GARTH BROOKS -- WHEN SCHLOCK COMES JINGLING IN
by Bryce Martin
Fortunate am I that my era had Bobby Darin. I feel bad for you if this is your era and you have Garth Brooks.
I heard for the first time Brooks’ “Call Me Claus,” with its pumped-up big-band sound. It is every singer who wants a Christmas standard, a recording so Christmas-y it vies for radio airplay each and every season, which, in turn, translates into album sales every year, such as Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock,” or Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song.” Even if it is just once a year, it is enough to keep a singer’s name in the forefront.
Brooks came close with his previous “Santa Looks a Lot Like Daddy” (an oldie by Buck Owens that did not even make it as a Christmas staple for him). The anti-Hank and Top Hat of all the hat acts must have felt something along the lines of a classic rendition would do the trick.
“Call Me Claus” from Brooks comes across as too contrived and forced to merit any genuine sentiment. When Bobby Darin was a young whelp and in his heyday, and even with such gems as “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea,” he gave the impression of being a poor imitation to the real kings of swing and style. To such elders as Frank Sinatra he paled in comparison. For sheer gaucheness, Brooks (Mr. Obvious) stands alone.
Tell them how the weather was... -- Ernest Hemingway bryce_martin_1@Lycos.com
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Saturday, December 13, 2003
WHEN THE RED, RED ROBIN...
by Bryce Martin
A grasshopper sat on a railroad track,
He looked at me and I looked back.
I picked up a brickbat and hit him in the shin,
He said, "Oh, Lord a'mercy, don't do that again."
Grandma quoted snippets of English nursery rhymes and songs while working the treadle on her sewing machine or baking a wild blackberry cobbler in the wood cook stove.
"My father was Johnny Bull," she said. "I get it from him, but I leave out the 'Bloody this' and the 'Bloody that' he was so fond of."
Johnny Bull is a name meant to represent England or an English person. Her father was born in England.
Grandma's most common phrase was "Lord a'mercy."
Her most vocalized non-gospel song was "Sing a Song of Sixpence."
Sing a song of sixpence
A pocket full of rye;
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie
Blackbird pie was common in her household while growing up. She remembered the traps set in the yards for the birds by her mother and the meat pies that followed. That particular song, however, was as much a riddle as anything else. She said she no longer remembered what it all meant.
"I'm not much for remembering anything anymore," she would say. "Time takes its toll on the mind and body, and it has taken its toll on mine."
I have always been a stickler for detail, even at a young age. Grandma loved birds and flowers, and the four seasons. One of the first signs of spring was the robin. When you saw robins with their swelled chests darting across the lawn or flying in one of those haphazard group formations they deploy, you knew spring was here.
The problem I had with detail came about when Grandma would recite one of the many British poems or songs concerning their national bird, the robin redbreast. That is what I had a problem with: Robins have an orange, not a red breast. I did not understand songs that had lines such as: "When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along."
Much later, I discovered that American Robins do have orange breasts -- and British robins have a red breast. Most all of the songs and poems about the robin were Old World works; hence, they all mention a red breast. Therefore, the answer to my problem was the fact that people in America, including my grandmother, were essentially making mention of British robins when the specimens at hand were American robins.
One legend has it that a robin tried to pull the thorns from Christ's crown, and drops of blood fell on the Robin's light-colored chest. There is also the Christmas story about the night Christ was born and about the little brown bird that shared the stable with the Holy Family. A fire Joseph built to keep the family warm burned out during the night. The bird quickly flew down from its nest and fanned the embers with its wings. The heat from the fire turned the bird's feathers red. The breast of the robin was red from then on to remind us of its love for the baby Jesus.
Doris Day had a hit with the song about the "red robin bobbin' along" in 1953 when I was 10 years old. That was in America, of course. The songwriter, if American, was not observant or was using artistic license to its fullest. On the other hand, maybe the songwriter was aware that nothing rhymes with orange.
by Bryce Martin
A grasshopper sat on a railroad track,
He looked at me and I looked back.
I picked up a brickbat and hit him in the shin,
He said, "Oh, Lord a'mercy, don't do that again."
Grandma quoted snippets of English nursery rhymes and songs while working the treadle on her sewing machine or baking a wild blackberry cobbler in the wood cook stove.
"My father was Johnny Bull," she said. "I get it from him, but I leave out the 'Bloody this' and the 'Bloody that' he was so fond of."
Johnny Bull is a name meant to represent England or an English person. Her father was born in England.
Grandma's most common phrase was "Lord a'mercy."
Her most vocalized non-gospel song was "Sing a Song of Sixpence."
Sing a song of sixpence
A pocket full of rye;
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie
Blackbird pie was common in her household while growing up. She remembered the traps set in the yards for the birds by her mother and the meat pies that followed. That particular song, however, was as much a riddle as anything else. She said she no longer remembered what it all meant.
"I'm not much for remembering anything anymore," she would say. "Time takes its toll on the mind and body, and it has taken its toll on mine."
I have always been a stickler for detail, even at a young age. Grandma loved birds and flowers, and the four seasons. One of the first signs of spring was the robin. When you saw robins with their swelled chests darting across the lawn or flying in one of those haphazard group formations they deploy, you knew spring was here.
The problem I had with detail came about when Grandma would recite one of the many British poems or songs concerning their national bird, the robin redbreast. That is what I had a problem with: Robins have an orange, not a red breast. I did not understand songs that had lines such as: "When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along."
Much later, I discovered that American Robins do have orange breasts -- and British robins have a red breast. Most all of the songs and poems about the robin were Old World works; hence, they all mention a red breast. Therefore, the answer to my problem was the fact that people in America, including my grandmother, were essentially making mention of British robins when the specimens at hand were American robins.
One legend has it that a robin tried to pull the thorns from Christ's crown, and drops of blood fell on the Robin's light-colored chest. There is also the Christmas story about the night Christ was born and about the little brown bird that shared the stable with the Holy Family. A fire Joseph built to keep the family warm burned out during the night. The bird quickly flew down from its nest and fanned the embers with its wings. The heat from the fire turned the bird's feathers red. The breast of the robin was red from then on to remind us of its love for the baby Jesus.
Doris Day had a hit with the song about the "red robin bobbin' along" in 1953 when I was 10 years old. That was in America, of course. The songwriter, if American, was not observant or was using artistic license to its fullest. On the other hand, maybe the songwriter was aware that nothing rhymes with orange.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
THE BROTHERS GLIB
by Bryce Martin
Scanning channels, I stopped for a while on Nashville Public Television to watch a Bee Gees show, one done in their latter years. Most of the camera work was on the main singer in the group, Robin Gibb. He was slender like a snake, mostly bald, and made me think of the word slimy. He was hardly the person you would conjure up in your mind when reveling in the imagery of the group�s many sexy, if shallow, love songs. It struck me as out of place for Robin (even his name is too cutesy for his looks), the least likely guy in school to have a date on prom night, breathing out those sultry lyrics for all the beautiful people to swoon over and feel a part of. His twin, Maurice Gibb, at least, wore a hat, sunglasses, and a beard. Without all that, he would have looked almost identical to Robin. Barry is � or was � the handsome one. Still, he was taking no chances, wearing a beard and some tinted shades. He still had his long, 60s-ish hair, that or he knew a good wig maker. I did not expect these people to get old and not age. They fared far better in that respect than some of their counterparts with the unnatural black hair-dye jobbies and the obvious plastic surgery and bad hair transplants. Call me socially conditioned (I think not in this case); I will repeat what I said at the beginning: Watching a highly unappealing person sing love song after love song does not work for me. Neither, necessarily, does watching a highly appealing person sing love song after love song work for me. Believable works just fine.
The Bee Gees were not singing some songs they just pulled from a hat. The songs were their songs and will always be associated with the group. At some point, however, consideration should be given to the difference between what you see on stage and what you hear from the stage.
Sure, the headline is a cheap shot, unoriginal, too. And just what are you supposed to do when you have spent the best years of your life singing about young love to young people in love and now you are old and worn? You should have saved your money and called it quits long ago. That's what.
by Bryce Martin
Scanning channels, I stopped for a while on Nashville Public Television to watch a Bee Gees show, one done in their latter years. Most of the camera work was on the main singer in the group, Robin Gibb. He was slender like a snake, mostly bald, and made me think of the word slimy. He was hardly the person you would conjure up in your mind when reveling in the imagery of the group�s many sexy, if shallow, love songs. It struck me as out of place for Robin (even his name is too cutesy for his looks), the least likely guy in school to have a date on prom night, breathing out those sultry lyrics for all the beautiful people to swoon over and feel a part of. His twin, Maurice Gibb, at least, wore a hat, sunglasses, and a beard. Without all that, he would have looked almost identical to Robin. Barry is � or was � the handsome one. Still, he was taking no chances, wearing a beard and some tinted shades. He still had his long, 60s-ish hair, that or he knew a good wig maker. I did not expect these people to get old and not age. They fared far better in that respect than some of their counterparts with the unnatural black hair-dye jobbies and the obvious plastic surgery and bad hair transplants. Call me socially conditioned (I think not in this case); I will repeat what I said at the beginning: Watching a highly unappealing person sing love song after love song does not work for me. Neither, necessarily, does watching a highly appealing person sing love song after love song work for me. Believable works just fine.
The Bee Gees were not singing some songs they just pulled from a hat. The songs were their songs and will always be associated with the group. At some point, however, consideration should be given to the difference between what you see on stage and what you hear from the stage.
Sure, the headline is a cheap shot, unoriginal, too. And just what are you supposed to do when you have spent the best years of your life singing about young love to young people in love and now you are old and worn? You should have saved your money and called it quits long ago. That's what.
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
SEE YA IN THE FUNNY PAPERS
by Bryce Martin
I wanted to be a cartoonist at an early age. In pencil, I drew a panel of how my private detective � Ace Armstrong � looked frontal, three-quarter and profile. It was a daunting desire and I put my pencil aside after that burst of creativity to admire the fabulous artwork, the line drawings and the ink colorings of the masters of the form.
I guess I enjoyed looking at the comics better than trying to reproduce them.
Keeping up with the main comic book characters was easy. It was fun to look for the lesser-known, minor comic figures. Ollie Owl, who wore huge eyeglasses, and Barney Bear were not only rare in comic book form but in movie cartoons as well. The movie houses always had a double feature, and in the middle was a cartoon. I would silently root for one of the minor characters to appear, and would be happier than usual when it was someone like Barney Bear. Some of the minor comic book characters never played in movie cartoons, such as Gyro Gearloose.
I enjoyed seeing the Beagle Boys get their comeuppances. They wore black masks, orange sweaters, caps, and blue trousers. They were always trying to steal Uncle Scrooge McDuck�s gold.
One of the oddest television cartoons, besides Crusader Rabbit, was Clutch Cargo. Talk about cheap. I thought Crusader Rabbit was primitive when it came to its minimal artwork. Clutch Cargo made that series look like Rembrandt by comparison. About the only thing that ever moved on the screen were the speaker�s lips. That part worked very well. It rather reminded me of Ricky Nelson. Ricky would sing one of his rocking hits on his mom and dad�s television show, with everyone clapping and keeping time and Ricky, with a minimum of movement, would be working just his lips and his fingers on the strings of his guitar. An ideal advertiser for the show would have been Geritol, a remedy for �tired blood.�
A neighbor boy in those days had smoked since he was in grade school. He was not caught up in whether a Pall Mall was better than a Lucky or if a Camel was the only real cigarette. He had to bum, steal or borrow something to smoke, so any cigarette was a good one if he was smoking it. That is how I feel about the comics and the cartoons. There are no bad ones; some are just a little better than the others are. Therefore, instead of saying odd, I guess I should have said different. Still, one comic stands out as actually being odd.
Creepily odd were the comic books titled Pinhead and Foodini. They were first conceived as puppets on an early television show. What I could not figure out was why when the pair branched out into comic books they were still puppets. They were not drawn as a regular comic book character might be, but as puppets, with blank, frozen faces.
Just as the Soldiers of Fortune was one of my favorite television shows, I liked The Blackhawks, another group of solders of fortune, in the comic books. The actual title was Blackhawk.
The Blackhawks were a group of guys who wore black leather jackets and piloted fighter planes in WW II battles mainly against the Commies and the Nazis. They got together on their own and put trouble on the run. There was Blackhawk, the leader, Olaf, Chop Chop, Hendrickson, Andre, Chuck, and Stanislaus. Much of their language was from their native tongues. I picked up many foreign language words and phrases. The various sentence structures in the different comics taught me about rhythm. It was not until much later I was able to realize how much of a learning tool the comics had been for me.
Blackhawk always yelled �Geronimo!� when he jumped from an airplane. That was a hard word to pronounce at my young age. After several Blackhawk comics had crossed my path, I realized it was a war cry of sorts gleaned from the name of the Apache Indian chief, Geronimo. I knew the name. He was one of the historical trading cards I had. All trading cards are not sports related. I could not conceive or comprehend what the word meant in that context. The Blackhawks used so many foreign words it might have been Italian for all I could tell.
Andre I liked best. He spoke quite a bit of French. I learned that �Oui, oui� was �Yes, yes.� I was able to figure out that the �Wee, wee� I had heard French people say in the movies and on television was spelled �Oui, oui.� That even helped me in grade school, more like got me in trouble. We had a girl substitute teacher one day and she was having each of us take turns reading passages from a textbook. One of my classmates stumbled on a pair of italicized works, �Oui, oui.� When he did, the substitute stepped in and, much to my surprise, she pronounced it �Ohy, ohy.� Without giving it a thought, I corrected her. �It�s �Wee, wee,� I said. She got that look of incredulity on her face, like �How could you possibly know that?� I would have told her if she had asked. The Blackhawks, Andre in particular.
I also learned from Andre about �bon ami,� which is French for �good friend.� One of my grandmother�s favorite soaps was Bon Ami. I told her it was French and what the name of the soap meant in English. She wondered how I could know such a thing at my tender age. After all, all I did was read comic books.
by Bryce Martin
I wanted to be a cartoonist at an early age. In pencil, I drew a panel of how my private detective � Ace Armstrong � looked frontal, three-quarter and profile. It was a daunting desire and I put my pencil aside after that burst of creativity to admire the fabulous artwork, the line drawings and the ink colorings of the masters of the form.
I guess I enjoyed looking at the comics better than trying to reproduce them.
Keeping up with the main comic book characters was easy. It was fun to look for the lesser-known, minor comic figures. Ollie Owl, who wore huge eyeglasses, and Barney Bear were not only rare in comic book form but in movie cartoons as well. The movie houses always had a double feature, and in the middle was a cartoon. I would silently root for one of the minor characters to appear, and would be happier than usual when it was someone like Barney Bear. Some of the minor comic book characters never played in movie cartoons, such as Gyro Gearloose.
I enjoyed seeing the Beagle Boys get their comeuppances. They wore black masks, orange sweaters, caps, and blue trousers. They were always trying to steal Uncle Scrooge McDuck�s gold.
One of the oddest television cartoons, besides Crusader Rabbit, was Clutch Cargo. Talk about cheap. I thought Crusader Rabbit was primitive when it came to its minimal artwork. Clutch Cargo made that series look like Rembrandt by comparison. About the only thing that ever moved on the screen were the speaker�s lips. That part worked very well. It rather reminded me of Ricky Nelson. Ricky would sing one of his rocking hits on his mom and dad�s television show, with everyone clapping and keeping time and Ricky, with a minimum of movement, would be working just his lips and his fingers on the strings of his guitar. An ideal advertiser for the show would have been Geritol, a remedy for �tired blood.�
A neighbor boy in those days had smoked since he was in grade school. He was not caught up in whether a Pall Mall was better than a Lucky or if a Camel was the only real cigarette. He had to bum, steal or borrow something to smoke, so any cigarette was a good one if he was smoking it. That is how I feel about the comics and the cartoons. There are no bad ones; some are just a little better than the others are. Therefore, instead of saying odd, I guess I should have said different. Still, one comic stands out as actually being odd.
Creepily odd were the comic books titled Pinhead and Foodini. They were first conceived as puppets on an early television show. What I could not figure out was why when the pair branched out into comic books they were still puppets. They were not drawn as a regular comic book character might be, but as puppets, with blank, frozen faces.
Just as the Soldiers of Fortune was one of my favorite television shows, I liked The Blackhawks, another group of solders of fortune, in the comic books. The actual title was Blackhawk.
