Sunday mornings

Walking down.

The hill hidden behind the houses that dot my street is a long slope. A drop. No chiggers sticking to my socks or Converse shoes as the grass is refreshed, newly mowed by the Jett, Kan. school district's finest from its parks department. This is the big drop into life, facing behind the middle school and towards Colorado.

Forgot my watch. Look at Maria's Android phone. (My iphone is back home on the charger.) Time -- 5:47 a.m. Temp. 73 degrees. Hummingbirds are chirping -- you hear them out here, all over the trees in the neighbors' backyards -- and a vocal family of pigeons have roosted clandestinely in our gutters at home. During the nice occasions when it snows here in winter and school gets called off on account of "Snow Day," you'll see families - each individual waiting his or her turn to swoosh down the white fluffy hills in a sled.

Below, past the soccer field and goal posts, there's the old soccer field, boxed inside a frame of white peeling paint. The orange sign, "Keep Out" looks you in the face. From there, I wander into neighborhoods. A garage door is open, a group of guys are sitting at a table underneath a lightbulb and tool racks, laughing and joking. Smoke traveling like Hunkpapa signals.

A young dark-haired woman stands in her driveway behind a Suburban. She's wearing a black sleveless top, a white skirt with a palm tree design and neon prints of exotic florals, left arm tucked under the right elbow bent upward, a cigarette between the two main fingers of her hand.

I gotta ask about those guys.

"They havin' a poker game?" I ask her.

"Beer pong," she says, affably.

"Man," I say. "They been goin' at it all night?"

"Pretty much. I just got back from work."

(smile) "Pretty cool. Well, have a nice day," I say, waving my hand, walking away.

"You too."

What's the story, morning glory

My grandpa Mac would always be up early like this. I'd rise early as well, catch him on the back porch, looking at morning glories and vines twisting around the lattice wall. He liked talking about that stuff. Old man would be facing true north, looking ahead, across the street at Kober Brothers Supermarket. A few years earlier, in the early '70s, it was a grassy field. My sister, Angie, and I would run around there with our uncle Ted, flying a kite.

For Grandpa, the greatest year ever was 1929. Sure it was the year the stock market crashed, and he and Grandma would go on and on about how horrible the depression was. But for Grandpa, something good happened that trumped all that.

His 17-year-old bride was on a hospital bed. The doctor said "she had once chance in a million of living through the night." I could picture him in my mind, outside pacing like he said he did, unable to sleep at all. Now I wonder why he didn't just stay in her hospital room, but maybe they didn't let them do that, then.

"I prayed for probably the first time in my life," Grandpa said. "I went to her room the next morning. She was sitting up in bed and asked, 'What are you doing here?'"

He told the story so much that for me it was relegated to the ramblings of an old man. Happened to people a long time ago. Had nothing to do with my life, but Grandma was alive, right? Frying chicken on a gas stove and setting a karafe percolating on one of the burners.

I would go to church with the grandparents on those weekends I stayed all night there, which was frequently. The Bible Baptist Church, a red brick building at the corner of State and Seventh streets, next to the full-service Texaco station, rivaled the Methodists for the status of biggest church in town. This bigness opened up a world for me.

What were Grandma and Grandpa learning in their old people Sunday school classes? Adults, my parents' ages, in their classes? Teenagers? Had to be sophisticated, deeper than what I was learning, but I'd get there.

It was fun. The piano. Singing songs like "Come Into My Heart, Lord Jesus" and "How Great Thou Art," which was accompanied by beautiful pictures of sunsets and thunderstorms. Before Sunday School, Grandma always handed my sister and I, dollar bills, which we'd throw in the basket when the offering came around.

On your birthday, you could pick prizes from a basket. Stuff like a pack of bubble gum, picture of Jesus, a Swiss Army knife. Mrs. Lowery, the woman leading Sunday school, would talk to us about our "mommies and daddies." I'd get so pissed off, thinking, "I'm not a little kid! I call them Mom and Dad!"

After a few songs and a lesson from Mrs. Lowery, we would split into the little classrooms for first, second and third-grade. I remember in second-grade, our teacher was an 18-year-old woman, just out of highschool. Eighteen, might as well had been 28 to me. I remember her name was Sandy like Sandy Duncan, the Broadway actress who appeared in a bunch of TV variety shows in the 1970s. (I was always amazed how this woman could pass for a 12-year-old boy, playing Peter Pan in some television production.)

Seemed like old people style, cornball entertainment was always on at the grandparents house. (Grandma and Grandpa Guy even watched Lawrence Welk.) On Saturday nights, it was always The Carol Burnett Show. They were so cool. Weren't like the hillarious, yet tragically hip young pot smoking Not Ready For Primetime Players on Saturday Night. When Tim Conway and Harvey Korman would start laughing, breaking character in the middle of one of their skits, it was refreshing.

