What Happened (Part 39)

Sunday we would have the fanciest meal of the whole week. For instance, Mom might make fried chicken, or braise and then simmer a roast with onions in the square electric pan she would plug in on the kitchen counter top. There would be gravy and mashed potatoes with that, and in the summer squash or green beans from the garden.  In the winter we might have beef stew, or chicken soup with dumplings made from two or three tubes of biscuits. 

The early evening was given over to The Wonderful World of Disney, which is the one place we got our rare dose of Disney animation.  Usually it was some live-action fare.  The fabled Disney cartoons were more a presence in books and comics than in actual films or shorts.  I always got the impression that Disney was aimed for the upper class, or those who had aspirations for it; Warner Brothers’ characters were more an everyday, working class kind of cartoon. The fact that Disney only came on once a week at Sunday seemed to emphasize that view.  But at Christmas we got to see some honest-to-goodness cartoons.

Sometime in the evening Pop would put on the uniform Mom had ironed for him (light blue shirt with name patch, dark blue pants), pick up his yellow safety helmet, and head out to work. Mom would kiss him good-bye, and we’d all give him a hug.  We never knew quite when he’d be home; it all depended on the run he would have to do, hauling steel and scrap all through Texas and the nearby states.  When he was gone, the whole vibe of the house would change; subtly but noticeably Mom put on extra vigilance.  There might be straightening up for the week ahead, and we’d have to beat our waves of toys back into the toy room, maybe even until they were put all the away back into the closet. At ten o’clock it was time for bed, and the regular cycle began again the next day.

This is My New Favorite Earworm

 WIND ROSE - Diggy Diggy Hole (Official Video) | Napalm Records - YouTube

What Happened (Part 38)

Another Sunday amusement was the family drive.  We’d all get in the station wagon (it was the old white one, then later the aquamarine Pontiac) and Pop would head out into the country, to the sand hills.  We’d look at old farms, and fields of cows (we had a simple game; whoever saw them first would yell out “My Cows!” and whoever claimed the most won), and sometimes we would even stop and pick wildflowers.  A fun part was when Pop came to a dip in the road, he’d speed up, and we’d all laugh as we felt our stomachs drop.  Somewhere along the way we’d stop at some joint or little store to get a snack and a soda.  I remember one time I got a Big Red that smelled like a cigar, but I had to drink it anyway, so as not to waste it.  Lucky I was really thirsty.

Off of the Wish List and Into My Library: Unfinished Tales (of Numenor and Middle-earth)

The last of my Christmas presents. This 2020 edition contains 18 color illustrations by Alan Lee, John Howe, and Ted Naismith, and four pencil illustrations at the head of four separate sections, as well as endpaper maps drawn by Christopher Tolkien. It is what it says on the label, stories and explorations by J. R. R. Tolkien into his invented world of Middle-earth that were never completed. They are written speculations and tales by the author as he tried to flesh out his mythical history, and have no established 'canonicity' as such, but offer glimpses into Tolkien's thinking and creative process, and have been accepted as at least his initial intentions for the facts of his legendarium. "Unfinished Tales" was first published in 1980, between the publication of "The Silmarillion" and before the beginning of the ambitious and inclusive 12-volume  "The History of Middle-earth".

I got my first copy of "Unfinished Tales" on November 29, 1980. I know because I wrote it on the inside cover (this was back when I did such things). While I read it all with some intensity (even deciphering the elf runes on the title page, I was most interested in the parts that had to do with Gandalf and the other wizards, the different take on Bilbo and the Quest of Erebor, and the insight into the Ringwraiths and into Gollum's movements in The Hunt for the Ring.

Over the years I got a couple of paperback copies, more for the interesting covers than as reading copies. Terlizzi's whimsical concept of a hobbit going over Tolkien's papers was especially fun, and pictures showing a take on one of Sauron's incarnations were sufficiently rare to intrigue me.

There have been several other hardback editions of the book, but this is the first one since 1980 that I've felt that I must have, mostly for the illustrations.

What Happened (Part 37)

If we were lucky, Pop might take us fishing down at the Lot.  The Lot was a common property on Loop Drive that allowed residents who didn’t have a place on the river to have access to the water.  He’d grab the old fish cage and some cane poles, and we’d gather up some snails and grasshoppers and crickets for bait and walk down the road to the corner. We’d spend a couple of hours snagging perch and mud turtles and watching the waves that the speed boating folks would kick up come slapping in against the shore.  I must admit I was really afraid of the river (even though we always wore gigantic orange life jackets), because I had no idea how deep it was or what could be lurking under the cloudy green water.  At the time I had already seen The Creature from the Black Lagoon on a Saturday afternoon movie and had a nightmare about the Creature emerging from our river with two children’s heads from which dangled their bare skeletons [an vision probably crossed with an old Laurel and Hardy movie.] Not an image that encouraged me to be a waterman. When bored of fishing we also liked to throw in sticks and see how long it took the current to carry them away.  Pop usually let all the fish go, but sometimes we’d bring home a turtle or two to keep as a pet for a while in a home-made terrarium in a big tin bucket lined with rocks. Eventually we’d return them to the wild as the novelty wore off. 

