life's work and her proven method.
She had a few favorites, a handful of kids who seemed to be a little less giggly than the rest, with good grades and good work ethics, in a word -- "good character". They were frequently called upon to demonstrate their superior way of doing things, these future leaders.
Of course this elite group didn't include me. There was enough discipline and fear going on, in class and at home, to control my scatterbrain tendencies and produce decent marks, but I was generally not on Irmy's radar, fairly inconspicuous, and probably happy for it.
It was nonetheless fashionable to dislike and scowl at ol' Irmy the Wormy behind her back, especially amongst the boys. Nobody I knew visited her after we got out of 8th grade. There was high school, followed by the rest of our lives, and she became a distant memory.
And she only came to mind recently, along with these present reflections on someone who now seems to exemplify a life well-lived. I heard a story about a guy named Eddie, who I knew back in childhood. He was a few years younger than me, and perhaps wound up with Sister Irmalita in 8th grade. Now in his mid-50s, he found out that the Sisters of Mercy cemetery was located not far from his home in New Jersey. He went there, and found the grave of Sister Irmalita inexplicably neglected, with overgrown weeds and a generally unkempt appearance. Eddie made it his business to go back there, cut the weeds, and make the site handsome. Well groomed, and befitting a great teacher. Somewhere along the way Eddie picked up a ton of character.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
500 Points
It was early spring 1969. Up in the Bronx, a late afternoon #6 train pulled into an elevated station a few blocks away from Fordham University.
The conductor, a huge black man wearing the handsome dark blue uniform of the New York Transit Authority, looked like he belonged on the offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys. As part of the routine of his job, he extended his head out of a window, checking on the passengers getting on and off the train, so as to open and close the doors at the right time.
On the platform was a lean young man, a college student, 18 years old, who had positioned himself to be facing the conductor when the train came to a stop. Now the two were face-to-face, and the young man suddenly reached out and grabbed the Official Transit Authority Cap off the the astonished conductor's head, and started running toward the staircase.
The conductor, perhaps new on the job, was shocked by this brazen deed, this mockery of his high position, and made the highly questionable snap decision of jumping off his train to give chase. The young college kid barreled down the stairs and onto Fordham Road, with the conductor right behind, shouting out various profanities and threats.
People strolling on Fordham Road in the pretty twilight were treated to the spectacle of a terrified and desperate young man, running with the hat cradled in his arm like a football, with the screaming hatless uniformed black Goliath never more than 40 feet behind. They both became extremely winded, and the chase eventually deteriorated into a series of off-again on-again running, trotting, and walking. Perhaps the kid would have been wise to simply drop the hat, and thus end the danger, but a higher motive pushed him to finish what he'd started.
After about 3/4 of a mile he made a left turn into the gate of Fordham University. Now only 200 feet from his own personal Touchdown, he broke into a dramatic final sprint toward a table out in an open lawn area. Seated at the table were a few college students -- fraternity brothers, who were taken aback as the out-of-breath runner reached them, threw the hat at them, shouted "TEAM D -- 500 points" and then kept running, far into the complex of Fordham's ivy-covered halls of learning.
A few seconds later the frat brothers saw the bewildered and exhausted conductor approaching the table, and they quickly surmised what had happened. They suppressed their roars of laughter long enough to explain to the conductor that they were running the annual Sigma Kappa Beta Scavenger Hunt. The cap was worth 500 points, and the thief merely wanted those points. The conductor's sanity now returned, and he hurried out of the Fordham campus with his beloved cap, back to the train station, back to whatever consequences befall a conductor who abandons his train.
The thief, imagining capture, death and dismemberment, or at the very least some legal trouble, had run to a far corner of the campus behind a maintenance building, lying down in tall weeds. It had rained heavily the night before, and he was soaked with water, mud and weeds from head to toe when he emerged from the shadows almost 2 hours later, and made his way back to the scavenger hunt headquarters.
By this time it was 8PM, the scavenger hunt was over, and all 40 participants -- 10 teams of 4 -- had now gathered for the Final Counting of Points. The bizarre story of the Giant Conductor had now gotten around to everybody, and the mud-covered fugitive got a huge applause when he finally arrived. He enjoyed the recognition, and an impromptu award of a case of beer from the frat guys, but he was especially happy that Goliath was gone.