The Blackhawks were a group of guys who wore black leather jackets and piloted fighter planes in WW II battles mainly against the Commies and the Nazis. They got together on their own and put trouble on the run. There was Blackhawk, the leader, Olaf, Chop Chop, Hendrickson, Andre, Chuck, and Stanislaus. Much of their language was from their native tongues. I picked up many foreign language words and phrases. The various sentence structures in the different comics taught me about rhythm. It was not until much later I was able to realize how much of a learning tool the comics had been for me.
Blackhawk always yelled �Geronimo!� when he jumped from an airplane. That was a hard word to pronounce at my young age. After several Blackhawk comics had crossed my path, I realized it was a war cry of sorts gleaned from the name of the Apache Indian chief, Geronimo. I knew the name. He was one of the historical trading cards I had. All trading cards are not sports related. I could not conceive or comprehend what the word meant in that context. The Blackhawks used so many foreign words it might have been Italian for all I could tell.
Andre I liked best. He spoke quite a bit of French. I learned that �Oui, oui� was �Yes, yes.� I was able to figure out that the �Wee, wee� I had heard French people say in the movies and on television was spelled �Oui, oui.� That even helped me in grade school, more like got me in trouble. We had a girl substitute teacher one day and she was having each of us take turns reading passages from a textbook. One of my classmates stumbled on a pair of italicized works, �Oui, oui.� When he did, the substitute stepped in and, much to my surprise, she pronounced it �Ohy, ohy.� Without giving it a thought, I corrected her. �It�s �Wee, wee,� I said. She got that look of incredulity on her face, like �How could you possibly know that?� I would have told her if she had asked. The Blackhawks, Andre in particular.
I also learned from Andre about �bon ami,� which is French for �good friend.� One of my grandmother�s favorite soaps was Bon Ami. I told her it was French and what the name of the soap meant in English. She wondered how I could know such a thing at my tender age. After all, all I did was read comic books.
Saturday, November 29, 2003
UNDERCUTTING THE SELF-INDULGENT COMPETITOR
by Bryce Martin
Members of the St. Louis Cardinals football team put together a touring basketball squad after the 1962 season ended. It was a way to rake in a little off-season money and keep in shape. I got a chance to watch them in a game at Joplin against a pickup team. One of the Joplin players was a local hero, �Bones� Turner, who had just concluded a college career at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
The Joplin Globe newspaper had wasted no opportunity during Turner�s stay at Baylor to inform readers of his latest heroics.
The draw for me, however, was seeing the Cardinals halfback, and a favorite of mine, John David Crow. Crow was well over six feet tall, wore a flattop and looked mean as hell. That was partly because he had a crooked mouth. I didn�t know if it was from birth or from an injury. Another player who stood out was defensive end Joe Robb -- for the wrong reasons. Robb was a big lineman all right, but, surprisingly to me, he had a big gut. I thought pro football players, no matter their size, would be solid as a rock.
Turner was a hotshot ball handler. Cocky and a show-off, he carried it too far, unless he saw it as a vehicle to hone an audition for the Harlem Globetrotters. Even that wouldn't have been fair to his teammates, whom he gave casual notice. I could see that Turner�s demeanor was raising the hackles of Crow, a bruiser and Heisman Trophy winner as the best college player in 1957 while at Texas A&M. Crow, who played college ball under coach Paul Bryant, seemed to be the floor leader for the Cards. As such, he apparently did not like seeing Turner trying to show him up or his teammates on the hardwood with his self-indulgent dribbling and ball-handling antics.
You could see the extent of Crow�s irritation by his glares and stares directed at Turner, who seemed oblivious to any detail of attention aimed his way.
I was not prepared for what Crow had in store for the upstart Turner.
Robb may have been an accomplice. The huge lineman sent up a shot from underneath the basket that caromed softly to the other side of the backboard. Crow went into a squat where he was stationed to the right of the basket. Turner was underneath and when he went up for the rebound, Crow sprang up, undercutting Turner. Turner hit the floor hard and in a heap. A referee blew his whistle for an injury timeout and Turner had to be helped off the court. I did not much care for Turner�s style of play myself but I had to admit his punishment was rather ugly under the circumstances.
Intentionally undercutting a shooter or rebounder is not only against the rules it is dangerous. It is an act designed to harm another and can easily end in serious injury. I had seen it performed once in a physical education class but never in an actual game. Because of all the action in a basketball game, it can be a difficult and unexpected call to spot for an official. The two officials missed this one, or maybe they ignored it.
The moral I gathered from John David Crow was: Beat us if you can, but don�t show us up in trying. While �Bones� Turner may have been a star at Baylor, he was just now going up against the big boys.
by Bryce Martin
Members of the St. Louis Cardinals football team put together a touring basketball squad after the 1962 season ended. It was a way to rake in a little off-season money and keep in shape. I got a chance to watch them in a game at Joplin against a pickup team. One of the Joplin players was a local hero, �Bones� Turner, who had just concluded a college career at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
The Joplin Globe newspaper had wasted no opportunity during Turner�s stay at Baylor to inform readers of his latest heroics.
The draw for me, however, was seeing the Cardinals halfback, and a favorite of mine, John David Crow. Crow was well over six feet tall, wore a flattop and looked mean as hell. That was partly because he had a crooked mouth. I didn�t know if it was from birth or from an injury. Another player who stood out was defensive end Joe Robb -- for the wrong reasons. Robb was a big lineman all right, but, surprisingly to me, he had a big gut. I thought pro football players, no matter their size, would be solid as a rock.
Turner was a hotshot ball handler. Cocky and a show-off, he carried it too far, unless he saw it as a vehicle to hone an audition for the Harlem Globetrotters. Even that wouldn't have been fair to his teammates, whom he gave casual notice. I could see that Turner�s demeanor was raising the hackles of Crow, a bruiser and Heisman Trophy winner as the best college player in 1957 while at Texas A&M. Crow, who played college ball under coach Paul Bryant, seemed to be the floor leader for the Cards. As such, he apparently did not like seeing Turner trying to show him up or his teammates on the hardwood with his self-indulgent dribbling and ball-handling antics.
You could see the extent of Crow�s irritation by his glares and stares directed at Turner, who seemed oblivious to any detail of attention aimed his way.
I was not prepared for what Crow had in store for the upstart Turner.
Robb may have been an accomplice. The huge lineman sent up a shot from underneath the basket that caromed softly to the other side of the backboard. Crow went into a squat where he was stationed to the right of the basket. Turner was underneath and when he went up for the rebound, Crow sprang up, undercutting Turner. Turner hit the floor hard and in a heap. A referee blew his whistle for an injury timeout and Turner had to be helped off the court. I did not much care for Turner�s style of play myself but I had to admit his punishment was rather ugly under the circumstances.
Intentionally undercutting a shooter or rebounder is not only against the rules it is dangerous. It is an act designed to harm another and can easily end in serious injury. I had seen it performed once in a physical education class but never in an actual game. Because of all the action in a basketball game, it can be a difficult and unexpected call to spot for an official. The two officials missed this one, or maybe they ignored it.
The moral I gathered from John David Crow was: Beat us if you can, but don�t show us up in trying. While �Bones� Turner may have been a star at Baylor, he was just now going up against the big boys.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
THE DINES SOUTHERN AND OTHER MINING DISASTERS
by Bryce Martin
Lead and zinc mining was a big business in my part of the country. It was a dangerous profession.
My part of the country is Galena, Kansas, in the extreme lower southeast portion of the state and in the heart and center of the historic Tri-State Mining District of Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma � a kidney-shaped lead belt of a region on a geologic map.
My grandfather, Noah Wesley Martin, was born in 1879 in Tipton Ford, Mo. Old maps show that a wagon trail led from there directly to Joplin, Mo., the largest town in the vicinity back then and the gateway to the lead fields extending westward and southward. He settled near Joplin in Kansas just over the state line in Galena. Galena was then a just-recent booming place, its population greatly swelled by the lead and zinc mining flurry along the Ozark Plateau.
Noah Martin worked some at other jobs, but he was primarily a life-long lead miner. He worked as a hoisterman (he pronounced it �hoisti�man�) right up to 72 years of age. He had to. Miners were often paid in silver dollars. Companies came and went and record keeping was not much of a priority. When he reached normal retirement age, he could not draw his pension because either he did not have proof of employment or he was not always supplied with such information. He had to continue working to gain eligibility.
The derricks on graveyard shifts were lonely, my grandfather said. They were rickety, too, and seemed ready to topple when the winds blew.
They came from all over to work the diggings and the tailings and created boomtowns, short-lived mostly, alongside the creeks and shoals of the small hamlets. Those who did not mind hard, dirty and hazardous working conditions, survived to raise families and some even flourished.
Times were rough and there was a price to pay. Some times the price was your life.
Explosions from dynamiting rock were common sources for accidents. Sparks, too, sometimes ignited gases in the hollows of the mines and took lives. The biggest safety concern, though, for the miners was from falling boulders or timbers down deep in the mines. Men worked in the mines at depths of 500 feet and deeper. No matter how closely the mines were inspected by independent engineers, cave-ins were far too common.
One of the most deadly mining disasters happened in January of 1939 at the Dines Southern Mine northwest of Treece, Kan., in which five men perished when the roof collapsed. Three of the dead were from my hometown of Galena: James Campbell, 34; John McCumber, 24, from the Blackjack region west of Galena; and Harry Burtrum, 32. Burtrum�s father was J.W. Burtrum of Seneca, Mo. Rescue workers toiled for nearly 70 consecutive hours to retrieve the bodies. Of two injured workers, Louis Hensbregh, 35, was also from Galena.
Another wholesale tragedy occurred at the Swalley Mine, owned by Beck Mining and Royalty Co. of Miami (Okla.), a mile and a half west of Baxter Springs, Kan., with the deaths of four miners in the summer of 1945.
At the Swalley, engineers blamed the cave-in, estimated at consisting of 10 to 15 tons of rock and dirt, to the brittle nature of the �sheet ground� layers. A �sheet ground� consists of flat seams extending horizontally in layers measuring from a few inches to a foot. Lead miners say it is a formation similar to those witnessed in coal mining.
It was not necessarily a safe place on the ground, either. Miners often died of suffocation after being buried alive due to slides from enormous chat piles. Such mishaps could not only cover a human body in a moment but could involve thousands of tons of chat.
A relative killed in the mines was Clarence A. Thomason, who, at just age 19, died November 20, 1925, struck by a falling boulder at the Velie Lion mine near Baxter Springs. From an old news clipping of his death, it states that a �boulder� struck him. The headline reads differently:
Miner Killed by Slab
Will Be Buried Today
While there is a difference between a �boulder� (round) and a �slab� (flat), I would imagine that the two were used interchangeably when referring to �sheet ground.� Also, it was sometimes never known for sure whether a miner actually died from being struck by timber or by rock. The cause of death for the lead miners, though vague in nature at times, was usually sudden in execution.
At the time of his death, Thomason was working as a tub hooker � the person who hooks or unhooks the hoisting rope from the ore buckets. (A hoisterman, situated at the top of the derrick, raises the load from the shaft by rope or cable.) Tub hookers were especially vulnerable to falling rock.
Men were lowered in a barrel by the hoisterman down into the shaft to start a day�s work. Even that was dangerous. In January of 1945, dragline foreman James Cowan, 53, who was raised just north of Galena, died from injuries received when the can he was riding plunged out of control to the pit of the shaft at the Muncie Mine outside Treece. No one could judge how far he fell. The hoisterman blamed the accident on a faulty hoist friction band. A cable broke late in the year in 1917 at the Vinegar Hill Wilson Mine, located two miles north of Commerce, Okla., where a young Otis Davis, 17, was being lowered into the hole. He fell an estimated 200 feet to his death. The cause of the cable�s failure was unknown but attributed to �constant strain.� Another such fall happened in an accident when a man fell from the can after it swung violently and struck the side of the shaft.
Hoistermen were not safe, either. Many were injured or killed when derricks collapsed. The man who lowered and raised the buckets was stationed high atop the derrick. The usual height of a derrick was around 70-feet.
Death came in many forms at the mines. A truck driver, Harry Farrar, 38, from Joplin, delivered a hoister to a site near Picher, Okla., early in 1945 and died while trying to help install the machinery. He fell from the top of the derrick.
One morning when no action was coming from the derrick room, a group of miners waiting to be transported to the bottom of the shaft went to see if there was a problem. There was. The hoisterman, apparently attempting to do some quick repair work, was found crushed to death. He was entangled in the hoist, lodged between the belt and the drum of the hoist.
Some derricks were fashioned from steel and others from wood. Steel derricks were not necessarily a safe haven. A hoisterman and another worker were killed in a steel derrick mishap on July 27, 1944, at a site just south of Cardin, Okla. A double-girder steel leg from a 400-ton square-type steel hopper buckled and gave way, toppling the derrick nearby.
Lawsuits were not uncommon. Widowers and other family members often collected in court from companies regarding the deaths of their kin.
Stephen Henry Velie Jr. owned the Velie mine, where young Thomason, my relative, was killed. Velie was the grandson of John Deere. In addition to the Lion Mine, he owned the Leopard and Tiger mines in the region. He was also, at the time, the vice president of the Velie Motor Company in Moline, Ill., a company that built automobiles. Postcards from the era show Velie cars parked in front of his mining offices and facilities in Baxter Springs. In 1911, a song of the day was �Take Me Out in a Velie Car.�
In 1962, on a Friday morning, October 19, the Velie Lion Mine claimed its last victim during �chugging� activities to relieve the ancient hole of its last vestiges of raw ore. Bill Wilson, 31, a World War II Army veteran from Picher was the second of two miners to die from the results of a cave-in that took place two days earlier. He was victim No. 41 taken by the mine since it opened in 1916.
Much too late for Clarence A. Thomason and others before and after him.
by Bryce Martin
Lead and zinc mining was a big business in my part of the country. It was a dangerous profession.
My part of the country is Galena, Kansas, in the extreme lower southeast portion of the state and in the heart and center of the historic Tri-State Mining District of Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma � a kidney-shaped lead belt of a region on a geologic map.
My grandfather, Noah Wesley Martin, was born in 1879 in Tipton Ford, Mo. Old maps show that a wagon trail led from there directly to Joplin, Mo., the largest town in the vicinity back then and the gateway to the lead fields extending westward and southward. He settled near Joplin in Kansas just over the state line in Galena. Galena was then a just-recent booming place, its population greatly swelled by the lead and zinc mining flurry along the Ozark Plateau.
Noah Martin worked some at other jobs, but he was primarily a life-long lead miner. He worked as a hoisterman (he pronounced it �hoisti�man�) right up to 72 years of age. He had to. Miners were often paid in silver dollars. Companies came and went and record keeping was not much of a priority. When he reached normal retirement age, he could not draw his pension because either he did not have proof of employment or he was not always supplied with such information. He had to continue working to gain eligibility.
The derricks on graveyard shifts were lonely, my grandfather said. They were rickety, too, and seemed ready to topple when the winds blew.
They came from all over to work the diggings and the tailings and created boomtowns, short-lived mostly, alongside the creeks and shoals of the small hamlets. Those who did not mind hard, dirty and hazardous working conditions, survived to raise families and some even flourished.
Times were rough and there was a price to pay. Some times the price was your life.
Explosions from dynamiting rock were common sources for accidents. Sparks, too, sometimes ignited gases in the hollows of the mines and took lives. The biggest safety concern, though, for the miners was from falling boulders or timbers down deep in the mines. Men worked in the mines at depths of 500 feet and deeper. No matter how closely the mines were inspected by independent engineers, cave-ins were far too common.
One of the most deadly mining disasters happened in January of 1939 at the Dines Southern Mine northwest of Treece, Kan., in which five men perished when the roof collapsed. Three of the dead were from my hometown of Galena: James Campbell, 34; John McCumber, 24, from the Blackjack region west of Galena; and Harry Burtrum, 32. Burtrum�s father was J.W. Burtrum of Seneca, Mo. Rescue workers toiled for nearly 70 consecutive hours to retrieve the bodies. Of two injured workers, Louis Hensbregh, 35, was also from Galena.
Another wholesale tragedy occurred at the Swalley Mine, owned by Beck Mining and Royalty Co. of Miami (Okla.), a mile and a half west of Baxter Springs, Kan., with the deaths of four miners in the summer of 1945.
At the Swalley, engineers blamed the cave-in, estimated at consisting of 10 to 15 tons of rock and dirt, to the brittle nature of the �sheet ground� layers. A �sheet ground� consists of flat seams extending horizontally in layers measuring from a few inches to a foot. Lead miners say it is a formation similar to those witnessed in coal mining.