What Happened (Part 36)

Sunday morning was great, because Pop would cook one of his special breakfasts.  There was always pulpy orange juice, made from frozen concentrate in a can.  He would either make huge stacks of pancakes with bacon or sausage, or huge piles of fried eggs with bacon or sausage, with a side of toast.  We would compete to get eggs whose yolks weren’t broken or cooked solid, but Pop had a pretty deft hand and these were rare.  He fried the eggs in the bacon fat supplemented with a little shortening.  On special special days he made French toast. After we’d eaten he’d haul in the heavy log of the Sunday paper, and hand off the colored funnies to us.  These were in two sections, the big funnies and the little funnies, so two could “read” them at the same time.  Mostly we enjoyed the graphics and made up our own interpretation of what was going on.  Sometimes Mom would read them to us. There were odd religious kids programs on in the morning, like Davey and Goliath and Jot, or educational shows like What’s New? 

Quotes: Groucho Marx

What Happened (Part 35)

But Saturday night could very well be the time for a family gathering.  If it was held elsewhere we would be dressed an ace better than we usually were, our hair slicked down with Vitalis and our scalps raked by Pop’s hard black comb. If they gathered at our house we could be a little more relaxed.  Two or three groups might arrive: perhaps the Grimms, or Uncle Bobby and his family, Aunt Ruby and Uncle Doc, and somebody would probably bring Omi along.  It could be potluck, or everybody would bring snacks and drinks.  Pop would haul out the coffee urn and get it going. After visiting and the meal, the serious business of the party would get started, and that was cards or dominoes.  There would be a group in the kitchen, one in the dining room, and if it was a particularly big party, around the grey folding table set up outside.  When we were smaller we could crawl around under the tables while they played. All doors and windows were open to their screens, and all the outside lights were on: front porch, back porch, and the light that shone on the driveway and the rectangular patch of grass on the side.  While the grown-ups banged and shuffled and laughed and cussed at their games, we boys and whatever younger cousins who had come would romp through the house and around and around the yards.  The support pole on the front porch cast a long black shadow towards the end of the yard; one game was to see how far we dared walk down this path of darkness. Sometimes I would pause while running about and look in the kitchen window at the people inside, and feel odd that I could see them and that they were unaware of me, and I would feel distant and secret and a little lonely.

Eventually it would grow too late even for our weekend excitement.  While the adults would play on fueled by caffeine, nicotine, and gambling fever, cousins would drop asleep on the couch or in the big chairs. One by one we boys would go to bed, just kicking our shoes off and laying down fully clothed, lulled to sleep by the comforting sound of far off good company.  

What Happened (Part 34)

They smoked, and just about everyone we saw on a regular basis smoked.  Pop had been smoking since before he was even a teen, and told us stories about he smoked cornsilk as a boy. Mom had smoked in defiance of Nanny, and some of their worst fights had been over it.  Omi, and almost every aunt and uncle we had on Pop’s side, smoked. The bowling alley Pop visited on Thursdays, the SMI Christmas Party or Labor Day Picnic, every family gathering, was covered with a hovering pall of smoke.  Despite our constant saturation we boys always found cigarettes distasteful and even disgusting, and always tried to stay out of the worst of it.  I remember I hated even having to touch them, and I found the sound of ashes being ground out particularly grating, and the awful smell of an ashtray being washed stomach-turning.

What Happened (Part 33)

Lunch was usually something light, and Mom might make a pitcher of Kool-Aid or Funny Face Drink Mix.  If it was spring or summer perhaps Pop would get some gardening in, and we would tag along.  Running down the rows of corn was fun, or searching the tomato plants for worms, or eating fresh picked green beans as a snack, and the earth dams around the squash when filled with water were a great place to play with little animals.  Pop might burn some trash in a chicken wire cylinder down at the end of the garden, or in the little barbecue grill he had before he got a pit and that could be pulled up and moved from place to place; fire was always interesting to watch and feed. Or he might get the old silver-colored lawn mower out of the garage and start on the yard. It was our job, when he was done, to pick up the little puffs of cigarette filters the blade chopped up. Towards evening when he was finished he and Mom would sit out on lawn chairs to survey their kingdom and smoke.  We would sit nearby on the porch or play on the swings, smelling the new-mown grass and watching their cigarette fire flare and fade in the deepening dark until they were tossed down like falling stars.