Not only was he gone -- the big conductor never returned to the Fordham campus, not even to say Hi, so it is not known if he got in trouble or lost his job. Hopefully he had a nice career and is happily retired, perhaps cringing whenever someone says "Fordham" or "scavenger hunt". Maybe it's just a coincidence, but it so happens that nowadays very few New York City conductors wear the uniform hat anymore. The hat still exists, but wearing it is now "optional".
It turned out that the "500-Point Kid" was a guest participant from another college, almost nobody at Fordham knew him, and he never returned to the scene of the crime. However his story is still told at Sigma Kappa Beta, especially in April. Somebody said he became a successful piano entertainer, worked on cruise ships around the world, and never stole anything again.
The conductor, a huge black man wearing the handsome dark blue uniform of the New York Transit Authority, looked like he belonged on the offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys. As part of the routine of his job, he extended his head out of a window, checking on the passengers getting on and off the train, so as to open and close the doors at the right time.
On the platform was a lean young man, a college student, 18 years old, who had positioned himself to be facing the conductor when the train came to a stop. Now the two were face-to-face, and the young man suddenly reached out and grabbed the Official Transit Authority Cap off the the astonished conductor's head, and started running toward the staircase.
The conductor, perhaps new on the job, was shocked by this brazen deed, this mockery of his high position, and made the highly questionable snap decision of jumping off his train to give chase. The young college kid barreled down the stairs and onto Fordham Road, with the conductor right behind, shouting out various profanities and threats.
People strolling on Fordham Road in the pretty twilight were treated to the spectacle of a terrified and desperate young man, running with the hat cradled in his arm like a football, with the screaming hatless uniformed black Goliath never more than 40 feet behind. They both became extremely winded, and the chase eventually deteriorated into a series of off-again on-again running, trotting, and walking. Perhaps the kid would have been wise to simply drop the hat, and thus end the danger, but a higher motive pushed him to finish what he'd started.
After about 3/4 of a mile he made a left turn into the gate of Fordham University. Now only 200 feet from his own personal Touchdown, he broke into a dramatic final sprint toward a table out in an open lawn area. Seated at the table were a few college students -- fraternity brothers, who were taken aback as the out-of-breath runner reached them, threw the hat at them, shouted "TEAM D -- 500 points" and then kept running, far into the complex of Fordham's ivy-covered halls of learning.
A few seconds later the frat brothers saw the bewildered and exhausted conductor approaching the table, and they quickly surmised what had happened. They suppressed their roars of laughter long enough to explain to the conductor that they were running the annual Sigma Kappa Beta Scavenger Hunt. The cap was worth 500 points, and the thief merely wanted those points. The conductor's sanity now returned, and he hurried out of the Fordham campus with his beloved cap, back to the train station, back to whatever consequences befall a conductor who abandons his train.
The thief, imagining capture, death and dismemberment, or at the very least some legal trouble, had run to a far corner of the campus behind a maintenance building, lying down in tall weeds. It had rained heavily the night before, and he was soaked with water, mud and weeds from head to toe when he emerged from the shadows almost 2 hours later, and made his way back to the scavenger hunt headquarters.
By this time it was 8PM, the scavenger hunt was over, and all 40 participants -- 10 teams of 4 -- had now gathered for the Final Counting of Points. The bizarre story of the Giant Conductor had now gotten around to everybody, and the mud-covered fugitive got a huge applause when he finally arrived. He enjoyed the recognition, and an impromptu award of a case of beer from the frat guys, but he was especially happy that Goliath was gone.
Not only was he gone -- the big conductor never returned to the Fordham campus, not even to say Hi, so it is not known if he got in trouble or lost his job. Hopefully he had a nice career and is happily retired, perhaps cringing whenever someone says "Fordham" or "scavenger hunt". Maybe it's just a coincidence, but it so happens that nowadays very few New York City conductors wear the uniform hat anymore. The hat still exists, but wearing it is now "optional".