It was not necessarily a safe place on the ground, either. Miners often died of suffocation after being buried alive due to slides from enormous chat piles. Such mishaps could not only cover a human body in a moment but could involve thousands of tons of chat.
A relative killed in the mines was Clarence A. Thomason, who, at just age 19, died November 20, 1925, struck by a falling boulder at the Velie Lion mine near Baxter Springs. From an old news clipping of his death, it states that a �boulder� struck him. The headline reads differently:
Miner Killed by Slab
Will Be Buried Today
While there is a difference between a �boulder� (round) and a �slab� (flat), I would imagine that the two were used interchangeably when referring to �sheet ground.� Also, it was sometimes never known for sure whether a miner actually died from being struck by timber or by rock. The cause of death for the lead miners, though vague in nature at times, was usually sudden in execution.
At the time of his death, Thomason was working as a tub hooker � the person who hooks or unhooks the hoisting rope from the ore buckets. (A hoisterman, situated at the top of the derrick, raises the load from the shaft by rope or cable.) Tub hookers were especially vulnerable to falling rock.
Men were lowered in a barrel by the hoisterman down into the shaft to start a day�s work. Even that was dangerous. In January of 1945, dragline foreman James Cowan, 53, who was raised just north of Galena, died from injuries received when the can he was riding plunged out of control to the pit of the shaft at the Muncie Mine outside Treece. No one could judge how far he fell. The hoisterman blamed the accident on a faulty hoist friction band. A cable broke late in the year in 1917 at the Vinegar Hill Wilson Mine, located two miles north of Commerce, Okla., where a young Otis Davis, 17, was being lowered into the hole. He fell an estimated 200 feet to his death. The cause of the cable�s failure was unknown but attributed to �constant strain.� Another such fall happened in an accident when a man fell from the can after it swung violently and struck the side of the shaft.
Hoistermen were not safe, either. Many were injured or killed when derricks collapsed. The man who lowered and raised the buckets was stationed high atop the derrick. The usual height of a derrick was around 70-feet.
Death came in many forms at the mines. A truck driver, Harry Farrar, 38, from Joplin, delivered a hoister to a site near Picher, Okla., early in 1945 and died while trying to help install the machinery. He fell from the top of the derrick.
One morning when no action was coming from the derrick room, a group of miners waiting to be transported to the bottom of the shaft went to see if there was a problem. There was. The hoisterman, apparently attempting to do some quick repair work, was found crushed to death. He was entangled in the hoist, lodged between the belt and the drum of the hoist.
Some derricks were fashioned from steel and others from wood. Steel derricks were not necessarily a safe haven. A hoisterman and another worker were killed in a steel derrick mishap on July 27, 1944, at a site just south of Cardin, Okla. A double-girder steel leg from a 400-ton square-type steel hopper buckled and gave way, toppling the derrick nearby.
Lawsuits were not uncommon. Widowers and other family members often collected in court from companies regarding the deaths of their kin.
Stephen Henry Velie Jr. owned the Velie mine, where young Thomason, my relative, was killed. Velie was the grandson of John Deere. In addition to the Lion Mine, he owned the Leopard and Tiger mines in the region. He was also, at the time, the vice president of the Velie Motor Company in Moline, Ill., a company that built automobiles. Postcards from the era show Velie cars parked in front of his mining offices and facilities in Baxter Springs. In 1911, a song of the day was �Take Me Out in a Velie Car.�
In 1962, on a Friday morning, October 19, the Velie Lion Mine claimed its last victim during �chugging� activities to relieve the ancient hole of its last vestiges of raw ore. Bill Wilson, 31, a World War II Army veteran from Picher was the second of two miners to die from the results of a cave-in that took place two days earlier. He was victim No. 41 taken by the mine since it opened in 1916.
Much too late for Clarence A. Thomason and others before and after him.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
FALLING DOWN ON MY STUDIES
by Bryce Martin
Another study. This one released in late 2003, informs us that scientists have concluded that video games are addictive. We needed them to tell us that? How much were they paid to conduct that study? Is it only official if scientists study the obvious and give us lay people the obvious results? I can add to that study. Before video games, pinball machines were addictive. I know because I was one of the addicts. We can probably take it back as far as the abacus.
As a matter of fact (and why not?) I will take it back as far as the abacus. I now offer that as a study. Headline: Study Reveals Ancient Greeks Were Hooked on Abacus.
If I were one of these scientists, I would take all the money given to me to conduct the study and spend none of it on the actual study itself and buy me a new Olds Aurora with the money left over (It would all be left over.). Why even bother? All I would need to do is to fill in some easy blanks to come up with some true results.
Tell us something we do not know -- or cannot figure out for ourselves -- then go conduct a real study and amaze us with your findings.
The one that first got my attention in a big way was the boondoggle done decades ago. As I recall, it was a $36,000 foray into reasons why kids fall off tricycles. More appalling was that it was a federal government study, which meant we had to cough up the money for it. I took it as a parody, but it was not, of course. They all read like parodies, don�t they?
It seems like there are two or three such �news stories� every year. I used to clip them out and collect them, but it got old. What I do not understand is how the media treats them so objectively, as if they really have something.
Imagine Joe Citizen looking up in the phonebook the number for the regional office of the Associated Press. �Hello, I have a news story for you, a little study I have done. Running downhill in bad shoes can cause your feet to swell. Hello�Hello!�
However, let Mr. Wizard call it in and, �By, Jove, I think we�ve got something. Your name, professor, and the details��
Here are just a few of several thousands such studies just waiting to be made official:
Fat people weigh more than people who are not as fat do.
Survey finds most people describe dill pickles as having a tart or sour taste and sugar as tasting sweet.
Live cows give more milk than dead cows.
Why do kids fall off tricycles? I can only guess. That is all it would take, too.
When do I start? I'll work for a stipend.
by Bryce Martin
Another study. This one released in late 2003, informs us that scientists have concluded that video games are addictive. We needed them to tell us that? How much were they paid to conduct that study? Is it only official if scientists study the obvious and give us lay people the obvious results? I can add to that study. Before video games, pinball machines were addictive. I know because I was one of the addicts. We can probably take it back as far as the abacus.
As a matter of fact (and why not?) I will take it back as far as the abacus. I now offer that as a study. Headline: Study Reveals Ancient Greeks Were Hooked on Abacus.
If I were one of these scientists, I would take all the money given to me to conduct the study and spend none of it on the actual study itself and buy me a new Olds Aurora with the money left over (It would all be left over.). Why even bother? All I would need to do is to fill in some easy blanks to come up with some true results.
Tell us something we do not know -- or cannot figure out for ourselves -- then go conduct a real study and amaze us with your findings.
The one that first got my attention in a big way was the boondoggle done decades ago. As I recall, it was a $36,000 foray into reasons why kids fall off tricycles. More appalling was that it was a federal government study, which meant we had to cough up the money for it. I took it as a parody, but it was not, of course. They all read like parodies, don�t they?
It seems like there are two or three such �news stories� every year. I used to clip them out and collect them, but it got old. What I do not understand is how the media treats them so objectively, as if they really have something.
Imagine Joe Citizen looking up in the phonebook the number for the regional office of the Associated Press. �Hello, I have a news story for you, a little study I have done. Running downhill in bad shoes can cause your feet to swell. Hello�Hello!�
However, let Mr. Wizard call it in and, �By, Jove, I think we�ve got something. Your name, professor, and the details��
Here are just a few of several thousands such studies just waiting to be made official:
Fat people weigh more than people who are not as fat do.
Survey finds most people describe dill pickles as having a tart or sour taste and sugar as tasting sweet.
Live cows give more milk than dead cows.
Why do kids fall off tricycles? I can only guess. That is all it would take, too.
When do I start? I'll work for a stipend.
Thursday, October 23, 2003
THE GODS MUST BE HAPPY AND SMILING
by Bryce Martin
First N!xau and now Jack Elam.
They may not be big names to all out there, but two of my favorite people on the big screen have passed on this year. It is sad, but inevitable. If anything is inevitable, it seems to be death. Taxes you do not have to pay, contrary to adage. You can go to prison instead.
N!xau. What a name. You have all these pretentious ______s out there trying to come up with a cool reading of an odd name to fit on a marquee, record label, or American Express card, and up comes some Kalahari bushmen as pure as the driven snow with a real name of his own to top any you could possibly dream up. Reading more about his death, I discover that his real name was G!kau. Still a singular marvel, because it maintains the apostrophe, but not quite up to N!xau on the cool quotient. In addition, it was not N!xau, a South African, who made the change from G!xau. It was a simple typing error during the formation of the first The Gods Must Be Crazy movie in 1982 in which N!xau-really-G!kau played the role of Xixo. The film was released in the United States in 1984. Sequels followed.
The original, in case you missed it (I know you would not forget) involves the ramifications of a bushman (Xixo) finding a Coke bottle tossed from an airplane and thinking it coming from the gods.
Too bad Francis X. Bushman from the silent era was not available for a cameo.
For those who missed the details, N!xau died July 1 from tuberculosis while hunting guinea fowl.
For anyone over 50 years of age, all I have to say for them to pinpoint in their craniums just who the hell Jack Elam is are these words: �You know, the guy with the bad eye that rolled around.�
�Oh, yeah. Him.�
I know they know at that point.
There was the leer, too, the smiling one to go with the wandering eye. That face was a stage of its own under a Western hat. Not all of Elam�s movies were cowboy ones but the ones you most remember sure were.
My earliest moment of movie terror involved Elam. The bad guys had the good guys pinned down in an outpost on the prairie in the movie Rawhide. The wind was blowing the thin topsoil of the plain to the point where visibility was at a minimum and eyes were pitted and useless from the dust. Suddenly, a young boy no older than two or three drifts from the house onto the flat area outside, between the bullets of the outlaws and the god fearin� sodbusters inside. The shooting stops once the boy is noticed and all is silent. Then, we see Elam, his grinning, menacing face, roving eye with its crazy gleam. With the camera back on the boy now, bullets fly near his feet, stirring up small explosions. The boy cries. The camera now rotates back to Elam. He is grinning, leering some more, pulling the trigger and is a picture of mad rapture.
Nobody could play that type of baddie like Elam.
Jack Elam passed on October 20.
Remember him, don�t you? The guy with the�
by Bryce Martin
First N!xau and now Jack Elam.
They may not be big names to all out there, but two of my favorite people on the big screen have passed on this year. It is sad, but inevitable. If anything is inevitable, it seems to be death. Taxes you do not have to pay, contrary to adage. You can go to prison instead.
N!xau. What a name. You have all these pretentious ______s out there trying to come up with a cool reading of an odd name to fit on a marquee, record label, or American Express card, and up comes some Kalahari bushmen as pure as the driven snow with a real name of his own to top any you could possibly dream up. Reading more about his death, I discover that his real name was G!kau. Still a singular marvel, because it maintains the apostrophe, but not quite up to N!xau on the cool quotient. In addition, it was not N!xau, a South African, who made the change from G!xau. It was a simple typing error during the formation of the first The Gods Must Be Crazy movie in 1982 in which N!xau-really-G!kau played the role of Xixo. The film was released in the United States in 1984. Sequels followed.
The original, in case you missed it (I know you would not forget) involves the ramifications of a bushman (Xixo) finding a Coke bottle tossed from an airplane and thinking it coming from the gods.
Too bad Francis X. Bushman from the silent era was not available for a cameo.
For those who missed the details, N!xau died July 1 from tuberculosis while hunting guinea fowl.
For anyone over 50 years of age, all I have to say for them to pinpoint in their craniums just who the hell Jack Elam is are these words: �You know, the guy with the bad eye that rolled around.�
�Oh, yeah. Him.�
I know they know at that point.
There was the leer, too, the smiling one to go with the wandering eye. That face was a stage of its own under a Western hat. Not all of Elam�s movies were cowboy ones but the ones you most remember sure were.
My earliest moment of movie terror involved Elam. The bad guys had the good guys pinned down in an outpost on the prairie in the movie Rawhide. The wind was blowing the thin topsoil of the plain to the point where visibility was at a minimum and eyes were pitted and useless from the dust. Suddenly, a young boy no older than two or three drifts from the house onto the flat area outside, between the bullets of the outlaws and the god fearin� sodbusters inside. The shooting stops once the boy is noticed and all is silent. Then, we see Elam, his grinning, menacing face, roving eye with its crazy gleam. With the camera back on the boy now, bullets fly near his feet, stirring up small explosions. The boy cries. The camera now rotates back to Elam. He is grinning, leering some more, pulling the trigger and is a picture of mad rapture.
Nobody could play that type of baddie like Elam.
Jack Elam passed on October 20.
Remember him, don�t you? The guy with the�
Thursday, October 02, 2003
IT'S ALL ONE THING
by Bryce Martin
To all things there is an order. Your order is not necessarily my order. When I tape whatever it is I tape on television, I don�t try to edit out the commercials or promos. I do it that way for one reason; I want to capture it just the way it was. It is all one thing, it is a totality. That�s because I�m pre-remote. I am before the hand-held channel changers. If you wanted to change the channel, you got up and turned the knob. That usually meant you didn�t get up, not to get away from the commercials anyway. So, I'm accustomed to seeing all of it, the commercials, the announcements, all the filler in-between. I bring this up to get to my subject of the moment: an old favorite of mine, a patty melt. A patty melt is what it is for a reason. Take out any part of it, rearrange how it is put together, and it is not a patty melt. It is something else. A patty melt is a totality; a sum of all its parts. First off, the bread is rye, not plain, not sourdough, not wheat, not something else, but your basic rye bread. You toast the bread on a griddle or in a skillet. The meat is better if it is ground round, but it can be just hamburger, just ground beef. That part is a matter of preference and does not hurt anything. Here now is an important ingredient. Onion, red or white is fine. I like white. Here, though, is the key: sliced in rings; not diced. If you do everything else right, but you dice the onion, then you�ve ruined it. Grill the rings until they are caramelized. That�s big. The cheese you use is swiss, nothing else, swiss. It is relevant to remember to melt the cheese slices on the burger, and not on the bread. Now, put it together and you have one delicious sandwich. I left out the salt and pepper part. As the phrase goes, season to taste.
by Bryce Martin
To all things there is an order. Your order is not necessarily my order. When I tape whatever it is I tape on television, I don�t try to edit out the commercials or promos. I do it that way for one reason; I want to capture it just the way it was. It is all one thing, it is a totality. That�s because I�m pre-remote. I am before the hand-held channel changers. If you wanted to change the channel, you got up and turned the knob. That usually meant you didn�t get up, not to get away from the commercials anyway. So, I'm accustomed to seeing all of it, the commercials, the announcements, all the filler in-between. I bring this up to get to my subject of the moment: an old favorite of mine, a patty melt. A patty melt is what it is for a reason. Take out any part of it, rearrange how it is put together, and it is not a patty melt. It is something else. A patty melt is a totality; a sum of all its parts. First off, the bread is rye, not plain, not sourdough, not wheat, not something else, but your basic rye bread. You toast the bread on a griddle or in a skillet. The meat is better if it is ground round, but it can be just hamburger, just ground beef. That part is a matter of preference and does not hurt anything. Here now is an important ingredient. Onion, red or white is fine. I like white. Here, though, is the key: sliced in rings; not diced. If you do everything else right, but you dice the onion, then you�ve ruined it. Grill the rings until they are caramelized. That�s big. The cheese you use is swiss, nothing else, swiss. It is relevant to remember to melt the cheese slices on the burger, and not on the bread. Now, put it together and you have one delicious sandwich. I left out the salt and pepper part. As the phrase goes, season to taste.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
DECORATION DAYS IN KEOKUK
by Bryce Martin
The city of Keokuk, Iowa, is now and always will be a part of my life. That was first evident in 1949 when my grandparents and my aunt Margaret made the trip there for Decoration Day ceremonies. They went to see the grave in the national cemetery and honor the memory of their son, brother, and my father, Wallace Bryce Martin Sr., killed in World War II along with the entire crew of an Army Air Force combat plane.
I stayed home that first year. In the trips that followed I have many memories, pleasant and sad alike.
Our federal government relocated the crew in which my father perished at the stateside gravesite in Keokuk, after previously burying them in a mass grave on foreign soil.
I remember my grandmother, especially somber as she attached her Gold Star Mother�s pin just above the heart. For the ceremonies, she had chosen a navy blue dress, matching hat with veil, and new black dress shoes. She made only one other trip to the cemetery in Keokuk. Each year at the appropriate time, she would hang a gold star in our living room window facing the street in Galena, Kan. I made the journey three times after sitting out that first year in 1949.
For my grandmother, it was an event meaningfully satisfying since she met parents and other family members of all those killed in the crew of the B-29 bomber with her son. She exchanged letters and photographs with the families for years to come.