Off of the Wish List and Into My Library: The Monster of Frankenstein, Volume I

More Christmas present kookiness. We read in this series from at least the early Seventies, but never managed to buy more than four or five issues. The scattered ones we acquired were certainly odd and intriguing, but to see the complete series is dumbfounding.

It begins with the expedition of in the late 1800’s, with the descendant of John Walden locating the Monster frozen in ice. It is accidentally thawed, revives, and tells its story to Walden, basically recounting the gist of Mary Shelly’s tale. This version (drawn by the great Mike Ploog) is articulate, intelligent, and even humane, wandering the earth like another Cain. After the death of Walden and his crew, the Monster continues his journey facing (among other things) a werewolf in a village of Norsemen, the last surviving batch of Neanderthals, and Dracula. Eventually he is frozen again and awakens in the Seventies into an even more bewildering world.

In this era, he finds himself reduced to the rage and inarticulation of the Karloff-era movie monster. I suppose one cannot undergo so many freezings and thawings without sustaining SOME brain-damage. In this ‘modern’ incarnation he encounters body-switches, cloned beasts, Satanists, robots, and a clandestine organization out to garner his secrets (probably with some nice long sessions of vivisection), not to mention the last descendant of the Frankenstein family aided by none other than the long-lived Igor himself.

The volume ends almost exactly where we stopped buying the comic books themselves, and there does not seem to be a second volume yet. It is a moot point if I would ever buy one if it did come out. In this collection I have all the comics we ever read in our childhood and all the ones we missed. I suppose I wanted it for the nostalgia of it all. It certainly couldn’t be for the crazy wandering storyline. I was more interested in what had happened in between than in what comes next. 

What Happened (Part 32)

 

After breakfast we’d gather around the TV on the floor, usually two or three feet away so we “wouldn’t ruin our eyes.”  Mom and Pop would go over the grocery list, and then head out to do the Saturday shopping at Baenziger’s (which we mispronounced as “Baenzinger’s” all our lives) grocery store in town.  He’d ask if anyone wanted to go with him, and sometimes one or two of us would volunteer if the line-up looked boring or like a repeat.  Pop didn’t like to wrangle the whole bunch of us if he could help it.  The benefits of going was that you might get to wheedle a Gold Key Digest or a Classics Illustrated off the magazine rack, or maybe a little animal out of the display boxes from the last aisle in the store.

Also you could influence the choice of kid’s cereal that week, and, if the check-out looked like it was going to be lengthy, you might finagle a gallop on the big orange horsie ride up front or a prize from the bubble gum machines. In those days your groceries were all loaded into paper bags and boxes; plastic was only for wrapping meat.  Shopping took an hour or so, and once Pop got back everybody had to drop what they were doing to help bring the groceries in before they spoiled. Then it was back to cartoons.

What Happened (Part 31)

Saturday morning in those days of course meant cartoons all morning.  Shows came and went over the years, but staples remained, like The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, The Porky Pig Show, Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Rocky and Bullwinkle. There were a host of other Jay Ward creations, including Underdog, the Go-Go Gophers, Dudley Do-Right, George of the Jungle, and of course King Linus the Lionhearted.  Besides being responsible for lots of the holiday specials that graced our childhood, Rankin/Bass provided the Saturday morning fare of King Kong, The Reluctant Dragon and Mr. Toad, and later shorts like The Red Baron and The Mad, Mad Monsters. Hanna-Barbera, at the time, had already produced a stable that included (besides the Flintstones and Jetsons) Top Cat, Quick Draw McGraw, Atom Ant, Wally Gator, Space Ghost, Frankenstein Jr., the Space Kidettes, The Herculoids, Magilla Gorilla, Secret Squirrel, Moby Dick and the Mighty Mightor, Shazzan, The Adventures of Gulliver, The Wacky Races, and the Banana Splits, not to mention the sui generis, glorious, incomparable Adventures of Jonny Quest. There was Deputy Dawg and Mr. Magoo and Heckle and Jeckle and Casper and the Archies and the Monkees and Kukla, Fran and Ollie.  In the fall, before the new season premiered, the networks would have a show on the Friday evening before showcasing the new line-up to whip up our anticipation.  From about six in the morning (when they might show older cartoons or the comedy capers of Laurel and Hardy or the Little Rascals) until twelve noon (when the shows petered out to the more educational or live-action kid programs) the television was ours, and given over to adventure, fantasy, laughs, and holding your water until the commercial breaks. 