It turned out that the "500-Point Kid" was a guest participant from another college, almost nobody at Fordham knew him, and he never returned to the scene of the crime. However his story is still told at Sigma Kappa Beta, especially in April. Somebody said he became a successful piano entertainer, worked on cruise ships around the world, and never stole anything again.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Wild Thing
As it eventually turned out, I unloaded that house, finished the ship gig in May, and have now joined Benny and my sister’s family out in the Poconos. He’s been here almost a year now, and after a few months of sulking in the basement, he wound up adjusting to things, returning to his “outdoor cat” style, with a new and deadly twist.
Sometime last autumn, shortly after I went out to sea, dead mice started turning up in the basement. It turned out that the oncoming winter was forcing mice indoors, and into the paws of a suddenly murderous cat. After a while the outside mice seemingly realized that Theresa & Gerry’s basement had become dangerous, and went elsewhere for shelter. Benny had de-moused the basement.
By springtime Benny had expanded his turf -- he became completely comfortable outdoors, and claimed this acre of woods as his own. Now, at the end of Summer 2010, he is officially Killer Cat, with a regular routine of leaving dead mice, moles, and even small rabbits all over the property, sometimes dropping the critters on the back deck as some perverse “gift” to the human occupants.
He isn’t eating this prey. He just leaves them lying all over. He‘s perfectly well-fed with Meow Mix, Friskies and whatnot, so this rodent-killing seems to be an amusement, an exercise in sadism. I say sadism because we’ve seen Benny toying with these little fellas before killing them, batting them around like tennis balls.
He wasn’t like this back at my house on Long Island. He was an outdoor cat certainly, but in 8 years only once did I ever see him like this, beating up on a soon-to-be-deceased bird. But this Poconos area is much more wild, and seems to have completely loosed Benny’s jungle instinct.
I used to think that human beings were the only creatures who killed for non-food reasons. That certainly seems untrue now, with Benny terrorizing the local rodents, with all the moral reservation of Jack the Ripper. No bad consequences either -- in fact I’m going downstairs to put some Meow Mix in Benny‘s bowl right now, and I’ll probably scratch his ears too.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Queen Mary
This major relocation to Pennsylvania has involved many cardboard boxes and plastic tubs containing my worldly possessions, and the re-allocation and/or disposal of it to new places. Occasionally a stray item turns up in a wrong box, and I find myself suddenly distracted and intrigued by some relic from the past.
And so it happened that a 13-page letter from my late brother George literally fell out of a box of old videotapes. This letter was one of the very few I received from him, and it was by far the longest and most passionate.
Also the “deepest” in terms of its subject matter, pretty much over my head back in 1978 when he wrote it. He was 35 at the time, I was 27 and up in Canada traveling and gigging around with a band. I had written to him, complaining about our mother and other family matters, with the idea that everybody was crazy and I wasn’t. His answer was unexpectedly long and philosophical.
As so often happens these days with me, I am impressed and astounded by things re-visited after many years. Be it a piece of music or art, a marvel of nature, a human accomplishment, a biography of a great person, there are so many wonderful things that I was too oblivious or impatient to take in when I was younger.
In 1978 my brother was exploding with revelations that came from a new philosophy he had discovered. Philosophic and well as spiritual and psychological. He was growing by leaps and bounds, feeling a spiritual awakening, and in me he’d found someone to express it to, someone who perhaps was also ready to receive this teaching.
It certainly was a teaching, since it was not all book-learning. He was meeting up with a group of people in Manhattan every week, with some very impressive wise people leading him, and providing interpretation and practice to the things he was reading.
By his own admission a negative and belligerent guy for his entire life, George found teachers who woke him up to his own sense of vanity and self-righteousness, these things being destructive and leading to a miserable and un-spiritual existence.
The letter goes on about evolving, becoming “godly” with proper guidance and discipline, defeating our negative tendencies. Actually the very recognition and acknowledgement of this negativity is half the battle, he seemed to be saying….
“Christ could walk on water. What is the water in this parable? It is all exterior life which is stormy and windy. As Plato said, Life is a Beast. Like the Apostles we must get in a boat (an inner discipline) until such time as we can walk on water and not get swallowed by the Beast. Steve, you need a boat. So do I, in fact my low level of being requires the Queen Mary.”