Although it was not a pleasure trip, there were things to see and do in the city, with the proper perspective taken into consideration.
One thing you could not miss was the large mass of water you had to cross to enter the city, nor the statue of Chief Keokuk and the inscription explaining the city�s origin.
Then, there was the Keokuk Dam, and the bridge whose span crossed over the Mississippi River, and resembled a giant Erector Set when its drawbridge girder mechanisms kicked into gear from the hands of an operator stationed under the mass of steel. The drawbridge opened for river traffic to proceed through the lock.
One summer, thousands and thousands of moths infiltrated the air and thousands more lie dead on the ground. The earthy aroma of the moths was an unforgettable smell.
There were two main downtown hotels. We always stayed at the same one, the Hotel Iowa, except for one summer. From our room in the other hotel, we could see far down below and the animals in the city�s small zoo. We usually ate at the Chuck Wagon Caf� on the main drag between seventh and eighth streets. It was a cowboy-styled diner with portions of the inside walls decorated in knotty pine wood. The pork tenderloin sandwich was my favorite.
The first time we stayed in the hotel was a first for me. A man with an odd outfit insisted on carrying our bags and escorting us to our room. His outfit reminded me of the little bellhop I had seen in ads for Phillip Morris cigarettes. Once inside, the man drew open the curtains, showed where everything was and then kind of stood still, still as the statue of Chief Keokuk. My grandfather grimaced, reached into his pocket and handed the man a fifty-cent piece. �He wanted a tip,� explained my grandfather as the man exited. I could tell he did not like the idea of giving someone money for imposing on you for something you could have done for yourself.
There were trips to Joyce Park to see the Keokuk Kernels play baseball. During some of our first visits, the Kernels were a Class B professional minor league team in the Three-I League. I knew all this from reading the backs of my baseball cards. In reading them, I never imagined ever actually being in one of the many cities mentioned on those cards, except for the ones nearby my hometown that I was already familiar with, such as Joplin, Independence, Chanute, and some others.
The lobby floor of the Hotel Iowa on Main Street housed the office for the Keokuk Kernels. I met the team�s manager at the hotel in 1954, Jo-Jo White, when they were a farm club for the Cleveland Indians. �Do you have anyone who hits the long ball, like Mantle maybe?� I asked him. �No,� he said, seemingly disinterested where the conversation was going. �Oh, yes,� he lit up, as if he just remembered something. �Roger Maris. He can belt them a ways.�
�I�ll remember that,� I said. �I�ll be looking for him on a baseball card.�
On a later 1960 trip, Keokuk was a Class D farm club of the St. Louis Cardinals and a member of the Midwest League, along with Clinton, Decatur, Dubuque, Kokomo, Davenport, Quincy and Waterloo. I enjoyed memorizing the names of the league cities. They sounded so alien somehow. Gone was Quad Cities and other teams, along with Keokuk, that had previously helped form the Three-I League.
A letter to my grandmother was especially troubling. A dark-haired, handsome young man with impeccable manners, dapper in a dark suit, who sang impressively from the stage during wreath ceremonies in Keokuk, had died, and from complications quite unusual. The fact came out that he liked to place redskin peanuts in the bottles of his sodas. That was not all that odd, I and many of my neighborhood friends had done the same thing. However, doctors said an accumulation of the peanut skins had built up in the young man�s body and that is what killed him.
Because of the effect it had on my grandmother, the stark reminder that death was no respecter of persons or circumstances, that has always left a stronger impression on me than any of my other Keokuk memories have.
by Bryce Martin
The city of Keokuk, Iowa, is now and always will be a part of my life. That was first evident in 1949 when my grandparents and my aunt Margaret made the trip there for Decoration Day ceremonies. They went to see the grave in the national cemetery and honor the memory of their son, brother, and my father, Wallace Bryce Martin Sr., killed in World War II along with the entire crew of an Army Air Force combat plane.
I stayed home that first year. In the trips that followed I have many memories, pleasant and sad alike.
Our federal government relocated the crew in which my father perished at the stateside gravesite in Keokuk, after previously burying them in a mass grave on foreign soil.
I remember my grandmother, especially somber as she attached her Gold Star Mother�s pin just above the heart. For the ceremonies, she had chosen a navy blue dress, matching hat with veil, and new black dress shoes. She made only one other trip to the cemetery in Keokuk. Each year at the appropriate time, she would hang a gold star in our living room window facing the street in Galena, Kan. I made the journey three times after sitting out that first year in 1949.
For my grandmother, it was an event meaningfully satisfying since she met parents and other family members of all those killed in the crew of the B-29 bomber with her son. She exchanged letters and photographs with the families for years to come.
Although it was not a pleasure trip, there were things to see and do in the city, with the proper perspective taken into consideration.
One thing you could not miss was the large mass of water you had to cross to enter the city, nor the statue of Chief Keokuk and the inscription explaining the city�s origin.
Then, there was the Keokuk Dam, and the bridge whose span crossed over the Mississippi River, and resembled a giant Erector Set when its drawbridge girder mechanisms kicked into gear from the hands of an operator stationed under the mass of steel. The drawbridge opened for river traffic to proceed through the lock.
One summer, thousands and thousands of moths infiltrated the air and thousands more lie dead on the ground. The earthy aroma of the moths was an unforgettable smell.
There were two main downtown hotels. We always stayed at the same one, the Hotel Iowa, except for one summer. From our room in the other hotel, we could see far down below and the animals in the city�s small zoo. We usually ate at the Chuck Wagon Caf� on the main drag between seventh and eighth streets. It was a cowboy-styled diner with portions of the inside walls decorated in knotty pine wood. The pork tenderloin sandwich was my favorite.
The first time we stayed in the hotel was a first for me. A man with an odd outfit insisted on carrying our bags and escorting us to our room. His outfit reminded me of the little bellhop I had seen in ads for Phillip Morris cigarettes. Once inside, the man drew open the curtains, showed where everything was and then kind of stood still, still as the statue of Chief Keokuk. My grandfather grimaced, reached into his pocket and handed the man a fifty-cent piece. �He wanted a tip,� explained my grandfather as the man exited. I could tell he did not like the idea of giving someone money for imposing on you for something you could have done for yourself.
There were trips to Joyce Park to see the Keokuk Kernels play baseball. During some of our first visits, the Kernels were a Class B professional minor league team in the Three-I League. I knew all this from reading the backs of my baseball cards. In reading them, I never imagined ever actually being in one of the many cities mentioned on those cards, except for the ones nearby my hometown that I was already familiar with, such as Joplin, Independence, Chanute, and some others.
The lobby floor of the Hotel Iowa on Main Street housed the office for the Keokuk Kernels. I met the team�s manager at the hotel in 1954, Jo-Jo White, when they were a farm club for the Cleveland Indians. �Do you have anyone who hits the long ball, like Mantle maybe?� I asked him. �No,� he said, seemingly disinterested where the conversation was going. �Oh, yes,� he lit up, as if he just remembered something. �Roger Maris. He can belt them a ways.�
�I�ll remember that,� I said. �I�ll be looking for him on a baseball card.�
On a later 1960 trip, Keokuk was a Class D farm club of the St. Louis Cardinals and a member of the Midwest League, along with Clinton, Decatur, Dubuque, Kokomo, Davenport, Quincy and Waterloo. I enjoyed memorizing the names of the league cities. They sounded so alien somehow. Gone was Quad Cities and other teams, along with Keokuk, that had previously helped form the Three-I League.
A letter to my grandmother was especially troubling. A dark-haired, handsome young man with impeccable manners, dapper in a dark suit, who sang impressively from the stage during wreath ceremonies in Keokuk, had died, and from complications quite unusual. The fact came out that he liked to place redskin peanuts in the bottles of his sodas. That was not all that odd, I and many of my neighborhood friends had done the same thing. However, doctors said an accumulation of the peanut skins had built up in the young man�s body and that is what killed him.
Because of the effect it had on my grandmother, the stark reminder that death was no respecter of persons or circumstances, that has always left a stronger impression on me than any of my other Keokuk memories have.
Thursday, September 04, 2003
LIVING AND DOING IN 1962
by Bryce Martin
Here I was with my first traffic ticket and scheduled court appearance, after five years of driving and countless miles traveled. It was just a few weeks ago when the odds caught up with me. An oscillating red light (dimmed some by the light of day) and the sound of a siren coming from a California Highway Patrol car near Red Rock Canyon clamored for my attention. I was driving just a few miles over the speed limit, according to the officer, but enough for a speeding violation citation. As noted on my copy, I was to appear before the judge in Johannesburg on such and such a date. That part rather threw me� Johannesburg. I mean it was not even a place you encountered along the highway. It was off the highway, kind of out of the way. However, since that was the closest settlement to the violation, I guessed that it made sense to attend court there.
At age 19, I considered myself to be an experienced driver, and my 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne was my fifth car; all of them stick shifts and two-doors except for this one, and all of them Chevies.
My first car was a dark green 1951 Chevrolet Deluxe two-door. The total cost for it in late 1957 was $312.50. It was equipped with a standard, column shift (�three on the tree�), fender skirts, and a sun visor. Next came a hand-me-down �54 Bel-Air, a light blue and white two-tone and clean as a pin; a �55 standard post 210 series, light green, two-door; and a custom-painted dark blue �53 hardtop with a converted floor shift.
The neglected undercarriage of the Biscayne creaked and groaned, especially when I slowed to corner one of Trona�s small streets. At one certain corner where an old man was usually sitting outside on his porch, I heard, �Hey, Flintstone,� when I cornered past. I did not know if he was commenting on how I resembled Fred Flintstone or how my creaking car sounded like some stone-wheeled vehicle from the television series.
I was 14 years-old and a freshman in high school when I was presented with the �51 Chevy for my very own. I enlisted an older cousin, Bill Cagle, to help me smooth out my shifting and to analyze my overall handling of the vehicle. We used a gravel road, one between two paved roads running in the same direction, near the Old Crow distillery site. He seemed to think I was taking it all too seriously and advised me to just relax more and I would be okay. It dawned on me that was the type of advice I would likely get from anyone older, and that I was on my own with the machine and Galena would have to suffer the consequences along with myself.
As it turned out, I did not do too badly, a couple of dings and nothing major or catastrophic over the delicate next few weeks. I was issued a restricted license, of course, one that you can receive in Kansas at age 14. I was only supposed to drive the car on agriculture errands, and certain other occasions, and not at all after six p.m. I drove it to school and back each day and on all occasions and at any time. I figured the more practice, the better. I have yet to run my first agricultural errand. If I had to wait on that, I would have never gotten behind a wheel.
I was so excited about the car; I just had to give my grandmother a ride. �No, no, no, Bryce, boy, you go on with it. I�m too old for that, � she said, good-naturedly. I politely insisted and finally talked her into it. �Just around the block or two, � I said. Returning in front of the house, she said, �Goody.� I was glad I took her for that ride, short though it was. It was the only time. She died not long after.
Just a few short months later in the summer of 1958, I drove, with my grandfather in his 1957 medium green Chevy, all the way to Trona from Galena for a two-week vacation. It was not that we would drive nothing but a Chevy. I remembered a roomy-as-a-house 1939 Packard. We stopped in Albuquerque where my grandfather called Virgil Duley from a roadside pay phone. Virgil was a young man who had lived across the street from us in the Spring Grove region of Galena. He had worked at the local Feezell�s Market, and the experience had somehow landed him a job as a grocery store manager off Route 66 in Albuquerque. We gave Virgil directions as to where we were located and waited while he arrived.
Albuquerque was about eight hundred miles from Galena and the unofficial midpoint to Trona.
Once in Trona, it was oven hot. Searles Valley, where most of the inhabitants work in one of two chemical plants, is just a short distance removed from Death Valley proper. My grandfather would sleep outside at night in either his car or his son�s, Walter. The cold air from the cooler in the house gave him respiratory problems. It did for me, too. The only type of air conditioning we were acclimated to was an open window. I was not about to sleep outside, so I suffered through some minor sore throat irritation and upper throat discomfort.
I attended the Foursquare Church in the evenings with Walter�s wife, Annabelle, and the boys. (Annabelle and Walter are both from Galena). Uncle Walter, like the other men in our Martin family, did not go to church. The Trona house of worship reminded me of my Assembly of God Church in Galena on Main Street. At the Trona church, I met a local girl, Bonnie Alter, who captured my attention. We were later to keep in touch with letters.
Near the end of the vacation, I drove us across more desert and down the El Cajon Pass among trees and grass to the city of Rialto, near San Bernardino, where my grandfather had a visit planned with a nephew, George M. Shaw. The two sat around George�s kitchen table and talked all afternoon. I drove us back to Trona the next morning.
When it was time to leave Searles Valley and reroute back to Galena, I drove to Barstow where we stopped to eat. I left the restaurant first, while my grandfather stayed to pay the tab. Outside, I was twirling the car keys when a pair of Marine M.P.�s wearing white armbands and wanting to see my identification approached me. I showed them my driver�s license, but they were not interested in that. Finally, my grandfather arrived. He listened and seemed to understand what they were asking. �He does not have a service card, he�s just fourteen,� he told them. That satisfied them and they drove away. �They wanted to see your military identification. They thought you were at least eighteen.�
I remembered all that while getting dressed and getting ready to drive to my first ever court appearance. I had fifty-five dollars in cash. I had no real idea what the fine might be, or if I was to receive a fine at all, but I did not think it would be any amount near fifty-five dollars. Oh, well, I had better place it all in my wallet, in case I have car trouble or some type of emergency.
I had already talked to some of my co-workers at Stauffer about the ticket. I was told that the judge would have a copy of my driving record, all previous citations and so forth. When I reminded that it was my first time in court, and that I had no previous citations, they all said the same thing: Then, he will go easy on you.
In court, the judge read the charges and asked how I pled.
�Guilty, your honor,� I said. I was not so sure, though, that he actually had a copy of my driving record or was aware that I had no prior violations. I felt it in my best interests to let him know.
I was quick to add, �This is my first time in court, my first ticket, your honor.�
�So, this is your first ticket,� he repeated, looking down at some papers and then focusing back on me. �That will be fifty-three dollars or three days in jail.�
I was a little stunned. I was angry at how he seemed to relish his words, and the severity of the punishment. If he was trying to prove a point of some kind, it was only that he came across as a jerk. The point being that life offers jerks galore and this is just one of many I will confront. I would have told him that, too, if he would have asked.
I left happy in the fact I had started the trip from my relatives� house with a full tank of gas. What had I learned from all of it? Something that I already knew: If you do not put yourself in such circumstances, you will not be subject to the particular whims of that fate -- something along those lines.
You do not necessarily live and learn; you live and do. I made that up for the moment and decided that would be my motto, at least until I thought of another one.
by Bryce Martin
Here I was with my first traffic ticket and scheduled court appearance, after five years of driving and countless miles traveled. It was just a few weeks ago when the odds caught up with me. An oscillating red light (dimmed some by the light of day) and the sound of a siren coming from a California Highway Patrol car near Red Rock Canyon clamored for my attention. I was driving just a few miles over the speed limit, according to the officer, but enough for a speeding violation citation. As noted on my copy, I was to appear before the judge in Johannesburg on such and such a date. That part rather threw me� Johannesburg. I mean it was not even a place you encountered along the highway. It was off the highway, kind of out of the way. However, since that was the closest settlement to the violation, I guessed that it made sense to attend court there.
At age 19, I considered myself to be an experienced driver, and my 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne was my fifth car; all of them stick shifts and two-doors except for this one, and all of them Chevies.
My first car was a dark green 1951 Chevrolet Deluxe two-door. The total cost for it in late 1957 was $312.50. It was equipped with a standard, column shift (�three on the tree�), fender skirts, and a sun visor. Next came a hand-me-down �54 Bel-Air, a light blue and white two-tone and clean as a pin; a �55 standard post 210 series, light green, two-door; and a custom-painted dark blue �53 hardtop with a converted floor shift.
The neglected undercarriage of the Biscayne creaked and groaned, especially when I slowed to corner one of Trona�s small streets. At one certain corner where an old man was usually sitting outside on his porch, I heard, �Hey, Flintstone,� when I cornered past. I did not know if he was commenting on how I resembled Fred Flintstone or how my creaking car sounded like some stone-wheeled vehicle from the television series.