From the Commonplace Book: C. S. Lewis

 

Light and Dark, Good and Evil

“It is one of the primeval boasts or lies of Evil that darkness came before light.  But the thought of ‘darkness’ before creation is simply the image or symbol that we use to imagine nothingness, or the absence of anything, which is otherwise unpicturable.  The dark is the diminution of light until it deepens to the unseeable, just as Evil is the diminution of Good until it collapses into the destruction of itself.  Darkness depends upon the creation of light, just as Evil depends upon Good for the possibility to exist.”

What Happened (Part 30)

This Monday night Carol Burnett is the last act on the ticket, and when she pulls her ear we are all ready to hit the hay. Pop stays put as the 10 o’clock news comes on.  At Mom’s insistence we drag ourselves to the bathroom where she has our jammies ready. We kick our clothes into the dirty and change, then brush our teeth, and take one last tinkle before bed. It’s really too hot for covers, but I insist on having a thin sheet over my midriff for security.  It is determined that the closet doors are completely closed, not from any specific anxiety, but to preserve us from staring into its darkly fascinating void and imagining what might come out. We find our spots (someone actually has to lie lengthwise along the bottom of the bed so we’re not all smugged up together). There is some debate whether to leave the windows open or not, and we compromise by having the one that opens on the field shut and the one behind the headboard open.  We might pray: “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.” We say our good nights and I-love-you’s to Mom, and it is time to sleep. 

But of course we don’t fall asleep all at once. The kerfuffle of getting ready for bed has dispelled the overwhelming drowsiness we were feeling for a while.  We talk for a little bit, going over the events of the day, recalling the most interesting things, wondering about tomorrow.  One by one the boys fall asleep until only I am awake.  I hear the distant natter from the TV finally cut off, and Mom and Pop going to bed.  Mom has taken to leaving the bathroom light on and the door open a crack, so we can find our way easily for emergency visits.  It also makes a good security light.  At last I drop of, lulled by the night breeze soughing through the innumerable rustling leaves of the ash tree outside the window.  Tomorrow it will all happen again, with interesting variations, but this is what life is like, and always will be, as far as I can imagine. 

What Happened (Part 29)

Since it is a Monday, Pop must watch Gunsmoke, his long-standing favorite, and the last holdout of the serious cowboy shows.  Westerns don’t hold much interest for me, but if the episode is a comedy one or features Festus as the story focus, I may give it my attention; the dramas or love stories, not so much.  We might wander in and out, waiting for it to end, but most of the time one of the younger boys stays snuggled up in the chair next to Pop, just for company and love.  Gunsmoke trumps anything that may be on any other channel, and that includes animated specials.  This can cause dissension in the kingdom, but with the acquisition of a small red portable black-and-white set an imperfect solution is reached. 

What we kids really love for evening viewing are comedies and variety shows.  To give a mere list of examples, for comedy shows there were The Beverly Hillbillies, The Lucy Show, Mayberry RFD, Bewitched, Gilligan’s Island, Family Affair, My Three Sons, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gomer Pyle, Green Acres, I Dream of Jeannie, Hogan’s Heroes, and Petticoat Junction; I remember when there were still new episodes of the original run of The Flintstones that were aired early in the evening. Variety shows were usually named after the star who hosted them.  We watched the Red Skelton Hour, the Jackie Gleason Show, the Carol Burnett Show, the Glenn Campbell Goodtime Hour, the Jim Nabors Hour, and Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In. For adventures we watched Batman, Flipper, Daniel Boone, and Lost in Space.  I recall clicking through channels once and passing by a scene of what I now know to have been Kirk and Spock running through the Enterprise’s corridor while a red alert was sounding. I remember being discouraged to linger, and so had one fleeting glimpse of Star Trek while it was still new.

Off of the Wish List and Into My Library: The Venture Brothers Season Six and Seven

A few months ago, in September, Adult Swim announced that they were cancelling “The Venture Bros.” after seven seasons spread over seventeen years. Although saddening, it was hardly surprising, considering nothing had been heard from the show for two years, as the creators (Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer) had been working on its increasingly complex and well-crafted storyline. Although there are hopeful rumors of a continuation by other means and by different networks, the First Age from Adult Swim is over.

     I had been meaning to get these two final seasons for years now but didn’t have the means until my sister’s Christmas bounty last month. The announced cancellation added urgency to my desire and so now I have had these DVDs since early January.