Unfortunately George never quite found a Queen Mary. The letter captures him at perhaps the most optimistic and clear-headed time of his life. Clear-headed and clear spirited. He had demons, and in a few years they came back and plagued him for the remainder of his life. And it was a short life, much to everyone’s surprise, as cancer claimed him two months short of his 54th birthday.
There Are No Coincidences, so some people say. Perhaps it was not a coincidence that the letter fell out of that box of videotapes, on a day that I was relaxed and sentimental enough to sit down and peruse it for the first time in 32 years. And I find that I barely read it the first time, especially the last ten pages. It was simply too much to grasp at the time, or I was simply too wrapped up in other things.
But it seems to resonate with me at the present moment. I could use a Queen Mary, and so could most people I know. Instead of tucking the letter away in a box, I’ll be keeping it nearby and immediately accessible for a while. It’s a marvelous testimony from a man discovering big things, a testimony written 32 years ago to a little brother who, after decades of stumbling around, might be able to use it now.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Q Factor
Lady Dawn and I have been engaged in a serious Scrabble competition since early 2007, and in that time we’ve played over 225 games -- this despite the fact that I was out at sea for 16 months of that time period. We’re pretty evenly matched, and no game is “just for fun”.
In a recent Scrabble outing at Sunken Meadow Park on Long Island, as we approached the end of Game #1, I concluded that Dawn had the “Q” on her rack. The dreaded letter was not in MY rack, nor was it out on the board, and the letter bag had just gone empty. It’s usually bad to be suddenly stuck with the “Q” at the very end of the game, because all four of the “U” letters may be already played. And a Q without a U is like a can without a can opener.
With total assurance I said “you’re stuck with the Q aren’t you?” She had a most quizzical look on her face and said “No Steve, I thought YOU were stuck with the Q.”
We looked at each other with the shocking realization that we’d been playing this game without the Q. We halted this suddenly-tainted game and futilely looked all over for the missing letter. Of all the letters to lose, why the Q? There’s only one Q in the whole set of 100 tiles.
What to do ? ! In the past I had jokingly (or angrily) talked about deliberately playing the game without the Q, for the fun of it. But now we had inadvertently done exactly that. And we were mildly surprised at how wrong it seemed. Even if the Q is the flaw in an otherwise perfect game, it has a storied past, and all the Scrabble games of our lives have included the annoying and angst-ridden Q.
For the next game we took an “O” tile and turned it into a Q, using a felt-tip pen. It was pretty ugly, and the game now had 7 O’s instead of 8, but at least the Q factor was re-established.
As the afternoon progressed it occurred to us where the lost Q might be. On the previous weekend we’d played Scrabble at a different park, a tiny place called Heckscher Park in downtown Huntington. We’d played on a wooden picnic table, the old-fashioned kind with the cracks in between the long planks. It seemed highly possible that our Q had fallen through the cracks. We now decided to visit this park later on, and search the dirt (and mud?) beneath that table.
We arrived at this table in the late afternoon, and it was happily occupied by some old ladies on a picnic. We explained our problem, and they were nice enough to step away while Dawn and I got on our hands and knees, picking through the mud. Yes, it had rained during the week. Sure enough, the mud-caked Q turned up after 30 seconds. It seemed like the little wooden tile had absorbed some moisture during its week underneath the picnic table, and was slightly larger and misshapen. Now it would be doubly unpleasant to pull this thing out of the bag.
Well, not exactly. If I remember correctly, the manufacturer has a reasonable policy of replacing lost letters for free. So I’ll be looking into getting a new Q, plus a new “O” to replace the one we destroyed in our desperation to have a Q.
Dawn and I do not adhere very much to the ultra-liberal Official Scrabble Dictionary, even though we keep one around. We have a give-and-take system, where any word we’ve “heard of” is good.
Back in 1998-99, during my brief foray into tournament Scrabble, I tried to memorize Official word lists, which included a plethora of weird Q-words, J-words, Z-words, and K-words, and hundreds of arcane 2 and 3-letter words. I didn’t know the meaning of most of these words, and I didn’t care. As a tournament player, I knew my opponent would be using them too, so I had to try and keep up.