I was 14 years-old and a freshman in high school when I was presented with the �51 Chevy for my very own. I enlisted an older cousin, Bill Cagle, to help me smooth out my shifting and to analyze my overall handling of the vehicle. We used a gravel road, one between two paved roads running in the same direction, near the Old Crow distillery site. He seemed to think I was taking it all too seriously and advised me to just relax more and I would be okay. It dawned on me that was the type of advice I would likely get from anyone older, and that I was on my own with the machine and Galena would have to suffer the consequences along with myself.
As it turned out, I did not do too badly, a couple of dings and nothing major or catastrophic over the delicate next few weeks. I was issued a restricted license, of course, one that you can receive in Kansas at age 14. I was only supposed to drive the car on agriculture errands, and certain other occasions, and not at all after six p.m. I drove it to school and back each day and on all occasions and at any time. I figured the more practice, the better. I have yet to run my first agricultural errand. If I had to wait on that, I would have never gotten behind a wheel.
I was so excited about the car; I just had to give my grandmother a ride. �No, no, no, Bryce, boy, you go on with it. I�m too old for that, � she said, good-naturedly. I politely insisted and finally talked her into it. �Just around the block or two, � I said. Returning in front of the house, she said, �Goody.� I was glad I took her for that ride, short though it was. It was the only time. She died not long after.
Just a few short months later in the summer of 1958, I drove, with my grandfather in his 1957 medium green Chevy, all the way to Trona from Galena for a two-week vacation. It was not that we would drive nothing but a Chevy. I remembered a roomy-as-a-house 1939 Packard. We stopped in Albuquerque where my grandfather called Virgil Duley from a roadside pay phone. Virgil was a young man who had lived across the street from us in the Spring Grove region of Galena. He had worked at the local Feezell�s Market, and the experience had somehow landed him a job as a grocery store manager off Route 66 in Albuquerque. We gave Virgil directions as to where we were located and waited while he arrived.
Albuquerque was about eight hundred miles from Galena and the unofficial midpoint to Trona.
Once in Trona, it was oven hot. Searles Valley, where most of the inhabitants work in one of two chemical plants, is just a short distance removed from Death Valley proper. My grandfather would sleep outside at night in either his car or his son�s, Walter. The cold air from the cooler in the house gave him respiratory problems. It did for me, too. The only type of air conditioning we were acclimated to was an open window. I was not about to sleep outside, so I suffered through some minor sore throat irritation and upper throat discomfort.
I attended the Foursquare Church in the evenings with Walter�s wife, Annabelle, and the boys. (Annabelle and Walter are both from Galena). Uncle Walter, like the other men in our Martin family, did not go to church. The Trona house of worship reminded me of my Assembly of God Church in Galena on Main Street. At the Trona church, I met a local girl, Bonnie Alter, who captured my attention. We were later to keep in touch with letters.
Near the end of the vacation, I drove us across more desert and down the El Cajon Pass among trees and grass to the city of Rialto, near San Bernardino, where my grandfather had a visit planned with a nephew, George M. Shaw. The two sat around George�s kitchen table and talked all afternoon. I drove us back to Trona the next morning.
When it was time to leave Searles Valley and reroute back to Galena, I drove to Barstow where we stopped to eat. I left the restaurant first, while my grandfather stayed to pay the tab. Outside, I was twirling the car keys when a pair of Marine M.P.�s wearing white armbands and wanting to see my identification approached me. I showed them my driver�s license, but they were not interested in that. Finally, my grandfather arrived. He listened and seemed to understand what they were asking. �He does not have a service card, he�s just fourteen,� he told them. That satisfied them and they drove away. �They wanted to see your military identification. They thought you were at least eighteen.�
I remembered all that while getting dressed and getting ready to drive to my first ever court appearance. I had fifty-five dollars in cash. I had no real idea what the fine might be, or if I was to receive a fine at all, but I did not think it would be any amount near fifty-five dollars. Oh, well, I had better place it all in my wallet, in case I have car trouble or some type of emergency.
I had already talked to some of my co-workers at Stauffer about the ticket. I was told that the judge would have a copy of my driving record, all previous citations and so forth. When I reminded that it was my first time in court, and that I had no previous citations, they all said the same thing: Then, he will go easy on you.
In court, the judge read the charges and asked how I pled.
�Guilty, your honor,� I said. I was not so sure, though, that he actually had a copy of my driving record or was aware that I had no prior violations. I felt it in my best interests to let him know.
I was quick to add, �This is my first time in court, my first ticket, your honor.�
�So, this is your first ticket,� he repeated, looking down at some papers and then focusing back on me. �That will be fifty-three dollars or three days in jail.�
I was a little stunned. I was angry at how he seemed to relish his words, and the severity of the punishment. If he was trying to prove a point of some kind, it was only that he came across as a jerk. The point being that life offers jerks galore and this is just one of many I will confront. I would have told him that, too, if he would have asked.
I left happy in the fact I had started the trip from my relatives� house with a full tank of gas. What had I learned from all of it? Something that I already knew: If you do not put yourself in such circumstances, you will not be subject to the particular whims of that fate -- something along those lines.
You do not necessarily live and learn; you live and do. I made that up for the moment and decided that would be my motto, at least until I thought of another one.
Friday, August 29, 2003
TO BE JUST SO POPULARLY GREAT
by Bryce Martin
Three things I just do not get: Garth Brooks, NASCAR, and pay per-view wrestling.
Now I can add another: awards shows. To be more specific, I should say televised awards shows.
Take music awards shows, please, any of them. You have people who, during the course of the year, had recordings that gained fame for those doing the recordings, adulation from fans, money, and all the big ticket add-ons. Are they not giving us all the pleasure we can stand? It seems not. After all that, they want to get together in some huge auditorium setting and pat each other on the back all evening for our viewing pleasure.
Not mine, thank you.
They are playing Big Shot.
It is not enough that these prima donnas get all the glory. They have to rub it in our faces, too.
Not mine, thank you.
I cannot imagine why anyone would watch such blatant pandering. Even worse, the same people who are labeled �artists,� are proving just the opposite by even taking part.
I have no problems with any of the entertainment groups having a private get-together to honor their own. I would encourage it. When it becomes a made-for-the-public event, it becomes forced and strained. The television awards shows are reduced to a party of self-centered swells back slapping each other into the night. At home in our living rooms we are reduced to fawning servility.
The whole shebang gives diarrhea a new egress.
How thrilling it is to watch them high-arm the trophies and thank the lesserlights for aiding their rise to fame and glory.
There amounts to a glut of these shows. The networks choose the participants for the shows, not the industry being honored. They are told what to wear, where to stand, what to sing, how long to sing it, when to clear out and go home.
The country music genre is toned down to where it is just a shadow of its true being. To appeal to the largest number of viewers, the networks take as much country as possible out of the country.
So much for honoring your own your own way.
by Bryce Martin
Three things I just do not get: Garth Brooks, NASCAR, and pay per-view wrestling.
Now I can add another: awards shows. To be more specific, I should say televised awards shows.
Take music awards shows, please, any of them. You have people who, during the course of the year, had recordings that gained fame for those doing the recordings, adulation from fans, money, and all the big ticket add-ons. Are they not giving us all the pleasure we can stand? It seems not. After all that, they want to get together in some huge auditorium setting and pat each other on the back all evening for our viewing pleasure.
Not mine, thank you.
They are playing Big Shot.
It is not enough that these prima donnas get all the glory. They have to rub it in our faces, too.
Not mine, thank you.
I cannot imagine why anyone would watch such blatant pandering. Even worse, the same people who are labeled �artists,� are proving just the opposite by even taking part.
I have no problems with any of the entertainment groups having a private get-together to honor their own. I would encourage it. When it becomes a made-for-the-public event, it becomes forced and strained. The television awards shows are reduced to a party of self-centered swells back slapping each other into the night. At home in our living rooms we are reduced to fawning servility.
The whole shebang gives diarrhea a new egress.
How thrilling it is to watch them high-arm the trophies and thank the lesserlights for aiding their rise to fame and glory.
There amounts to a glut of these shows. The networks choose the participants for the shows, not the industry being honored. They are told what to wear, where to stand, what to sing, how long to sing it, when to clear out and go home.
The country music genre is toned down to where it is just a shadow of its true being. To appeal to the largest number of viewers, the networks take as much country as possible out of the country.
So much for honoring your own your own way.
Sunday, August 10, 2003
Is That What You�re Learning in School?
by Bryce Martin
In 1960, a high school classmate came up with some new takes on some old Mother Goose rhymes. They were crude but too sophisticated for him to have made up on his own. I never knew where they came from. I guessed from some 78-rpm comedy album. Anyway, in my personal manner of giving all things a name, I called these bawdy little things Mother Goose-Me Rhymes:
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack burnt his ass on the candlestick.
Little Miss Muffett sat on her tuffet eating her curds and whey, along came a spider, sat down beside her and said, �What�s in the bowl, bitch?�
There was an old lady who lived in a shoe; she had so many children her snatch fell off.
Some others were even less tasteless.
These are some of those in the same vein that made the rounds in the halls and classrooms I inhabited only a couple of years earlier:
�Don�t Fence Me In� By Bob Wire
�The Ruptured Chinaman� By One Hung Low
�A Race to the Outhouse� By Willie Makeit
�Under The Grandstand� By Seymour Butts
�Tiger�s Revenge� By Claude Balls
�The Constipated Chinaman� By Hung Chow
�A Hole in the Mattress� By Mr. Completely
There were sloughs of others, these book-and-author one-liners, including a title I do not remember By I.P. Freely. Others I do remember are too crude in content to publish (not that the ones selected are couth).
�
by Bryce Martin
In 1960, a high school classmate came up with some new takes on some old Mother Goose rhymes. They were crude but too sophisticated for him to have made up on his own. I never knew where they came from. I guessed from some 78-rpm comedy album. Anyway, in my personal manner of giving all things a name, I called these bawdy little things Mother Goose-Me Rhymes:
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack burnt his ass on the candlestick.
Little Miss Muffett sat on her tuffet eating her curds and whey, along came a spider, sat down beside her and said, �What�s in the bowl, bitch?�
There was an old lady who lived in a shoe; she had so many children her snatch fell off.
Some others were even less tasteless.
These are some of those in the same vein that made the rounds in the halls and classrooms I inhabited only a couple of years earlier:
�Don�t Fence Me In� By Bob Wire
�The Ruptured Chinaman� By One Hung Low
�A Race to the Outhouse� By Willie Makeit
�Under The Grandstand� By Seymour Butts
�Tiger�s Revenge� By Claude Balls
�The Constipated Chinaman� By Hung Chow
�A Hole in the Mattress� By Mr. Completely
There were sloughs of others, these book-and-author one-liners, including a title I do not remember By I.P. Freely. Others I do remember are too crude in content to publish (not that the ones selected are couth).
�
Sunday, August 03, 2003
Don�t Mess With My Crayolas
by Bryce Martin
As a young kid, six years old to be exact, I loved my Crayola crayons. It was the colors that were fascinating, of course -- my favorites being burnt sienna, Prussian blue, blue violet, brick red, and flesh. I could not believe there was a color matching my skin, or that brick alone was significant enough as a shade to be a color by itself. I was learning more about colors on my own than I had ever imagined. I did not have one of those small packs of Crayolas, like all the rest of the kids in class. Actually, some of the kids had no crayons at all. The year was 1949 and my teacher was Mrs. Ditson, a kindly old woman who seemed ancient. She had given all of us several days to round up and bring in our crayons from home, and some still had none, others had new packs of the small boxes, some had worn and smashed boxes with empty spaces where crayons were missing, duplicate crayons, some with torn wrappers, and all sizes in length. I was careful with mine. I had kept the points sharp, tried to not waste too much of the waxy part when I sharpened one. I kept the wrappers intact. I kept the box they came in as new a condition as I possibly could. I had 48 crayons. It was a chevron box with a sketch on the front of the painter Rubens. It was the biggest box Crayola sold. When you flipped the lid all the way up, each row was exposed. Each row was tiered like the bleachers in a gym, each row rising higher and higher. I thought of them a little bit as being people sitting in rows of seats, each having their own personality. I liked the orderliness of the pack. If one space was empty, I would be upset. If one crayon was broken, I knew I would be upset. I used them, colored with them, but I wanted them to remain as tidy as the day I opened the box in wonderment. I liked their smell, too. I tried smelling different ones, red ones, black ones, to see if there was a difference. They all smelled the same. It was not so much that I had the largest box of crayons in the room, I sensed, I knew, actually, that my interest in colors was more than that of any of the others. My interest in the names of the crayons was a deep one. The box of crayons had opened up a new world to me, one I did not know existed. I had the crayons a good while before I started the first grade, so it was not just a novelty associated with school. I was not keen on the idea of sharing them. I only had to look at the crayons of the other kids to know they did not take care of theirs as well as I did mine. That is what my teacher was asking. Share because I had many and some had few or none. I protested but to no avail. I was assured that at the end of the class, the same exact crayons my teacher had picked out for loan would be returned. It did not happen that way of course. I became upset, not rowdy or out of control, but I made my feelings known. My teacher told me I was selfish. She told those who were raising me the same thing. They took her side. After all, she was a teacher. From then on, I heard the word selfish increasingly.
�
by Bryce Martin
As a young kid, six years old to be exact, I loved my Crayola crayons. It was the colors that were fascinating, of course -- my favorites being burnt sienna, Prussian blue, blue violet, brick red, and flesh. I could not believe there was a color matching my skin, or that brick alone was significant enough as a shade to be a color by itself. I was learning more about colors on my own than I had ever imagined. I did not have one of those small packs of Crayolas, like all the rest of the kids in class. Actually, some of the kids had no crayons at all. The year was 1949 and my teacher was Mrs. Ditson, a kindly old woman who seemed ancient. She had given all of us several days to round up and bring in our crayons from home, and some still had none, others had new packs of the small boxes, some had worn and smashed boxes with empty spaces where crayons were missing, duplicate crayons, some with torn wrappers, and all sizes in length. I was careful with mine. I had kept the points sharp, tried to not waste too much of the waxy part when I sharpened one. I kept the wrappers intact. I kept the box they came in as new a condition as I possibly could. I had 48 crayons. It was a chevron box with a sketch on the front of the painter Rubens. It was the biggest box Crayola sold. When you flipped the lid all the way up, each row was exposed. Each row was tiered like the bleachers in a gym, each row rising higher and higher. I thought of them a little bit as being people sitting in rows of seats, each having their own personality. I liked the orderliness of the pack. If one space was empty, I would be upset. If one crayon was broken, I knew I would be upset. I used them, colored with them, but I wanted them to remain as tidy as the day I opened the box in wonderment. I liked their smell, too. I tried smelling different ones, red ones, black ones, to see if there was a difference. They all smelled the same. It was not so much that I had the largest box of crayons in the room, I sensed, I knew, actually, that my interest in colors was more than that of any of the others. My interest in the names of the crayons was a deep one. The box of crayons had opened up a new world to me, one I did not know existed. I had the crayons a good while before I started the first grade, so it was not just a novelty associated with school. I was not keen on the idea of sharing them. I only had to look at the crayons of the other kids to know they did not take care of theirs as well as I did mine. That is what my teacher was asking. Share because I had many and some had few or none. I protested but to no avail. I was assured that at the end of the class, the same exact crayons my teacher had picked out for loan would be returned. It did not happen that way of course. I became upset, not rowdy or out of control, but I made my feelings known. My teacher told me I was selfish. She told those who were raising me the same thing. They took her side. After all, she was a teacher. From then on, I heard the word selfish increasingly.
�
Friday, July 25, 2003
Fancy Fielder
by Bryce Martin
1949
He is mine
She said, my dream in a tux
Eddie Waitkus, ballplayer deluxe
He moved well around first
Too well, perhaps
For a dame with a thirst
A desire for certain chaps
Those in uniform
Of Lithuanian descent
With smooth athletic form
No words spoken, not a hint
Until one night a note appeared
Asking him to indulge a whim
A bullet split his boutonni�re
She was so happy for her and him
...
by Bryce Martin
1949
He is mine
She said, my dream in a tux
Eddie Waitkus, ballplayer deluxe
He moved well around first
Too well, perhaps
For a dame with a thirst
A desire for certain chaps
Those in uniform
Of Lithuanian descent
With smooth athletic form
No words spoken, not a hint
Until one night a note appeared
Asking him to indulge a whim
A bullet split his boutonni�re
She was so happy for her and him
...