For those unfamiliar with the show, it is both an homage to and a deconstruction of the progressive Space Age pop culture of the Sixties and Seventies, with a special emphasis on the young adventurer trope so well embodied in shows like “Jonny Quest” (“The Venture Bros.” seminal inspiration).  “The series chronicles the lives and adventures of the Venture family: well-meaning but incompetent teenagers Hank and Dean Venture; their loving but emotionally insecure, unethical and underachieving super-scientist father Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture; the family's bodyguard, secret agent Brock Samson, … and the family's self-proclaimed archnemesis, The Monarch, a butterfly-themed supervillain.” ^- Wikipedia.

Seasons Six and Seven see the family move from the largely destroyed Venture Compound to the Ven Tech Tower in New York following the death of Dr. Venture’s more successful brother. The Monarch also moves to his run-down family mansion in nearby Newark, where his wife Dr. Mrs. The Monarch (newly appointed council member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent) tries to balance her career with helping her low-ranking husband fulfill his dreams of vengeance. Much of the two seasons is involved with untangling Dr. Venture and the Monarch’s families histories; the rest is following Hank in his new life in college and Dean as he pursues his love interest, the daughter of his father’s Guild-appointed arch-nemesis. The series ends on a cliffhanger, of course, with a major reveal and the future uncertain.

    While I hope for some sort of continuation of the series, I sometimes wonder if just letting it stand as it is might not be a viable alternative. It is, after all, episodic in nature, like life itself, and wherever and however it ends one can always imagine the story going on. While there have been ongoing story-arcs that resolve themselves, they always generate new ones, and one cannot imagine a satisfying series finale, unless it is one that acknowledges that the story really goes on forever, even after some characters have their inevitable exits. And that can be imagined at the end of almost any season.

From the Commonplace Book: Secondhand Lions

What Happened (Part 28)

Today, however, the playing is simply abandoned when Mom sticks her head around the door and says she’s been calling us, and that supper is ready.  We run to the bathroom, jostle around the sink to wash our hands, and then race to the kitchen.  We just turn the corner into the kitchen when to our happy surprise the back door opens and Pop comes in, home early from work.  We cheer, surround him, hug his legs, and ask if he brought us back anything.  Usually he has some gum or Lifesavers in his pockets, and he takes a moment to judiciously dole them out.  Mom kisses him and tells him he’s just in time.  We hustle him into the living room, sit him down, and help him off with his socks and hard black work shoes, which he acknowledges with a theatrical sigh of relief.  While he goes to change his shirt and put on more comfortable footwear, Mom rearranges the table slightly by setting him his place at the head of the table.  Kenny climbs into the high chair and Mike pushes him up to the table.  When Pop comes in we are all in our places and ready to begin.

The preliminaries consist of us all fixing our plates.  The meal I have chosen for this typical day is one of the most basic and almost stereotypical for our family.  I refer, of course, to the dish that Pop euphemized for us as the Same Old Stuff, or S.O.S.  This simple but nourishing dish is just hamburger meat scrambled and fried with diced onions, salt, and pepper, then made into gravy using water, milk and flour.  You serve it over a slice of torn up bread or on the butter noodles that are inevitably made with it as a side.  Since I want to particularly enjoy this imaginary instance, I’m going to add green beans (one of my favorites) as the vegetable, though we were just as often served harder to palate examples like spinach or Brussels sprouts. Luckily supper includes iced tea, poured from a frosted glass pitcher and with lemon provided in a yellow plastic coffee cup: with enough tea you could wash the nastier greens down without having to taste them too much.  S.O.S. remains a delicious comfort food that turns up on our table every now and then.

When everyone’s plate was ready, it was time to pray.  Mom would solemnly nominate one of us to do the job, and you could hesitate but not refuse.  Everyone got quiet; we bowed our heads, folded our hands, and shut our eyes (no peeking allowed, and definitely no giggling). We prayed:

Come, Lord Jesus,

Be our guest.

Let this food

To us be blessed.

Amen.

 

Everyone joined in on the Amen. I sometimes wondered what would happen if Jesus did join us, for usually there was just enough food to go around. The older and heartier of us could get second helpings, just so there would be no leftovers hanging around.  When Mom fried a chicken (which she did to perfection) there was a regular decision-of-Solomon situation as to who got what piece, although eventually everyone settled on a favorite. Deserts are rare, but sometimes there is fruit or Jello or even just a piece of jelly bread.  When we are done eating, we have to ask to be excused from the table, and push our chair in before we leave. Mom turns on the radio in the kitchen window and settles in to clean up and wash dishes. For us, it is time for evening TV. 