On some level I felt that this robotic rote memorization of words, made necessary by cut-throat competition and the highly liberal Official Scrabble Dictionary, was a corruption of the original intent of the game. More and more I felt uncomfortable, increasingly sucked into this word-memorization vortex. It was ruining my love of the game, and I finally dropped out of tournament play.
The 1998 Official Scrabble Dictionary had a handful of “Q-without-the-U words” -- qat, qaid, qanat, qoph, qabala, and faqir, and they were quite necessary to know for tournaments. This of course took some of the stress out of the Q factor. However this was a tiny gain compared to the overall requirement of memorizing a ton of idiotic useless words for competitive Scrabble.
More recently, just a few months ago, the new 2010 edition of the Scrabble Dictionary came out, with a revolutionary change. From now on, “qi” is an accepted word. It’s an alternate spelling for “chi”, which is a Chinese name for life-energy.
It is revolutionary because “qi” is an extremely easy word to come up with. Very easy and possibly high-scoring, because the Q is still worth 10 points. It is certainly a constant new presence in tournament Scrabble. It’s the equivalent of lengthening the distance between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. The average Scrabble score will increase by a few points.
And perhaps a few more people will play the game. Even on the non-tournament “living room level”, everybody will come to know that “qi” is a legit word, an answer to a prayer, a huge reduction in the Q factor of Scrabble.
Dawn and I will reject this word along with all the other phony words that the Scrabble Association has concocted. We should all deal with the Q Factors in our lives, appreciate their character-building qualities, and not let the powers-that-be make wimps and robots out of us, in Scrabble and elsewhere.
In a recent Scrabble outing at Sunken Meadow Park on Long Island, as we approached the end of Game #1, I concluded that Dawn had the “Q” on her rack. The dreaded letter was not in MY rack, nor was it out on the board, and the letter bag had just gone empty. It’s usually bad to be suddenly stuck with the “Q” at the very end of the game, because all four of the “U” letters may be already played. And a Q without a U is like a can without a can opener.
With total assurance I said “you’re stuck with the Q aren’t you?” She had a most quizzical look on her face and said “No Steve, I thought YOU were stuck with the Q.”
We looked at each other with the shocking realization that we’d been playing this game without the Q. We halted this suddenly-tainted game and futilely looked all over for the missing letter. Of all the letters to lose, why the Q? There’s only one Q in the whole set of 100 tiles.
What to do ? ! In the past I had jokingly (or angrily) talked about deliberately playing the game without the Q, for the fun of it. But now we had inadvertently done exactly that. And we were mildly surprised at how wrong it seemed. Even if the Q is the flaw in an otherwise perfect game, it has a storied past, and all the Scrabble games of our lives have included the annoying and angst-ridden Q.
For the next game we took an “O” tile and turned it into a Q, using a felt-tip pen. It was pretty ugly, and the game now had 7 O’s instead of 8, but at least the Q factor was re-established.
As the afternoon progressed it occurred to us where the lost Q might be. On the previous weekend we’d played Scrabble at a different park, a tiny place called Heckscher Park in downtown Huntington. We’d played on a wooden picnic table, the old-fashioned kind with the cracks in between the long planks. It seemed highly possible that our Q had fallen through the cracks. We now decided to visit this park later on, and search the dirt (and mud?) beneath that table.
We arrived at this table in the late afternoon, and it was happily occupied by some old ladies on a picnic. We explained our problem, and they were nice enough to step away while Dawn and I got on our hands and knees, picking through the mud. Yes, it had rained during the week. Sure enough, the mud-caked Q turned up after 30 seconds. It seemed like the little wooden tile had absorbed some moisture during its week underneath the picnic table, and was slightly larger and misshapen. Now it would be doubly unpleasant to pull this thing out of the bag.
Well, not exactly. If I remember correctly, the manufacturer has a reasonable policy of replacing lost letters for free. So I’ll be looking into getting a new Q, plus a new “O” to replace the one we destroyed in our desperation to have a Q.