Monday, July 21, 2003
LIFE LESSONS FROM RECORD LABELS
by Bryce Martin
Among a multitude of others, I remember a 45-rpm record called �Forget Me Not,� by the Kalin Twins. It was a neat little recording. I recognized the song title as somewhat of a pun. Okay, it was a pun. I guess one either is or is not. I would not have thought of the song as a pun if not for my grandmother. She liked to plant and grow flowers. She liked forget-me-nots. I noticed many of the song titles were a play on words. �Don�t Gild the Lily, Lily,� was a weak one from Del Shannon. Of course, it was the B-side to �Hats Off to Larry,� the A-side. The side with the strongest chance of becoming a hit has an A, and the other side, called the �flip side,� is printed with a B. I do not think any of my friends have ever figured that out. Some times both sides are a hit, or both sides are a flop. I know for sure none of my friends knew what the name, or names, under the song title indicated, the one that is always in parenthesis. For example: (Leiber-Stroller). It is the name of the songwriter(s). I do not even think any adults � any that I knew anyway � were aware of that little fact. Should I have said "that little bit of esoterica" instead? Can some thing so obvious to one such as myself fall under the category of esoteric to someone else? Sure, why not? Some people are just naturally dull and unobservant. On a Ritchie Valens recording, I noticed the name in parenthesis was "R. Valenzuela." Based on that, I could see that he shortened Valenzuela to Valens, for show biz purposes. I was able to tell all that just by looking at the record. They seemed to be just records to everyone else. I noticed the same thing looking at �Robbin� the Cradle.� The singer, Tony Bellus, was apparently Italian. I say that because a Tony (Anthony, actually) with a much longer Italian-sounding last name, but one that would shorten nicely to Bellus, was the songwriter, the name inside the parenthetical signs (Anthony J. Bellusci). I was not certain, though, about Renato Carasone. He had a hit song called "Torero," which I knew was Spanish for bullfighter. The only other word in the foreign-language song I could decode was "sombrero." But was it really a Spanish song when the singer had what sounded like an Italian name? The B-side did not offer much of a clue. It was called "Che La La." Spanish or Italian? After listening to it a few times, I only knew it had no chance of becoming an A-side hit in America.
Don�t gild the lily, Lily
Don�t overplay your hand
Indeed.
�
by Bryce Martin
Among a multitude of others, I remember a 45-rpm record called �Forget Me Not,� by the Kalin Twins. It was a neat little recording. I recognized the song title as somewhat of a pun. Okay, it was a pun. I guess one either is or is not. I would not have thought of the song as a pun if not for my grandmother. She liked to plant and grow flowers. She liked forget-me-nots. I noticed many of the song titles were a play on words. �Don�t Gild the Lily, Lily,� was a weak one from Del Shannon. Of course, it was the B-side to �Hats Off to Larry,� the A-side. The side with the strongest chance of becoming a hit has an A, and the other side, called the �flip side,� is printed with a B. I do not think any of my friends have ever figured that out. Some times both sides are a hit, or both sides are a flop. I know for sure none of my friends knew what the name, or names, under the song title indicated, the one that is always in parenthesis. For example: (Leiber-Stroller). It is the name of the songwriter(s). I do not even think any adults � any that I knew anyway � were aware of that little fact. Should I have said "that little bit of esoterica" instead? Can some thing so obvious to one such as myself fall under the category of esoteric to someone else? Sure, why not? Some people are just naturally dull and unobservant. On a Ritchie Valens recording, I noticed the name in parenthesis was "R. Valenzuela." Based on that, I could see that he shortened Valenzuela to Valens, for show biz purposes. I was able to tell all that just by looking at the record. They seemed to be just records to everyone else. I noticed the same thing looking at �Robbin� the Cradle.� The singer, Tony Bellus, was apparently Italian. I say that because a Tony (Anthony, actually) with a much longer Italian-sounding last name, but one that would shorten nicely to Bellus, was the songwriter, the name inside the parenthetical signs (Anthony J. Bellusci). I was not certain, though, about Renato Carasone. He had a hit song called "Torero," which I knew was Spanish for bullfighter. The only other word in the foreign-language song I could decode was "sombrero." But was it really a Spanish song when the singer had what sounded like an Italian name? The B-side did not offer much of a clue. It was called "Che La La." Spanish or Italian? After listening to it a few times, I only knew it had no chance of becoming an A-side hit in America.
Don�t gild the lily, Lily
Don�t overplay your hand
Indeed.
�
Saturday, July 19, 2003
OLD SUNDAYS
You never knew who might show up on a Sunday. That is the way I remember it. Sunday was God's day, and on God's day all was forgiven. Especially sins such as being away for too long and not keeping in touch. Sooner or later, though, all those lost sheep came home, clothesline clean in their Sunday-best britches, dresses, halters and whatnot. Pies and cobblers were always at the ready, some tea and coffee too. The men would finally settle outside, gathered around a raised car hood, rolling their own. The woman would be inside, gathered in a circle, talking quilt patterns and praising grandchildren. I tried to write a song about it, a song mind you, not a poem. I wrote the music for it but I don't know how to show it. Here's the lyrics:
They All Came Over on Sundays
by Bryce Martin
I remember when I was just a kid
Church on Sunday you always did
Then when you would go on home
You never knew just who might show
You never knew who might come by
Oh, how the week just seemed to fly
Another rat race and another maze
Time to re-unite again on Sunday
No matter how long it might have been
Here came cousin Carla and Uncle Ben
Just when you thought they had parted ways
They all came over for a spell on Sundays
They would all came by to stay a bit
Sooner or later you could bet on it
No matter how long they had been away
They were bound to show up some Sunday
I remember it all just like yesterday
That one day was special so many ways
Never seen Barbara look so great
Diane was getting big for eight
The Dooley�s had a brand new Chevy
We always had food aplenty
They all came by if just to say hi
Out in the yard we waved good-bye
Next time don�t stay away so long
Have a good trip getting on home
...
You never knew who might show up on a Sunday. That is the way I remember it. Sunday was God's day, and on God's day all was forgiven. Especially sins such as being away for too long and not keeping in touch. Sooner or later, though, all those lost sheep came home, clothesline clean in their Sunday-best britches, dresses, halters and whatnot. Pies and cobblers were always at the ready, some tea and coffee too. The men would finally settle outside, gathered around a raised car hood, rolling their own. The woman would be inside, gathered in a circle, talking quilt patterns and praising grandchildren. I tried to write a song about it, a song mind you, not a poem. I wrote the music for it but I don't know how to show it. Here's the lyrics:
They All Came Over on Sundays
by Bryce Martin
I remember when I was just a kid
Church on Sunday you always did
Then when you would go on home
You never knew just who might show
You never knew who might come by
Oh, how the week just seemed to fly
Another rat race and another maze
Time to re-unite again on Sunday
No matter how long it might have been
Here came cousin Carla and Uncle Ben
Just when you thought they had parted ways
They all came over for a spell on Sundays
They would all came by to stay a bit
Sooner or later you could bet on it
No matter how long they had been away
They were bound to show up some Sunday
I remember it all just like yesterday
That one day was special so many ways
Never seen Barbara look so great
Diane was getting big for eight
The Dooley�s had a brand new Chevy
We always had food aplenty
They all came by if just to say hi
Out in the yard we waved good-bye
Next time don�t stay away so long
Have a good trip getting on home
...
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
OUR FIRST IDIOT BOX
by Bryce Martin
We had a Hallicrafter black-and-white picture television.
We now had our first television station to try out the Hallicrafter and the t.v. light sitting on its top to protect our eyes from harmful glare we weren't used to.
KOAM-TV began broadcasting on December 13, 1953. Affiliated with CBS and on channel 7locally, the fledgling Pittsburg, Kan., station opened with a test pattern, one similar to the drawing of the Indian depicted on school kids' Big Chief writing tablets, and shut down programming by midnight in its early days. The 1,200-foot broadcasting tower became a familiar feature to viewers. Station engineer Dwayne Hudspeth was a regular in front of the camera while making an almost daily trek upward to install the tower's first lights. Hudspeth looked at the camera, kept to his climbing and provided an oral report of his progress and what lie ahead, no less a pioneer than Peary climbing the Pole.
...
by Bryce Martin
We had a Hallicrafter black-and-white picture television.
We now had our first television station to try out the Hallicrafter and the t.v. light sitting on its top to protect our eyes from harmful glare we weren't used to.
KOAM-TV began broadcasting on December 13, 1953. Affiliated with CBS and on channel 7locally, the fledgling Pittsburg, Kan., station opened with a test pattern, one similar to the drawing of the Indian depicted on school kids' Big Chief writing tablets, and shut down programming by midnight in its early days. The 1,200-foot broadcasting tower became a familiar feature to viewers. Station engineer Dwayne Hudspeth was a regular in front of the camera while making an almost daily trek upward to install the tower's first lights. Hudspeth looked at the camera, kept to his climbing and provided an oral report of his progress and what lie ahead, no less a pioneer than Peary climbing the Pole.
...
Saturday, July 12, 2003
DAYS OF CARDS
by Bryce Martin
I remember each, any and all,
Remember the faces, colors bright, some
Only in black and white.
All those days of cards.
No, Mom did not toss them
Away like blank pizza plate cardboard
Carelessly hidden under my bed.
I sold them, needed the cash.
It did not matter, leaving as they did,
As I said, I knew them all by memory,
All those days of cards.
All those baseball cards of my youth, my
Life and theirs combined, Gone now,
Who knows where?
Sold through the mail,
Frank Leja, Maury McDermott, Bowman
Topps, Forties, Fifties, some older,
Some cut from Wheaties boxes, others
by the score.
All those days of cards.
As true as any friends
Ever I could count,
In memory cast, full and given names,
Birthdates, places of birth, heights,
Weights, ERAs, ABs and the like,
Their numbers in life.
Faces, shaded and bright, as easy to
Recall as a summer sky.
I remember each, any and all
All those days of cards
...
by Bryce Martin
I remember each, any and all,
Remember the faces, colors bright, some
Only in black and white.
All those days of cards.
No, Mom did not toss them
Away like blank pizza plate cardboard
Carelessly hidden under my bed.
I sold them, needed the cash.
It did not matter, leaving as they did,
As I said, I knew them all by memory,
All those days of cards.
All those baseball cards of my youth, my
Life and theirs combined, Gone now,
Who knows where?
Sold through the mail,
Frank Leja, Maury McDermott, Bowman
Topps, Forties, Fifties, some older,
Some cut from Wheaties boxes, others
by the score.
All those days of cards.
As true as any friends
Ever I could count,
In memory cast, full and given names,
Birthdates, places of birth, heights,
Weights, ERAs, ABs and the like,
Their numbers in life.
Faces, shaded and bright, as easy to
Recall as a summer sky.
I remember each, any and all
All those days of cards
...
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
WHAT PART OF NO...
by Bryce Martin
What part of no do I not understand? I am glad you asked.
No Pepper.
No Haiku.
No Masse.
The above are three areas of masterful art I grew up with that are no longer welcome in this world. In addition, and more importantly, all three have the word �no� in front of their action to drive home the point in no uncertain manner. The �no� is quite definite. (And, purely offered as an aside, �No Haiku� is the only one of the three that is a sentence and not a fragment.)
I can see reasons to eliminate haiku and masse, which I will discuss later, but I never imagined the game of pepper in baseball would be outlawed and declared taboo and fall by the wayside. (I am being redundant to show emphasis.)
Yet, pepper, the baseball variety, for all practical purposes is gone, or is, at least, being shown the door. I can explain pepper to you if you are not familiar with the exercise, but your best bet would be to buy, rent or borrow the series of videos titled Baseball: A Film, by Ken Burns. It is a boxed set of nine (Nine, get it?) There are snippets of old time ballplayers playing pepper, tossing the ball behind their backs and generally having a grand old time with it. It is the baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters tossing the ball around in warm-ups at the free throw circle to the strains of �Sweet Georgia Brown.�
I remember Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates using a 40-ounce bat and holding it with one hand to conduct pepper sessions. He and his teammates did it the same way we sandlotters did it. A few players would form a semicircle and toss the ball to a batter at close range. The batter peppered the ball back off the bat, where it was handled as best one can handle a short-range missile and it was quickly tossed back to the batter, who peppered another shot, and so on, fastly. It was supposed to be a good warm-up, one to improve hand and eye coordination. It was usually done around the backstop area.
Major League baseball parks today boast �No Pepper� signs around the home plate region. Some say the little game tears up the turf. Others say a ball might fly into the stands and injure a paying customer. I do not know the real reason. I do not see how there could be a real reason.
If you ever tried to submit poetry for publication or to enter in a contest, you would usually see the two-word sentence that served as a warning: No haiku. Haiku is a 17-syllable poem made up of 5-7-5 lines, and is considered by many to be so lowbrow as to not deserve merit or attention, much like the split infinitive I just tossed out. I did not disagree. I mean who would not aspire to higher poetry.
Masse is just a fancy French word that means �Don�t rip a tear in my expensive pool table cover.� The technique of masse involves a method of striking a cue ball off center where it will curve around one ball to hit another. The problem with this is that you have to elevate the butt of the cue stick until it is almost perpendicular with the table and, while the other hand forms a bridge not supported by the table, you strike down on the cue ball. As you might be able to picture, there is a good chance that the tip of the cue stick will keep going and damage the green cover.
As a kid growing up, I never quite understood every single no spouted by all the grownup sorts. I still do not.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "As ragged as the last rose of summer."
...
by Bryce Martin
What part of no do I not understand? I am glad you asked.
No Pepper.
No Haiku.
No Masse.
The above are three areas of masterful art I grew up with that are no longer welcome in this world. In addition, and more importantly, all three have the word �no� in front of their action to drive home the point in no uncertain manner. The �no� is quite definite. (And, purely offered as an aside, �No Haiku� is the only one of the three that is a sentence and not a fragment.)
I can see reasons to eliminate haiku and masse, which I will discuss later, but I never imagined the game of pepper in baseball would be outlawed and declared taboo and fall by the wayside. (I am being redundant to show emphasis.)
Yet, pepper, the baseball variety, for all practical purposes is gone, or is, at least, being shown the door. I can explain pepper to you if you are not familiar with the exercise, but your best bet would be to buy, rent or borrow the series of videos titled Baseball: A Film, by Ken Burns. It is a boxed set of nine (Nine, get it?) There are snippets of old time ballplayers playing pepper, tossing the ball behind their backs and generally having a grand old time with it. It is the baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters tossing the ball around in warm-ups at the free throw circle to the strains of �Sweet Georgia Brown.�
I remember Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates using a 40-ounce bat and holding it with one hand to conduct pepper sessions. He and his teammates did it the same way we sandlotters did it. A few players would form a semicircle and toss the ball to a batter at close range. The batter peppered the ball back off the bat, where it was handled as best one can handle a short-range missile and it was quickly tossed back to the batter, who peppered another shot, and so on, fastly. It was supposed to be a good warm-up, one to improve hand and eye coordination. It was usually done around the backstop area.
Major League baseball parks today boast �No Pepper� signs around the home plate region. Some say the little game tears up the turf. Others say a ball might fly into the stands and injure a paying customer. I do not know the real reason. I do not see how there could be a real reason.
If you ever tried to submit poetry for publication or to enter in a contest, you would usually see the two-word sentence that served as a warning: No haiku. Haiku is a 17-syllable poem made up of 5-7-5 lines, and is considered by many to be so lowbrow as to not deserve merit or attention, much like the split infinitive I just tossed out. I did not disagree. I mean who would not aspire to higher poetry.
Masse is just a fancy French word that means �Don�t rip a tear in my expensive pool table cover.� The technique of masse involves a method of striking a cue ball off center where it will curve around one ball to hit another. The problem with this is that you have to elevate the butt of the cue stick until it is almost perpendicular with the table and, while the other hand forms a bridge not supported by the table, you strike down on the cue ball. As you might be able to picture, there is a good chance that the tip of the cue stick will keep going and damage the green cover.
As a kid growing up, I never quite understood every single no spouted by all the grownup sorts. I still do not.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "As ragged as the last rose of summer."
...
Sunday, July 06, 2003
Mickey, the Patriot
by Bryce Martin
Mantle hits one
Mantle hits one and it goes
Mantle hits one and it goes high and far
Mantle hits one and it goes high and far up in the distance
Mantle hits one and it goes high and far up in the distance out of sight
Completely gone
You should see the fireworks
...
by Bryce Martin
Mantle hits one
Mantle hits one and it goes
Mantle hits one and it goes high and far
Mantle hits one and it goes high and far up in the distance
Mantle hits one and it goes high and far up in the distance out of sight
Completely gone
You should see the fireworks
...
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
A BIG LEAGUE MYSTERY
by Bryce Martin
What are the odds of the 1929 Pittsburgh Pirates having two first basemen, both from the same small town in Kansas?