What Happened (Part 27)

The news done, Mom went to the kitchen to make supper.  We were already in the middle of amusing ourselves in the toy room, digging through piles and selecting our characters for a playing.  A playing happened in this wise.  A toy or two would be selected by each of us from the stuffed or squeaky toys, and his name and occupation would be announced.  A prologue or opening statement was proclaimed: “One day Mr. Blah-da-blah was walking down the road when he came to Mr. Blee-de-blee’s house…”  The characters would meet, a problem or goal was stated (whatever popped into our head), and the story would take off, nobody knew whither. Now, a true playing wasn’t us simply manipulating these characters.  A playing was us going into these toys, becoming them, forgetting our own personas while the tale unfolded.  It was part puppet show, part acting, part storytelling, and completely a magical art.  Furniture became mountains; cardboard boxes were houses or ships; rugs, oceans and deserts.  It was journeys and adventures, and clashes of personality as we sought to become the heroes of the tale or came up with new plot complications to stir the pot (John was especially good in this department).  Other versions of playings were simply acted out without toys while swinging or just running around. A bad playing might end with disagreements and fights about how the story should go; a good playing wove everyone’s input into one satisfying conclusion.

From the Commonplace Book: G. K. Chesterton on Robert Louis Stevenson

 

The faith of Stevenson, like that of a great number of very sane men, was founded on what is called a paradox—the paradox that existence was splendid because it was, to all outward appearance, desperate. Paradox, so far from being a modern and fanciful matter, is inherent in all the great hypotheses of humanity. The Athanasian Creed, for example, the supreme testimony of Catholic Christianity, sparkles with paradox like a modern society comedy. Thus, in the same manner, scientific philosophy tells us that finite space is unthinkable and infinite space is unthinkable. Thus the most influential modern metaphysician, Hegel, declares without hesitation, when the last rag of theology is abandoned, and the last point of philosophy passed, that existence is the same as non-existence.

Thus the brilliant author of "Lady Windermere's Fan," in the electric glare of modernity, finds that life is much too important to be taken seriously. Thus Tertullian, in the first ages of faith, said "Credo quia impossibile."

We must not, therefore, be immediately repelled by this paradoxical character of Stevenson's optimism, or imagine for a moment that it was merely a part of that artistic foppery or "fuddling hedonism" with which he has been ridiculously credited. His optimism was one which, so far from dwelling upon those flowers and sunbeams which form the stock-in-trade of conventional optimism, took a peculiar pleasure in the contemplation of skulls, and cudgels, and gallows.

It is one thing to be the kind of optimist who can divert his mind from personal suffering by dreaming of the face of an angel, and quite another thing to be the kind of optimist who can divert it by dreaming of the foul fat face of Long John Silver. And this faith of his had a very definite and a very original philosophical purport. Other men have justified existence because it was a harmony.

He justified it because it was a battle, because it was an inspiring and melodious discord. He appealed to a certain set of facts which lie far deeper than any logic—the great paradoxes of the soul. For the singular fact is that the spirit of man is in reality depressed by all the things which, logically speaking, should encourage it, and encouraged by all the things which, logically speaking, should depress it.

Nothing, for example, can be conceived more really dispiriting than that rationalistic explanation of pain which conceives it as a thing laid by Providence upon the worst people. Nothing, on the other hand, can be conceived as more exalting and reassuring than that great mystical doctrine which teaches that pain is a thing laid by Providence upon the best. We can accept the agony of heroes, while we revolt against the agony of culprits. We can all endure to regard pain when it is mysterious; our deepest nature protests against it the moment that it is rational.

This doctrine that the best man suffers most is, of course, the supreme doctrine of Christianity; millions have found not merely an elevating but a soothing story in the undeserved sufferings of Christ; had the sufferings been deserved we should all have been pessimists.

Stevenson's great ethical and philosophical value lies in the fact that he realised this great paradox that life becomes more fascinating the darker it grows, that life is worth living only so far as it is difficult to live. The more steadfastly and gloomily men clung to their sinister visions of duty, the more, in his eyes, they swelled the chorus of the praise of things. He was an optimist because to him everything was heroic, and nothing more heroic than the pessimist.

To Stevenson, the optimist, belong the most frightful epigrams of pessimism. It was he who said that this planet on which we live was more drenched with blood, animal and vegetable, than a pirate ship. It was he who said that man was a disease of the agglutinated dust. And his supreme position and his supreme difference from all common optimists is merely this, that all common optimists say that life is glorious in spite of these things, but he said that all life was glorious because of them. He discovered that a battle is more comforting than a truce. 

What Happened (Part 26)

 

After the show was over it was time for the news, and Mom would take over the TV.  The news was the grown-up’s department, and none of our problem or interest.  It was full of Vietnam coverage at the time, and I remember being completely indifferent to it, not worried or outraged or enthusiastic. I do remember waiting up one night to watch the moon landing. What I recall about that is the boredom of the wait and how fuzzy and black and white it all was. I was way too young to realize the wonder and achievement of the event; I had been more engaged by the exploits of the Three Stooges in space.  We went to look at the moon out of the bathroom window and tried to think about there being men on it, but the moon looked as it ever did, distant and mysterious and beyond human concern.  Mom, however, did watch the news and worried, worried about the world her boys were growing up in.