Dawn and I do not adhere very much to the ultra-liberal Official Scrabble Dictionary, even though we keep one around. We have a give-and-take system, where any word we’ve “heard of” is good.
Back in 1998-99, during my brief foray into tournament Scrabble, I tried to memorize Official word lists, which included a plethora of weird Q-words, J-words, Z-words, and K-words, and hundreds of arcane 2 and 3-letter words. I didn’t know the meaning of most of these words, and I didn’t care. As a tournament player, I knew my opponent would be using them too, so I had to try and keep up.
On some level I felt that this robotic rote memorization of words, made necessary by cut-throat competition and the highly liberal Official Scrabble Dictionary, was a corruption of the original intent of the game. More and more I felt uncomfortable, increasingly sucked into this word-memorization vortex. It was ruining my love of the game, and I finally dropped out of tournament play.
The 1998 Official Scrabble Dictionary had a handful of “Q-without-the-U words” -- qat, qaid, qanat, qoph, qabala, and faqir, and they were quite necessary to know for tournaments. This of course took some of the stress out of the Q factor. However this was a tiny gain compared to the overall requirement of memorizing a ton of idiotic useless words for competitive Scrabble.
More recently, just a few months ago, the new 2010 edition of the Scrabble Dictionary came out, with a revolutionary change. From now on, “qi” is an accepted word. It’s an alternate spelling for “chi”, which is a Chinese name for life-energy.
It is revolutionary because “qi” is an extremely easy word to come up with. Very easy and possibly high-scoring, because the Q is still worth 10 points. It is certainly a constant new presence in tournament Scrabble. It’s the equivalent of lengthening the distance between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. The average Scrabble score will increase by a few points.
And perhaps a few more people will play the game. Even on the non-tournament “living room level”, everybody will come to know that “qi” is a legit word, an answer to a prayer, a huge reduction in the Q factor of Scrabble.
Dawn and I will reject this word along with all the other phony words that the Scrabble Association has concocted. We should all deal with the Q Factors in our lives, appreciate their character-building qualities, and not let the powers-that-be make wimps and robots out of us, in Scrabble and elsewhere.
What, no Trombone?
My father’s “bucket list” included a trip to the fabled City of New Orleans, the Birthplace of Jazz, and supposedly the home of ongoing Dixieland-style performance.
He was not a jazz fan per se -- in fact he couldn’t listen to anything more advanced than the simple white swing of Benny Goodman. But he appreciated Dixieland, in particular New Orleans clarinetist Pete Fountain, whose album “New Orleans at Midnight” was part of dad’s rather sparse record collection.
So he envisioned the romantic picture of Bourbon Street - the Ground Zero of Dixieland Jazz - with the joyous sounds of clarinets, trumpets, and trombones pouring out of bars and restaurants for many blocks, a Dixieland Paradise.
This may have been the scenario at some point in the past, but Bourbon Street was hardly a Dixieland Paradise by the time my dad finally got down there in the 1980s. He waited too long -- the music pouring out into the street was mostly rock and blues, with loud electric guitars and crashing drums. Apparently the baby boomers had taken over the area, and they didn’t care about Pete Fountain or any other clarinetist for that matter. Dad was swarmed by young party animals everywhere he went in the French Quarter, and the New Orleans experience was a disappointment.
I visited New Orleans for a few days last week, only a few years younger than dad was during his visit in the 80s. I had the advantage of not being as deluded as dad was. In fact, certain nephews and nieces had been there in recent years, hard rock fans who found Bourbon Street to be the ultimate Party Town.
Yet New Orleans still tries to talk up its “Birthplace of Jazz” history, and Bourbon Street still makes a few feeble concessions to it, most notably every night at the Maison Bourbon, located at the very heart of the French Quarter, at the intersection of Bourbon and St Peter. If one gets close to its open doors (close enough to block out the blaring rock music across the street), the sound of Dixieland will be heard, and you may quickly find yourself seated inside.
Or is it really Dixieland? Up front there was a trumpeter and a clarinetist, and I kept saying Where Is The Trombone? Damn, they charged me $7 for a Coke, couldn’t they afford a trombonist?