I have long wondered that question myself.
In 1980, I had a baseball encyclopedia, which I had borrowed from a friend. It listed in alphabetical order everyone who had ever played in the Major Leagues, even if it consisted of one at bat. I found many ways to use the massive book. I was living in Bakersfield. Calif., so I looked through every page to see who was born in that city. An intriguing find was W.H. �Buck� May, a pitcher going back to the 1920s and for whom no death date was listed. I looked in the Bakersfield phone book and there he was. I was able to set up an interview with him for a feature article later published in a local sports publication. I also used it as a chance to inquire about George Grantham.
Well before Mickey Mantle, the best-known big league baseball player to come out of the Joplin Mining District region was George Grantham.
As it turned out, �Buck� May knew Grantham but could offer no details other than he knew he had lived in Arizona (He died in Arizona in 1954.).
Grantham played 12-plus years in the Major Leagues with the Cubs, Pirates, Reds and Giants. He batted over .300 eight consecutive years. His lifetime average was .302.
He debuted fulltime in 1923 with the Chicago Cubs as a second baseman, and later became a first baseman. A left-handed batter and right-handed thrower, Grantham stood 5-foot-10 and weighed 170 pounds.
Born George Farley Grantham on May 20, 1900, at Galena, Kans., the son of Mr. and Mrs. B.F. Grantham, he moved to Goldroads, Ariz., with his family at the age of three and attended grammar school there and later high school at Flagstaff.
Grantham, although an outstanding batsman, was a notoriously bad fielder, thus the nickname �Boots.� He began in organized baseball in 1920 with Tacoma. The following year he went to Portland and in 1922 played with Omaha. In the latter part of the 1922 season, he joined the Cubs. After two years with the Cubs, he was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates where he stayed for seven years.
With Pittsburgh, Grantham played in two World Series. He was so popular in Pittsburgh a street was named after him.
I knew Grantham was from my hometown of Galena, Kans. I even had a 1933 Goudey baseball card of him that mentioned that fact on the backside, and had heard his name talked about in the family from an early age. I looked through the big book for anyone else that might be from Galena. That is when I found Bill Windle.
Willis Brewer (Bill) Windle. Born December 14, 1904, in Galena, Kans. Height: 5-111/2; Weight, 170. Died in Corpus Christi, Texas, on December 8, 1981.
Listed as a first baseman along with Grantham, Windle batted once (he hit a double) in 1928 with the Pirates and he went hitless in one at bat in 1929. That was his Major League career.
Did it just happen, two guys from Galena on the Pirates at the same time? From an odds standpoint, it is not likely. It sounds more like a �buddy plan� of some kind. Grantham, as popular as he was in Pittsburgh, could have arranged it. It remains a mystery.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash."
by Bryce Martin
What are the odds of the 1929 Pittsburgh Pirates having two first basemen, both from the same small town in Kansas?
I have long wondered that question myself.
In 1980, I had a baseball encyclopedia, which I had borrowed from a friend. It listed in alphabetical order everyone who had ever played in the Major Leagues, even if it consisted of one at bat. I found many ways to use the massive book. I was living in Bakersfield. Calif., so I looked through every page to see who was born in that city. An intriguing find was W.H. �Buck� May, a pitcher going back to the 1920s and for whom no death date was listed. I looked in the Bakersfield phone book and there he was. I was able to set up an interview with him for a feature article later published in a local sports publication. I also used it as a chance to inquire about George Grantham.
Well before Mickey Mantle, the best-known big league baseball player to come out of the Joplin Mining District region was George Grantham.
As it turned out, �Buck� May knew Grantham but could offer no details other than he knew he had lived in Arizona (He died in Arizona in 1954.).
Grantham played 12-plus years in the Major Leagues with the Cubs, Pirates, Reds and Giants. He batted over .300 eight consecutive years. His lifetime average was .302.
He debuted fulltime in 1923 with the Chicago Cubs as a second baseman, and later became a first baseman. A left-handed batter and right-handed thrower, Grantham stood 5-foot-10 and weighed 170 pounds.
Born George Farley Grantham on May 20, 1900, at Galena, Kans., the son of Mr. and Mrs. B.F. Grantham, he moved to Goldroads, Ariz., with his family at the age of three and attended grammar school there and later high school at Flagstaff.
Grantham, although an outstanding batsman, was a notoriously bad fielder, thus the nickname �Boots.� He began in organized baseball in 1920 with Tacoma. The following year he went to Portland and in 1922 played with Omaha. In the latter part of the 1922 season, he joined the Cubs. After two years with the Cubs, he was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates where he stayed for seven years.
With Pittsburgh, Grantham played in two World Series. He was so popular in Pittsburgh a street was named after him.
I knew Grantham was from my hometown of Galena, Kans. I even had a 1933 Goudey baseball card of him that mentioned that fact on the backside, and had heard his name talked about in the family from an early age. I looked through the big book for anyone else that might be from Galena. That is when I found Bill Windle.
Willis Brewer (Bill) Windle. Born December 14, 1904, in Galena, Kans. Height: 5-111/2; Weight, 170. Died in Corpus Christi, Texas, on December 8, 1981.
Listed as a first baseman along with Grantham, Windle batted once (he hit a double) in 1928 with the Pirates and he went hitless in one at bat in 1929. That was his Major League career.
Did it just happen, two guys from Galena on the Pirates at the same time? From an odds standpoint, it is not likely. It sounds more like a �buddy plan� of some kind. Grantham, as popular as he was in Pittsburgh, could have arranged it. It remains a mystery.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash."
Thursday, April 17, 2003
HOME IS WHERE YOU FIND IT
by Bryce Martin
I had watched it just once, my favorite episode of The X-Files. Actually, I should say the favorite of the ones I have watched. I am not a diehard fan of this or any other television show. While switching channels, I caught it right at the beginning. It is titled "Home." It is not so much as what it is about, a clan of murderous and wild as animals misfits as measured on any scale, deformed by inbreeding, the fictional Peacock family. It is about that, but also how the boys are stuck in some kind of early-Elvis pop culture era. The poignant ballads of the period streaming at just the right intervals in the background are perfect picks and the oblique camera angles bring out the iconic Cadillac in its long and angular tail-finned best. Mulder and Scully find the mother under a bed, lying on an auto mechanic's creeper. She has no arms or legs. Of her three misshapen boys, one is both brother and father to the other two. However, by looking at the mother, and of a picture of her and her now dead husband hanging on a wall, it is clear that the inbreeding started well before this current brood. What I like is the juxtaposition of the icons of the innocent and romantic late Fifties and early Sixties set against the strangely pathetic family, feral outcasts that they are, pitiable and defiant and led by a mother intent on preserving the bloodline. If "Home" is not art, it is more than a good stab at it.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "Jumpin' up and down like one-egg puddin'."
...
by Bryce Martin
I had watched it just once, my favorite episode of The X-Files. Actually, I should say the favorite of the ones I have watched. I am not a diehard fan of this or any other television show. While switching channels, I caught it right at the beginning. It is titled "Home." It is not so much as what it is about, a clan of murderous and wild as animals misfits as measured on any scale, deformed by inbreeding, the fictional Peacock family. It is about that, but also how the boys are stuck in some kind of early-Elvis pop culture era. The poignant ballads of the period streaming at just the right intervals in the background are perfect picks and the oblique camera angles bring out the iconic Cadillac in its long and angular tail-finned best. Mulder and Scully find the mother under a bed, lying on an auto mechanic's creeper. She has no arms or legs. Of her three misshapen boys, one is both brother and father to the other two. However, by looking at the mother, and of a picture of her and her now dead husband hanging on a wall, it is clear that the inbreeding started well before this current brood. What I like is the juxtaposition of the icons of the innocent and romantic late Fifties and early Sixties set against the strangely pathetic family, feral outcasts that they are, pitiable and defiant and led by a mother intent on preserving the bloodline. If "Home" is not art, it is more than a good stab at it.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "Jumpin' up and down like one-egg puddin'."
...
Thursday, February 20, 2003
PENNY WISE, MEMORIES FOOLISH
by Bryce Martin
I have a baseball signed by Mickey Mantle. Signed in 1955.
Owning such an item, and telling someone about it, always draws a response such as this: "Hey, I bet that's worth some money!"
I believe I understand why many people equate autographs from famous people with dollar signs, disregarding any possible emotional attachments the holder might enjoy. My belief is that people feel insecure around star power, and asking for an autograph is an easy ice-breaker. I mentioned to my sister years ago about interviewing John Wayne for a magazine article. "John Wayne," she exclaimed. "What did you say to him?"
Having met and talked with several major and minor celebrities over the years, I have never asked one for an autograph. I cannot imagine why I would. I was in their presence and we exchanged words and I will remember the occasion - most of it anyway. That is enough for me. Am I supposed to get one to impress someone else with later?
Having been a sports memorbilia collector most of my life, I know quite a bit about autograph collecting. An Abraham Lincoln signature is rare and worth more than a Bill Clinton one. That is, if all you have is a signature from either of the two - not one from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, or from Clinton's swearing-in document. Clinton freely gives autographs and, as such, they are common. Lincoln will sign no more. Bill Russell, the old Boston Celtics basketball great, has purposely acted stingy over the years in putting his name on anything. No so with Shaquille O'Neal. The big Los Angeles Lakers center has written "Shaq" for multitudes of autograph hounds, countless times more than Russell. The value of a Russell signature may diminish over the years as his name fades from public memory. Mark McGuire, the retired baseball slugger, in his latter years refused to sign any longer on the "sweet spot," thus making his older signatures more valuable. McGuire's signature, it is interesting to note, went from easily distinguishable to illegible as he became more and more famous. Must of the value for signatures and autographs from famous people and celebrities is determined by the signer's popularity, what the signature or autograph deals with, the condition of the signature, and its rarity.
In Nashville, years ago, a young waitress at a steak house became so excited that the Grand Ole Opry's ancient man of sorrow, Roy Acuff , was in the adjoining room, she had to tell me about it when she came to my table. "Did you get a good tip from Mr. Acuff?" I asked her later. She was still beaming. "No," she said, "he gave me his autograph." Her gushing enthusiasm indicated she felt that was the better deal of the two. "My dear, you should have pushed for the tip," I told her. But, I was wrong. "I am going to mail it to my dad. He loves Roy Acuff." And that is why I was wrong.
My grandfather drove to Commerce, Okla., that day in 1955, just he and I. It was a short drive from his house to Mantle's. When we arrived, Mickey and his teammate buddy, Billy Martin, were coming out the front door. A hunting trip in some Oklahoma woods was on their minds. (I remember the day well, but I do not remember why Martin's signature is not also on the ball.) Shotguns stood stacked against an outside wall. The sky was clear and the fall day near perfect.
My Mantle baseball is signed on the sweet spot, where you want it for ultimate worth, but the baseball is a Little League model. My grandfather pulled it from a pants pocket for signature. It reads: Best Wishes Mickey Mantle. For maximum worth, it should have been an official American League baseball, the league Mantle played in during his career with the New York Yankees. That enhances the signature's value and significance. My baseball is dingy and the ink from the autograph has dimmed. The baseball should be white or, at least, a near-white and the signature should be clear and sharp. Worse, even before Mantle signed it, mine had written on it: 1955, Little League City Champs, printed neatly in ballpoint. That is a real value killer. Instead of having a single-signed Mickey Mantle autographed baseball, I own a defaced Mantle signed baseball. It has little monetary value.
Yet, I do not even have to see the baseball for it to have value. I can just picture it while away at work or driving down the highway, and when I do, it revs up an old movie projector stored in my very essence, rolling and stirring up the images from that grand day, from that time. That's some worth, there.
WORN-OUT COUPLES: juicy tidbits, angst ridden, rising discontent, viable alternative, finding closure, seeking solace, political upheaval, implementing measures, sea change, buoying up, seemingly secure, political correctness, sexual orientation, gender baiting, lingering doubt, emotional stability, faux pas, current restrictions, work related, fashion apparel, dress shorts, parting shot, needless excess, party crowd, financially secure, time tested.
TODAY�S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: �If you ate a rock, he ate a boxful.�
...
by Bryce Martin
I have a baseball signed by Mickey Mantle. Signed in 1955.
Owning such an item, and telling someone about it, always draws a response such as this: "Hey, I bet that's worth some money!"
I believe I understand why many people equate autographs from famous people with dollar signs, disregarding any possible emotional attachments the holder might enjoy. My belief is that people feel insecure around star power, and asking for an autograph is an easy ice-breaker. I mentioned to my sister years ago about interviewing John Wayne for a magazine article. "John Wayne," she exclaimed. "What did you say to him?"
Having met and talked with several major and minor celebrities over the years, I have never asked one for an autograph. I cannot imagine why I would. I was in their presence and we exchanged words and I will remember the occasion - most of it anyway. That is enough for me. Am I supposed to get one to impress someone else with later?
Having been a sports memorbilia collector most of my life, I know quite a bit about autograph collecting. An Abraham Lincoln signature is rare and worth more than a Bill Clinton one. That is, if all you have is a signature from either of the two - not one from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, or from Clinton's swearing-in document. Clinton freely gives autographs and, as such, they are common. Lincoln will sign no more. Bill Russell, the old Boston Celtics basketball great, has purposely acted stingy over the years in putting his name on anything. No so with Shaquille O'Neal. The big Los Angeles Lakers center has written "Shaq" for multitudes of autograph hounds, countless times more than Russell. The value of a Russell signature may diminish over the years as his name fades from public memory. Mark McGuire, the retired baseball slugger, in his latter years refused to sign any longer on the "sweet spot," thus making his older signatures more valuable. McGuire's signature, it is interesting to note, went from easily distinguishable to illegible as he became more and more famous. Must of the value for signatures and autographs from famous people and celebrities is determined by the signer's popularity, what the signature or autograph deals with, the condition of the signature, and its rarity.
In Nashville, years ago, a young waitress at a steak house became so excited that the Grand Ole Opry's ancient man of sorrow, Roy Acuff , was in the adjoining room, she had to tell me about it when she came to my table. "Did you get a good tip from Mr. Acuff?" I asked her later. She was still beaming. "No," she said, "he gave me his autograph." Her gushing enthusiasm indicated she felt that was the better deal of the two. "My dear, you should have pushed for the tip," I told her. But, I was wrong. "I am going to mail it to my dad. He loves Roy Acuff." And that is why I was wrong.
My grandfather drove to Commerce, Okla., that day in 1955, just he and I. It was a short drive from his house to Mantle's. When we arrived, Mickey and his teammate buddy, Billy Martin, were coming out the front door. A hunting trip in some Oklahoma woods was on their minds. (I remember the day well, but I do not remember why Martin's signature is not also on the ball.) Shotguns stood stacked against an outside wall. The sky was clear and the fall day near perfect.
My Mantle baseball is signed on the sweet spot, where you want it for ultimate worth, but the baseball is a Little League model. My grandfather pulled it from a pants pocket for signature. It reads: Best Wishes Mickey Mantle. For maximum worth, it should have been an official American League baseball, the league Mantle played in during his career with the New York Yankees. That enhances the signature's value and significance. My baseball is dingy and the ink from the autograph has dimmed. The baseball should be white or, at least, a near-white and the signature should be clear and sharp. Worse, even before Mantle signed it, mine had written on it: 1955, Little League City Champs, printed neatly in ballpoint. That is a real value killer. Instead of having a single-signed Mickey Mantle autographed baseball, I own a defaced Mantle signed baseball. It has little monetary value.
Yet, I do not even have to see the baseball for it to have value. I can just picture it while away at work or driving down the highway, and when I do, it revs up an old movie projector stored in my very essence, rolling and stirring up the images from that grand day, from that time. That's some worth, there.
WORN-OUT COUPLES: juicy tidbits, angst ridden, rising discontent, viable alternative, finding closure, seeking solace, political upheaval, implementing measures, sea change, buoying up, seemingly secure, political correctness, sexual orientation, gender baiting, lingering doubt, emotional stability, faux pas, current restrictions, work related, fashion apparel, dress shorts, parting shot, needless excess, party crowd, financially secure, time tested.
TODAY�S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: �If you ate a rock, he ate a boxful.�
...
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
MY ONLY TOP TEN LIST
This was originally published under my byline, Bryce Martin, on Jim Rome's Fox Sports Website, under a heading titled "Orenthal Smack," in April of 2001.