What Happened (Part 25)

This would be Cap’n Gus and his cartoon show on every weekday afternoon. If Captain Kangaroo was a kindly grandfather, Cap’n Gus was a jovial uncle in shiny red bowling shirt, white captain’s hat, and gigantic red moustache.  He’d greet us every day with “Ahoy, Mateys!” and announce that today we would “do the do and the whole McClue!” From his seat aboard a mock tugboat he would ring his bell and present Popeye cartoons, as well as many of the older Leon Schlesinger and Harman-Ising shorts, and even for a while dubbed, serialized Russian animated fairy tales like The Magic Fish and Beauty and the Beast.  Periodically he would descend on “the Galley,” bleachers filled with local children, to interview them on their favorite cartoons and what they liked to do.  It was a childhood dream (never fulfilled, and considered with equal excitement and dread) to actually be on the show and meet Cap’n Gus, or even get a shout-out if you were feeling “puny.” He mugged and jollied and gave funny moral commentary on the cartoons he showed: his drawling out of “Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius” was a lecture on the perils of pretentiousness all in itself.  He always ended the show with “Be good and always do what your mommy and daddy tells you to!  Ba-ding-bing!”

What Happened (Part 24)

Mom is up and watching her program, and when it ends she announces she’s going out to get the mail, and who wants to go with her? Of course we all have to go.  The front door is open with the screen door locked, but with a click and a squawking of hinges we tumble out after her.  The front porch is a stage for its own variety of amusements: we can form a circular line of jumping off its precipitous one-foot height, climbing back up the stairs, and doing it again, or we can swing out on its pole over the abyss and back again, or it can be the venue for the Green Apple Talent Show. It is lit at night by a black stage-coach style lamp, and has a hook for a birdcage on its supporting pole.  There is a sidewalk looping squarely from the front porch to the back, a nice track for rides on the old red tricycle, and we follow it partway to the stony driveway.  Here the less hardy of us must pause under the shade of the front ash tree.  Let’s look around a bit while Mom goes to get the mail at the end of the driveway.

The front yard is a rather irregular rectangle thanks to the loop that gives Loop Drive its name.  Besides the ash tree there are two young pecan trees that right now aren’t producing pecans, but will in later years.  Close to the house there is rather lush and comfortable carpet grass, but towards the Road (as we call the street) there is an increasing instance of stickers, and at the sides of the property a propensity for milkweed. To the right as you face the street is a large field, split down the middle by a tall windbreak line of trees, full of Johnson grass that reaches over our heads and scattered with bull nettle.  Bull nettle is fascinatingly dangerous; its big white flowers, tri-horned buds, and bright orange sap that bleeds when you cut the stem, dare us to meddle with it despite the painful thin prickles that guard the plant. Sometimes in spring the field is full of deep, deep clover. In front, across the road, is the Coors household, an older couple in a fancier house with access to the river.  Pop knows Mr. Coors from when he was serving a stint at the Guadalupe Valley Electric Company.  Though nice people, they are periodic sources of irritation when they throw big parties and their guests park on “our side of the road”, gouging into the drainage ditch and leaving trash behind, and when the fall winds blow huge drifts of leaves from their sycamore trees into our yard.  To the left is a small green rental house, owned by Shadow, the proprietor of our neighborhood bar and grill.  The house is occupied by the Johnson family. Besides the rather sketchy father (whose name always escapes me, though John tells me it was Tommy; he was always at work), there was Kathy, the mother, who would come over for coffee and visits with Mom, her daughter Donna, just about my age, and their mostly white dog Loppy, named for his drooping ear.  They are always good for company and amusement, and it is with Donna that we play the Green Apple Talent Show, either on the front porch or in the bed of the old green pickup truck that sits beached in our driveway, mugging and miming our way through childish parodies of popular entertainment.

Mom comes back from the mailbox (it is bills or sales; very, very seldom letters) and she’s also picked up the paper from the end of the driveway (which sports a significant dip that after rain becomes a very interesting, rather large puddle to play with, but never in; mostly by sailing leaves).  We all troop back in, and Mom settles down to read the paper in the armchair in the living room.  We have a short period for a quick playing or two to kill time (and I fear I haven’t even now explained the true nature of a playing, but I will, before the chapter’s out) and then it’s time for the highlight of our day.