There’s an old musicians joke, something like How Do You Know When a Trombonist is at your Door? And the answer (ha-ha) is He’s the One Wearing a Domino’s Pizza Hat…
…referring, of course, to the demise of trombone in popular music ever since the mid-20th century. Jazz groups got smaller and more progressive in the 50s, and clarinets and trombones didn’t seem to fit the style, and fell into disfavor. Trumpets, and even more so saxophones, still managed to thrive, if there’s such a thing as “thriving” in the world of jazz.
The classic New Orleans jazz style of the early 20th century always had a trombone in the line-up, mixing with trumpet and clarinet for that hallmark Dixieland Sound. Yet the Maison Bourbon -- this iconic jazz house on Bourbon Street -- couldn’t find a trombonist in all of New Orleans to complete the authentic sound? Louie Armstrong would have been appalled.
The next night I went to a jazz club, called the Snug Harbor, located elsewhere in New Orleans, pretty far away from all the Bourbon Street noise, After paying a cover charge, I heard great jazz, in a room designed for a great listening experience. This large band, reading charts and also including solo improv performances, contained two young men on trombones. It was reassuring that this noble instrument is still revered and encouraged somewhere on this planet, quite appropriately down in New Orleans, despite present-day music trends.
I was tempted to go back to the trombone-less band on Bourbon street to inform them of the two young men I’d heard at Snug Harbor. But it occurred to me to me that my meddling would not be welcome, that these old New Orleans jazzers had a lifetime’s-worth of musical cohorts and could add a trombonist IF they were so inclined.
I never found out why they were NOT so inclined. Perhaps -- alas -- it was the simple economic decision to keep the group as small as possible? Less guys to pay? Musical corner-cutting in a New Orleans jazz group? I would hope not, but what else am I to think? The Maison Bourbon has a huge sign outside boasting its “Dedication to the Preservation of Jazz”, and I found myself rolling my eyes as I looked at it.
Dixieland fans should do some serious research before plucking down money for visiting New Orleans. With luck, enough of the Real Item can be found down there, in the handful of venues away from Bourbon Street. But there’s no guarantee of that, and “Real New Orleans Jazz” may be more mythical than real, and perhaps there‘s more of it to be found in one‘s own home town.
He was not a jazz fan per se -- in fact he couldn’t listen to anything more advanced than the simple white swing of Benny Goodman. But he appreciated Dixieland, in particular New Orleans clarinetist Pete Fountain, whose album “New Orleans at Midnight” was part of dad’s rather sparse record collection.
So he envisioned the romantic picture of Bourbon Street - the Ground Zero of Dixieland Jazz - with the joyous sounds of clarinets, trumpets, and trombones pouring out of bars and restaurants for many blocks, a Dixieland Paradise.
This may have been the scenario at some point in the past, but Bourbon Street was hardly a Dixieland Paradise by the time my dad finally got down there in the 1980s. He waited too long -- the music pouring out into the street was mostly rock and blues, with loud electric guitars and crashing drums. Apparently the baby boomers had taken over the area, and they didn’t care about Pete Fountain or any other clarinetist for that matter. Dad was swarmed by young party animals everywhere he went in the French Quarter, and the New Orleans experience was a disappointment.
I visited New Orleans for a few days last week, only a few years younger than dad was during his visit in the 80s. I had the advantage of not being as deluded as dad was. In fact, certain nephews and nieces had been there in recent years, hard rock fans who found Bourbon Street to be the ultimate Party Town.
Yet New Orleans still tries to talk up its “Birthplace of Jazz” history, and Bourbon Street still makes a few feeble concessions to it, most notably every night at the Maison Bourbon, located at the very heart of the French Quarter, at the intersection of Bourbon and St Peter. If one gets close to its open doors (close enough to block out the blaring rock music across the street), the sound of Dixieland will be heard, and you may quickly find yourself seated inside.
Or is it really Dixieland? Up front there was a trumpeter and a clarinetist, and I kept saying Where Is The Trombone? Damn, they charged me $7 for a Coke, couldn’t they afford a trombonist?