My Freshly Original Top Ten Little-Known Things About O.J. That May Have Swayed A Jury Had It Been Aware:
(From No. 10 to No. 1, of course)
10. In high school: class cutup
9. In college: class cutter
8. In pro football: cut-and-slash runner
7. Title after football: athlete-slash-actor
6. Role he wanted: cut man, in Rocky
5. Favorite movie cue: cut!
4. Favorite music purchases: cutouts
3. Favorite movie: Cutter's Way
2. On dance floor likes to: cut a rug
1. In people situations that make him uncomfortable he is prone to: cut a trail
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "I came here with nothing, and I still have most of it."
...
This was originally published under my byline, Bryce Martin, on Jim Rome's Fox Sports Website, under a heading titled "Orenthal Smack," in April of 2001.
My Freshly Original Top Ten Little-Known Things About O.J. That May Have Swayed A Jury Had It Been Aware:
(From No. 10 to No. 1, of course)
10. In high school: class cutup
9. In college: class cutter
8. In pro football: cut-and-slash runner
7. Title after football: athlete-slash-actor
6. Role he wanted: cut man, in Rocky
5. Favorite movie cue: cut!
4. Favorite music purchases: cutouts
3. Favorite movie: Cutter's Way
2. On dance floor likes to: cut a rug
1. In people situations that make him uncomfortable he is prone to: cut a trail
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "I came here with nothing, and I still have most of it."
...
Monday, February 17, 2003
COLOR MY WORLD
by Bryce Martin
Having a passion for colors, I am constantly being seduced by their endless variations and combinations. From an early age, I was hooked by the tones and hues from the labels of my stacks of 45 rpm vinyl records, and even drawn in by the individual diskettes from a tubular pack of Necco wafers. Some of the best appear when you are least expecting. Earlier in the week, for example, I glanced up from some reading just as a blast of beautiful colors on the televison screen froze my gaze. They were vivid and vibrant, a freshness of color and quality of detail out of the ordinary. A man on Antiques Roadshow had several old empty canned food tins he found after excavating an old building. They were all from the same "find." One had a date of 1876. No one on the show recalled ever seeing such cans. The men who built the structure had tossed their food cans after group lunches. They had dined in what would become the building's crawl space. The owner of the treasures said the cans discarded in the dirt had rust. Those tossed on wood chips were in mostly mint condition. The can's labels are what makes them valuable. These labels were chromolithographs. This process, now a lost art, is what produced the spectacular colors. Modern day dot-pattern photograph printing processes are artless in comparison. Though the labels depicting salmon and green beans are ephemera, and, as such, count as advertising or commercial art, they looked like fine art to me.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "She wasn't wearing enough clothes to flag a handcar."
...
by Bryce Martin
Having a passion for colors, I am constantly being seduced by their endless variations and combinations. From an early age, I was hooked by the tones and hues from the labels of my stacks of 45 rpm vinyl records, and even drawn in by the individual diskettes from a tubular pack of Necco wafers. Some of the best appear when you are least expecting. Earlier in the week, for example, I glanced up from some reading just as a blast of beautiful colors on the televison screen froze my gaze. They were vivid and vibrant, a freshness of color and quality of detail out of the ordinary. A man on Antiques Roadshow had several old empty canned food tins he found after excavating an old building. They were all from the same "find." One had a date of 1876. No one on the show recalled ever seeing such cans. The men who built the structure had tossed their food cans after group lunches. They had dined in what would become the building's crawl space. The owner of the treasures said the cans discarded in the dirt had rust. Those tossed on wood chips were in mostly mint condition. The can's labels are what makes them valuable. These labels were chromolithographs. This process, now a lost art, is what produced the spectacular colors. Modern day dot-pattern photograph printing processes are artless in comparison. Though the labels depicting salmon and green beans are ephemera, and, as such, count as advertising or commercial art, they looked like fine art to me.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "She wasn't wearing enough clothes to flag a handcar."
...
Saturday, February 15, 2003
TOO MUCH LEAD IN OUR PENCILS
by Bryce Martin
A kidney-shaped region on a geologic map represents the most polluted territory in the United States. The region takes in parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, and is part of a massive clean-up operation funded by our federal government. Today's children living on the contaminated soil have lead blood levels high enough to cause immediate concern. Mining activities ceased decades ago, but a full clean-up will take decades more.
My grandfather, Noah Martin, was born in 1879 in Tipton Ford, Mo. A wagon trail led from there directly to Joplin, Mo., the largest town in the vicinity. In the late 1890s, he ended up near Joplin just over the state line in Galena, Kans, which was then a lead and zinc boom town with a Main Street known as "Red Hot Street."
Miners were often paid in silver dollars. Companies came and went and record-keeping was not much of a priority. When he reached retirement age, he could not draw his pension because he either did not have proof of employment and earnings or he was not always supplied with such information. He had to work into his 70s to become eligible, and he went back to the lead mining business.
I imagine he was given some consideration because of his age. He worked graveyards as a derrick "hoisti'man" in his latter years. That's how he pronounced it. It might have been "hoisting man," or hoistingman." The derricks were rickety and seemed ready to topple when the winds blew. It was his job to lower men in a barrel, with the aid of winch and cable, down into the shaft, and to bring the barrel back up when the men filled it. He would then tip the contents of the barrel down a chute. Fortunately, such work in his younger days had left him with a strong grip
On paydays, I would sometimes go with him. I was once treated to a fabulous display of colors. Laid out on the ground, on half-shingle size strips of balsa wood were core samples. The samples, like strips of toothpaste, were of just about every clay color imaginable, but leaning more toward pastels. I had thought there was nothing under the ground except brown dirt. The company geologist was explaining to my grandfather what it all meant. All I could decipher was that it meant work, and a job.
After he finally retired, he would sometimes pull his truck off the road at a pasture between Galena and Joplin. Just over the fence and in some weeds was a rusted piece of machinery with big iron wheels, a relic from his wood cutting days. He said it was a "widder-maker," that some less fortunate he had worked with were killed using such a machine. It was tricky to use and dangerous. He would sit and study its machinations from a distance, the gears, brakes, sprockets and chains. Each time he would come to the same conclusion: It had been a killer machine and a lot of poor boys had been its victims.
Long after the mines played out, the ground around Galena was littered with chunks of lead ore and jack (zinc). Broken chunks of lead were as smooth as glass and shone like a mirror. Now, those chunks are all gone. Lead became valuable enough that townspeople, many too young to even remember the bygone mining days, rounded it all up and sold it.
...
by Bryce Martin
A kidney-shaped region on a geologic map represents the most polluted territory in the United States. The region takes in parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, and is part of a massive clean-up operation funded by our federal government. Today's children living on the contaminated soil have lead blood levels high enough to cause immediate concern. Mining activities ceased decades ago, but a full clean-up will take decades more.
My grandfather, Noah Martin, was born in 1879 in Tipton Ford, Mo. A wagon trail led from there directly to Joplin, Mo., the largest town in the vicinity. In the late 1890s, he ended up near Joplin just over the state line in Galena, Kans, which was then a lead and zinc boom town with a Main Street known as "Red Hot Street."
Miners were often paid in silver dollars. Companies came and went and record-keeping was not much of a priority. When he reached retirement age, he could not draw his pension because he either did not have proof of employment and earnings or he was not always supplied with such information. He had to work into his 70s to become eligible, and he went back to the lead mining business.
I imagine he was given some consideration because of his age. He worked graveyards as a derrick "hoisti'man" in his latter years. That's how he pronounced it. It might have been "hoisting man," or hoistingman." The derricks were rickety and seemed ready to topple when the winds blew. It was his job to lower men in a barrel, with the aid of winch and cable, down into the shaft, and to bring the barrel back up when the men filled it. He would then tip the contents of the barrel down a chute. Fortunately, such work in his younger days had left him with a strong grip
On paydays, I would sometimes go with him. I was once treated to a fabulous display of colors. Laid out on the ground, on half-shingle size strips of balsa wood were core samples. The samples, like strips of toothpaste, were of just about every clay color imaginable, but leaning more toward pastels. I had thought there was nothing under the ground except brown dirt. The company geologist was explaining to my grandfather what it all meant. All I could decipher was that it meant work, and a job.
After he finally retired, he would sometimes pull his truck off the road at a pasture between Galena and Joplin. Just over the fence and in some weeds was a rusted piece of machinery with big iron wheels, a relic from his wood cutting days. He said it was a "widder-maker," that some less fortunate he had worked with were killed using such a machine. It was tricky to use and dangerous. He would sit and study its machinations from a distance, the gears, brakes, sprockets and chains. Each time he would come to the same conclusion: It had been a killer machine and a lot of poor boys had been its victims.
Long after the mines played out, the ground around Galena was littered with chunks of lead ore and jack (zinc). Broken chunks of lead were as smooth as glass and shone like a mirror. Now, those chunks are all gone. Lead became valuable enough that townspeople, many too young to even remember the bygone mining days, rounded it all up and sold it.
...
[2/14/2003 11:38:56 PM | Bryce Martin]
SKEWED SOUTHERN MANNERS
by Bryce Martin
Southerners, by most all accounts, have a lock on politeness, reverence to traditional manners, and overall goodwill. You cannot be unaware of all the catch phrases - "southern hospitality," "down-home manners," "southern charm" - and all things genteel.
Arriving in Nashville 10-plus years ago from Bakersfield, California, and judging on my own, I am not entirely convinced. In comparison between the two cities, all manners fly out the window in Nashville when it comes to navigating by car by cart or by foot.
In Bakersfield, Calif., and in all California communities I have spent time in, the pedestrian in a crosswalk is king. Traffic going both ways slows and comes to an orderly stop, with an occasional screeching of tires, and remains stopped for as long as it takes the pedestrian or pedestrians to cross safely. Okay, certain crosswalks are dangerous enough to have their own Website, like the one that warns motorists of local police speed traps. But, in Bakersfield and throughout California, crosswalks have a history. Pedestrians really do have the right of way, and it is a clear and mostly observed law. The idea is purely alien in Nashville.
Crosswalks are identified by painted lanes in California. Their existence is a way of life, as familiar as a line of palm trees. You grow up with the words �PED XING� - painted on the asphalt between the crosswalk lines. The habit is so embedded that you see people in the middle of a sidewalk so reluctant to cross over that they walk to the end for safe passage at the crosswalk.
Minorities, especially, know the rules in California. �You don�t get no money if you get hit outside the lines,� a young black man once told me.
Driving in traffic? Honey, hush. In Bakersfield, the freeway traffic during prime driving times may be humming along bumper to bumper at 70 miles per hour. This creates a �herd effect.� You go with the herd whether you like it or not. Slow down and you may be crumpled; speed up and you may exchange more than paint. You are part of a group, with no room for individualism. As bad as it sounds, it works amazingly well.
In Nashville, there are not as many vehicles during prime driving hours as are moving in Bakersfield, allowing the problem of varied drivers to display their own personalities. Vehicles yo-yo dangerously and create chaotic ebbs and flows in traffic speeds and patterns. Bakersfield traffic moves fast and linear; Nashville traffic does the herky-jerky.
In Bakersfield, if, say, six cars are stopped at a red light and all will continue in a straight line once the light turns green, a pattern will quickly emerge: Once the light turns green, all six cars will soon be going the same speed and with the same distance in between. That is partly due to the habits picked up with the �herd effect,� and more to do to in being considerate of drivers behind them. In Nashville, that sixth car will be lucky to even see a green light, since the drivers of the cars in front show no consideration for the trailing drivers. Some cars in the line will nearly touch and huge gaps will space out the others.
Going shopping is another exercise in bad manners in Nashville. In Bakersfield, large businesses have signs on front doors. You enter on the right and you exit on the right. Inside, you have right aisle traffic and left aisle traffic. It is orderly and pleasantly efficient.
In Nashville, no such signs or traditions exist. If you try to take a cart in the right door, someone is coming out that door, and the other door, too. The aisles are even worse than the entrances and exits when it comes to a balance of order.
Nashvillians, in my estimation, could learn much from those rude and laid-back Californians.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "Cuter than a new speckled pup in a red wagon."
...
SKEWED SOUTHERN MANNERS
by Bryce Martin
Southerners, by most all accounts, have a lock on politeness, reverence to traditional manners, and overall goodwill. You cannot be unaware of all the catch phrases - "southern hospitality," "down-home manners," "southern charm" - and all things genteel.
Arriving in Nashville 10-plus years ago from Bakersfield, California, and judging on my own, I am not entirely convinced. In comparison between the two cities, all manners fly out the window in Nashville when it comes to navigating by car by cart or by foot.
In Bakersfield, Calif., and in all California communities I have spent time in, the pedestrian in a crosswalk is king. Traffic going both ways slows and comes to an orderly stop, with an occasional screeching of tires, and remains stopped for as long as it takes the pedestrian or pedestrians to cross safely. Okay, certain crosswalks are dangerous enough to have their own Website, like the one that warns motorists of local police speed traps. But, in Bakersfield and throughout California, crosswalks have a history. Pedestrians really do have the right of way, and it is a clear and mostly observed law. The idea is purely alien in Nashville.
Crosswalks are identified by painted lanes in California. Their existence is a way of life, as familiar as a line of palm trees. You grow up with the words �PED XING� - painted on the asphalt between the crosswalk lines. The habit is so embedded that you see people in the middle of a sidewalk so reluctant to cross over that they walk to the end for safe passage at the crosswalk.
Minorities, especially, know the rules in California. �You don�t get no money if you get hit outside the lines,� a young black man once told me.
Driving in traffic? Honey, hush. In Bakersfield, the freeway traffic during prime driving times may be humming along bumper to bumper at 70 miles per hour. This creates a �herd effect.� You go with the herd whether you like it or not. Slow down and you may be crumpled; speed up and you may exchange more than paint. You are part of a group, with no room for individualism. As bad as it sounds, it works amazingly well.
In Nashville, there are not as many vehicles during prime driving hours as are moving in Bakersfield, allowing the problem of varied drivers to display their own personalities. Vehicles yo-yo dangerously and create chaotic ebbs and flows in traffic speeds and patterns. Bakersfield traffic moves fast and linear; Nashville traffic does the herky-jerky.
In Bakersfield, if, say, six cars are stopped at a red light and all will continue in a straight line once the light turns green, a pattern will quickly emerge: Once the light turns green, all six cars will soon be going the same speed and with the same distance in between. That is partly due to the habits picked up with the �herd effect,� and more to do to in being considerate of drivers behind them. In Nashville, that sixth car will be lucky to even see a green light, since the drivers of the cars in front show no consideration for the trailing drivers. Some cars in the line will nearly touch and huge gaps will space out the others.
Going shopping is another exercise in bad manners in Nashville. In Bakersfield, large businesses have signs on front doors. You enter on the right and you exit on the right. Inside, you have right aisle traffic and left aisle traffic. It is orderly and pleasantly efficient.
In Nashville, no such signs or traditions exist. If you try to take a cart in the right door, someone is coming out that door, and the other door, too. The aisles are even worse than the entrances and exits when it comes to a balance of order.
Nashvillians, in my estimation, could learn much from those rude and laid-back Californians.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "Cuter than a new speckled pup in a red wagon."
...
Thursday, February 13, 2003
WIRED FOR SOUND
by Bryce Martin
Our insightful media recently reported the great breakthrough when Iraq agreed to let U.N. inspectors interview a Baghdad scientist without a minder present, and, even better, at a location chosen by the inspectors. Hot diggety. We should be able to get a lot of useful info from this whistle blower, huh? It is a totally useless exercise. Saddam would have briefed the scientist on what not to say, threatened him and his family, and fitted him with a wire to monitor his every word. Although this would seem an obvious outcome of such a meeting, nobody in the media has made such a mention. The talking heads miss on another one. They're too busy asking the tough questions to Al Sharpton, as if someone who pronounces "asked" as "axed" could share any illuminating thoughts, and bowing to Bill Clinton as he spouts his revisionist history.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "Quicker than a minnow can swim a dipper."
...
by Bryce Martin
Our insightful media recently reported the great breakthrough when Iraq agreed to let U.N. inspectors interview a Baghdad scientist without a minder present, and, even better, at a location chosen by the inspectors. Hot diggety. We should be able to get a lot of useful info from this whistle blower, huh? It is a totally useless exercise. Saddam would have briefed the scientist on what not to say, threatened him and his family, and fitted him with a wire to monitor his every word. Although this would seem an obvious outcome of such a meeting, nobody in the media has made such a mention. The talking heads miss on another one. They're too busy asking the tough questions to Al Sharpton, as if someone who pronounces "asked" as "axed" could share any illuminating thoughts, and bowing to Bill Clinton as he spouts his revisionist history.
TODAY'S FOLKSY EXPRESSION OVERHEARD: "Quicker than a minnow can swim a dipper."
...