Off of the Wish List and Into My Library: Tolkien (2019 DVD)

     It has taken me some time to come around to getting and watching the 2019 biopic of my favorite author, J. R. R. Tolkien. I have my sister and her Christmas bounty to thank for finally being able to order it. I heard much about it when it came out, both good and bad, and then it just disappeared. But I always knew that I would have to someday own it and see for myself, just because I am such a Tolkien fan. And now I do and I have.

My first impression was that it was a strange patchwork sort of a telling. The movie used Tolkien’s experiences during World War One as a kind of framing device, opening with him in the trenches and suffering weird visions of black riders, dark lords, and dragons as he faces bayonets, gas attacks, and primitive flame-throwers. It flashes back to his mother and her death, his placement in a boarding house by his guardian Father Francis, his growing love for his fellow border Edith Bratt, and the development of a “fellowship” with three of his schoolmates as he deepens his love of language under the tutelage of Professor Wright. These patches of storytelling are broken up by more struggles in the No-Man’s-Land of WWI, where Tolkien is aided by his batsman, “Sam Hodges”, as an obvious stand-in for the private soldiers Tolkien based Sam Gamgee on.

So far, so good. But why doesn’t it work? Things happen, but they seem to have no connection to each other. The elements do not mingle into a satisfying theme. And I can only conclude it is because the creative team behind the movie (director Dome Karukoski and writers David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford) do not understand the true significance of the threads that helped make Tolkien what he was.

I have read enough biographies to know that Tolkien and his friends were not “outcasts” but a tightly knit society that followed their own star. I know that his fealty to Father Francis was finely balanced with his love of Edith, and it was his loyalty to the two of them that led to his keeping faith with both, returning to Edith the moment he had promised. I know that he was writing his myths long before he ever set pen to paper and wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

That is how the movie ends, skipping from Tolkien leaving the war all the way to him being a professor with four young children. Suddenly, out of the blue, as if it were the culmination of all his life experiences so far and not a simple tale that he begins on a whim and then tells his children (and which becomes the beginning of the unforeseen “The Lord of the Rings”), he as good as raises his head to the camera and gives us a significant look.

There are a few original bits and pieces I found pleasing. The casting of Colm Meaney as Father Francis and Derek Jacobi as Professor Wright I thought well-done. I groaned with familiarity when Tolkien corrected the professor’s pronunciation of “Tol-KINE” to “Tol-KEEN”. One of Tolkien’s friends says of Wagner’s Ring Cycle that it shouldn’t take six hours to tell a story about a magic ring. But there are far too many missteps which I can only say are the result of using frog DNA when you are trying to recreate a tyrannosaur.

It is perhaps noteworthy that “the Tolkien family and the Estate issued a statement before the film's release to make clear that they did not approve of, authorize or participate in the making of this film, and did not endorse it or its content in any way.” Maybe that was just a piece of legal boilerplate. But maybe there were deep personal reasons. As it is, I simply hope that the day will come when a more accurate and artistic work will be produced that will better recount Tolkien’s journey. 

From the Commonplace Book: C. S. Lewis

“The First [Friend] is the alter ego, the man who first reveals to you that you are not alone in the world by turning out (beyond hope) to share all your most secret delights. There is nothing to be overcome in making him your friend; he and you join like raindrops on a window. But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything. He is not so much the alter ego as the antiself. Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one. It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it. How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right? He is as fascinating (and infuriating) as a woman. When you set out to correct his heresies, you will find that he forsooth has decided to correct yours! And then you go at it, hammer and tongs, far into the night, night after night, or walking through fine country that neither gives a glance to, each learning the weight of the other's punches, and often more like mutually respectful enemies than friends. Actually (though it never seems so at the time) you modify one another's thought; out of this perpetual dogfight a community of mind and a deep affection emerge.”

― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

What Happened (Part23)

We all convene to Mom and Pop’s room, get a short scolding from Mom for the ruffled bedclothes, and then we all lay down on the cool, satiny cover. Mom lies down with us, trying to get us calm and composed so we’ll fall asleep. She might sing a lullaby, or tell us stories (fairy tales or stuff from when she a little girl), or in the end she just might have to order us with physical threats to settle down.  When we do finally drop off it is the dead-to-the-world, careless sleep of youth. In summer it is particularly good way to get through the afternoon Texas heat. Sometimes Mom will sleep with us, but more often she gets up and has some quiet time for herself, maybe watching some “stories,” as the family calls the soap operas like The Edge of Night or The Days of Our Lives that Omi has got her hooked on.  Nap time lasts about an hour or so, and when one of us wakes up we all soon follow, partly from the bouncing up off the bed and partly from our flock instinct.