Once I figured out Business was the wrong college (Southeast Missouri State University) major, I got a small part in The Taming of the Shrew (December 1968). They offered me a tiny scholarship (and the chance to keep my draft deferment) and I jumped at it. Other productions that year included: The Subject Was Roses, Summer Tree, Camelot, Slow Dance on a Killing Ground and Blithe Spirit.
I begged the photographer (one of those retro places you see at tourist traps) to let me be a rugged fence-mendin’, doggie-punchin’ cowboy but he insisted I didn’t have the face for it. Said I was more of the Brett Maverick type. Sigh.
Buddy died in his sleep last night. Heart related, I assume. From his page on The Basement Diaries:
Buddy (did we call him Shive?) always seemed more grown-up than everyone else. Sure, confident, directed. Buddy helped me get my first job in high school (at Liberty Supermarket). While the rest of us were farting away our lives during the Basement years, Buddy was building a career. He played with us but I always felt like it was the way an adult plays with a child. Another very good poker player. Here’s his first entry in The Basement Diaries:
“I remember when we first started playing poker it was for real money and for some pretty big money (for the time, at least) and then the markers started, and got worse and worse (for some reason I blame Larry Miller for starting the markers) and after a while, every time you lost some money, you dug into your wallet and picked out an appropriate IOU and used it like money. I remember once piling up all my IOU notes out of my wallet and having 50 or 60 IOU’s totaling more than two hundred dollars! Occasionally (not often) we declared an “actual cash” game and didn’t allow the IOU’s. Someone discovered that whenever Mullen was bluffing, he’d say “up a buck,” and when he had it, he’d say “up a dollar”. He lost lots of IOU’s before we told him.
What history can be complete without mention of THE BROWN DERBY. I’m talking about the original Derby across the street from the Cotton Bowl Hotel. It was run by an old man named Kirk who made a great bowl of stew and grilled delicious hamburgers. Kirk had a cute little trick where he pretended to flatten the burger patty by squeezing it in his armpit. I’ll bet no one knows his last name or what ever happened to him.
Mullen was the best at snooker… Miller was a wannabe. The best shooters at the Brown Derby were “Sudsy” Southern and Steve Reagan’s older, left-handed, red-headed brother, shooting those $5 games of nine-ball on the back table.”
Buddy correctly points out that most of the early poker games and snooker/ nine-ball games at the Brown Derby took place while we were still in high school and predate The Basement Years. These events are, however, very much in the spirit of the The Basement Diaries.
As I reached the intersection of Madison and High Streets yesterday, I saw — and heard — them. Maybe two dozen young men and women, all college age. And all black. They were striding purposefully down the street, led by a young man with a bullhorn, leading the group in now familiar chants (“Hands up! Don’t shoot!” “No justice, no peace!”).
They were students at Lincoln University and obviously headed to a rally at the state capitol a block a way. As they passed I asked one young man if it would be okay for me to walk along with them and he handed me a small cardboard sign, printed with the hashtag #BLACKLIVESMATTER.
As we moved on to the capitol grounds we could see other groups on the steps and a few organizers in orange vests directed us toward the doors leading into the capitol rotunda. Folding chairs were set up on the floor and lots of folks stood on the staircase leading up to the second floor. Others looked down from the floors above. A few white faces. Not many. Mostly young, a few older.
I saw police officers directing traffic. Missouri Highway Patrol officers at some of the entrances to the capitol and what I assumed were members of the capitol police force in the rotunda area. But they were dressed as police officers. No riot gear. And the ones I saw seemed intent on keeping a low profile. They didn’t appear to be expecting trouble.
A young woman standing next to me had a sign showing news images of black men who had been killed by police officers. Her sign was affixed to a small, child size, wooden baseball bat. She was using it to hold her sign. An officer came up and quietly —and politely— explained to her that the bat wasn’t allowed inside the capitol because it could be used as a weapon. She nodded and the officer went away and came back a minute later with a pair of scissors the young woman used to remove her sign from the bat. The officer pointed toward one of the doors where she could retrieve the bat when she left. And she simply held her sign up with both hands for the rest of the event. A simple thing that could have been fucked up… but wasn’t.
I sensed some tension between the older people in attendance, represented by the NAACP, and a group of younger protestors who had been on the streets in Ferguson when things got ugly. Those who spoke expressed frustration, anger, sadness. I wasn’t expecting any “I have a dream” rhetoric but I found myself wondering if this movement would have a Dr. King. Or a Malcolm X, or Stokely Carmichael.
Following the event I struck up a conversation with an older (my age) gentleman and mentioned Dr. King. He looked me in the eye and quietly said, “Martin Luther King is dead.”
As I thought about that later it dawned on me that Dr. King and the civil right movement are historical events for young black people. Like slavery or the Civil War. Important, but a long time ago. And I had the clear sense the NAACP has lost most of its relevance.
I tried to listen to the speakers but the sound system and the acoustics were awful. So I read the signs people were holding. “No justice, no peace!” “This is what democracy looks like.” “Hands up, don’t shoot!” “#BLACKLIVESMATTER.”
They do.
I burned fifteen years worth of Day-Timers today, the culmination of a months long project. I went through each day from 1984 to 1999, creating a corresponding entry in my Google Calendar. By ’99 I had started keeping notes in Act! (now on a rusting hard drive in some landfill).
I considered shredding these but the wire binder made that impractical. So I put them in a wash tub, soaked them in gasoline and burned them.
In addition to being a long, tedious (and pointless?) task, I found it a bit stressful. The pages were filled with more unpleasant memories than I would have imagined. Don’t get me wrong. I worked for a great company, with some really wonderful people. But, in retrospect, I wasn’t having as much fun as I always though I had. Does that many any sense at all?
Flipping through those old pages brought back some physical sensations. A little stomach clinch over some bad news… tightness in the neck muscles as some unpleasantness unfolded. I was glad to get through the final month. And the burning ritual seemed therapeutic.
November 21, 1994: $49.95 for software; $19.95/mo (7 hours free; $3.00 per hour after that). 9600 baud/14400. And I was thrilled to get it.
A couple of months later I was offered — and accepted — a new job in a different city. For the record, I view astrology as nonsense. A bit like fortune cookies.
In 1966 I got the part of Professor Harold Hill in our high school spring musical. This song was supposed to be sung in two-part harmony with Marion the Librarian (who also happened to be my girl friend). I couldn’t do the harmony so they cut my part and I stood on the little foot bridge while she did a solo. I still can’t sing harmony.
Wikipedia: “Till There Was You” is a song written by Meredith Willson for his 1957 musical play The Music Man, and which also appeared in the 1962 movie version. The song is sung by librarian Marian Paroo (Barbara Cook on Broadway, Shirley Jones in the film) to Professor Harold Hill (portrayed by Robert Preston) toward the end of Act Two.
Barb cleaned out her office today. She started practicing law in August, 1990 and retires June 30. Sort of. (She’ll be on some national board for a couple of years). Next week it’s off to NYC for some conference but come July 1 she’s a woman of leisure. These photos of her desk tell the (a) story.