There’s an old musicians joke, something like How Do You Know When a Trombonist is at your Door? And the answer (ha-ha) is He’s the One Wearing a Domino’s Pizza Hat…
…referring, of course, to the demise of trombone in popular music ever since the mid-20th century. Jazz groups got smaller and more progressive in the 50s, and clarinets and trombones didn’t seem to fit the style, and fell into disfavor. Trumpets, and even more so saxophones, still managed to thrive, if there’s such a thing as “thriving” in the world of jazz.
The classic New Orleans jazz style of the early 20th century always had a trombone in the line-up, mixing with trumpet and clarinet for that hallmark Dixieland Sound. Yet the Maison Bourbon -- this iconic jazz house on Bourbon Street -- couldn’t find a trombonist in all of New Orleans to complete the authentic sound? Louie Armstrong would have been appalled.
The next night I went to a jazz club, called the Snug Harbor, located elsewhere in New Orleans, pretty far away from all the Bourbon Street noise, After paying a cover charge, I heard great jazz, in a room designed for a great listening experience. This large band, reading charts and also including solo improv performances, contained two young men on trombones. It was reassuring that this noble instrument is still revered and encouraged somewhere on this planet, quite appropriately down in New Orleans, despite present-day music trends.
I was tempted to go back to the trombone-less band on Bourbon street to inform them of the two young men I’d heard at Snug Harbor. But it occurred to me to me that my meddling would not be welcome, that these old New Orleans jazzers had a lifetime’s-worth of musical cohorts and could add a trombonist IF they were so inclined.
I never found out why they were NOT so inclined. Perhaps -- alas -- it was the simple economic decision to keep the group as small as possible? Less guys to pay? Musical corner-cutting in a New Orleans jazz group? I would hope not, but what else am I to think? The Maison Bourbon has a huge sign outside boasting its “Dedication to the Preservation of Jazz”, and I found myself rolling my eyes as I looked at it.
Dixieland fans should do some serious research before plucking down money for visiting New Orleans. With luck, enough of the Real Item can be found down there, in the handful of venues away from Bourbon Street. But there’s no guarantee of that, and “Real New Orleans Jazz” may be more mythical than real, and perhaps there‘s more of it to be found in one‘s own home town.
Intro Pocono
Sitting at the breakfast table of this house in the woods, I look out the window and see a group of deer munching on apples, just a few feet away. They are plentiful around here and can turn up any time of day. Some of them are over-accustomed to humans, and will feed right out of a human hand. My sister got well acquainted with one of them when she moved here five years ago. She fed this old girl by hand, recognized her by her unique markings, named her Jeffrey.
Why Jeffrey? “Jeffrey” is the name of a giraffe, whose close-up portrait can be seen on “Jeffrey money”. This silly paper money was issued by Toys R Us in years gone by, to be purchased as gift certificates. This money is history now -- and apparently so is Jeffrey the Old Doe. She hasn’t been seen around here for over two years, and perhaps she’s gone off to that great apple tree in the sky.
This move to the Pocono Mountains is the latest in a series of “phases” that began when I retired from ASCAP, in April 2006. These phases have been a mixture of the incredible highs of cruising the world, and the incredible lows of my landlording experience, and perhaps many other things that’ll come back to me as I move along with this.
The “Poco-Notes” title is cute starter title. The Poconos is simply the place where I’m doing the writing, writing about anything and everything, and I expect the blog to be prolific and entertaining, like herds of deer.
Why Jeffrey? “Jeffrey” is the name of a giraffe, whose close-up portrait can be seen on “Jeffrey money”. This silly paper money was issued by Toys R Us in years gone by, to be purchased as gift certificates. This money is history now -- and apparently so is Jeffrey the Old Doe. She hasn’t been seen around here for over two years, and perhaps she’s gone off to that great apple tree in the sky.
This move to the Pocono Mountains is the latest in a series of “phases” that began when I retired from ASCAP, in April 2006. These phases have been a mixture of the incredible highs of cruising the world, and the incredible lows of my landlording experience, and perhaps many other things that’ll come back to me as I move along with this.
The “Poco-Notes” title is cute starter title. The Poconos is simply the place where I’m doing the writing, writing about anything and everything, and I expect the blog to be prolific and entertaining, like herds of deer.
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