The bad thing was the question-and-answer session at the start of the Carol Burnett show. Someone in the audience was always asking her to do that stupid Tarzan yell.

So one morning, we're in the Sunday school classroom with Sandy. It's a free-for-all. Kids are all over the place, bouncing, loud-mouthed. Just obnoxious little shit-asses. Can't speak for the other kids, but I remember exactly what I was doing that day. Mrs. Lowery comes in, dresses us down and says, "And who's doing the (she pantomines chest pounding, makes a yelping sound.) Tarzan yell."

"Jeff!" Every kid in the class points at me.

I don't remember what I was doing the night before, but I bet you a million dollars, I'd seen it the night before on The Carol Burnett Show.

July 5, 1954

My favorite line in this song is: "Son, that gal you're foolin' with, she ain't no good for you."

The story is that on that hot July 5th day in 1954, the chords just struck up from osmosis while they were sitting in the break room, drinking from bottles of Coca-Cola. Rhythm guitar strumming, bass slappin', jumpin' around. You know the story.

A more obscure figure in rockabilly history, Charlie Feathers, said he arranged the session with Elvis, Scotty and Bill. With all we know, what exactly do we really know? Who's to say, but we need our mythologies, don't we? Our stories?

Feathers, who spent his childhood around Holly Springs, Miss., was embarrassed for the rest of his life about having to leave school in the third grade. (He went on to work in oil fields all over Illinois and Texas.) But hell, he co-wrote "I Forgot to Remember to Forget" for Elvis and the Blue Moon Boys, didn't he? Song spent five weeks at #1 on the Billboard C&W Most Played in Juke Boxes chart.

Old Charlie Feathers

It's a standard known fact that Feathers was like a Greek god to punk and soul rockers like Johnny Thunders, Roky Erikson, The Cramps, The Gun Club and the city's own Alex Chilton. ("If he died in Memphis, that'd be cool.")

So anyhow, the opening shot in this video of young Elvis was


Elvis Presley 1939

 taken in front of the house he'd bought for his mama and daddy on Memphis's Audobon Drive. (It's tough to find a Presley video on YouTube that's not cheesy. This one's not perfect, but it's miles above most.) A white bred neighborhood much more Leave it to Beaver than feudal, farmland mansion. It was Big Time, baby, from a Big Town. He was literally thanking God his family was out of Lauderdale Courts at the north end of downtown Memphis.

Bought the place with some royalties from Sun Records. It's how he paid for the pink cadillac, flashy clothes and Harley Davidson motorcycle.

Well it's Memphis, right? W.C. Handy. Beale Street. Sleepy John Estes. Memphis Minnie. Rufus Thomas. Howlin' Wolf. Sam Phillips. Ike Turner. The Stamps Quartet. B.B. King. Junior Parker. Johnny Cash. Carl Perkins. Jerry Lee Lewis and his pumpin' piano. Barbara Pittman. Billy Lee Riley. Warren Smith. Sonny Burgess. Little Milton. Carla Thomas. The Mar-Keys. Donald "Duck" Dunn. Booker T. and the MGs. Steve Cropper. (Didn't my friends from Moreland Arbuckle work with him?) Jim Stewart. Estelle Axton. Otis Redding. Wilson Pickett. Isaac Hayes. Chips Moman. The Staple Singers. Al Green. Albert King. The Box Tops. The Isley Brothers. Big Star...

Moreland Arbuckle with Steve Cropper. I guess they're in Italy or Holland now. That'd be cool.

Love light. Chuck Berry immortalized the town in his blues-rockabilly tune about standing in a phone booth, calling long distance information to get in touch with a girl he'd lost because her mom didn't agree. In the ending poignant twist, we learn the girl, Marie, is his six-year-old daughter and the mom who didn't agree is his estranged wife.

Dylan.

Oh mama, can this really be the end? To be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again

Years ago, Chuck D said Elvis was "straight up racist." But that's bullshit and he now knows it. In 1956, the African-American newspaper, The Memphis World reported that Elvis Presley defied local segregation laws by showing up at the Memphis Fairgrounds amusement park “during what is designated as ‘colored night.’” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/opinion/11guralnick.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Was he really conspiring with Richard Nixon to kick John Lennon out of the U.S.? Hell no. The man just wanted his FBI badge and he was going to say what he had to, to get it. If he had to go knocking the Beatles and Jane Fonda, oh well. Personally, I wouldn't do it, but that's me.

Private Presley (he'd been promoted to the rank of sergeant when he left) considered it his patriotic duty to serve his country in uniform. He'd go on to sing patriotic hymns from the Vegas stage. But he was also buddies with Muhammad Ali, who had converted to Islam, loved the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and refused to be inducted into the armed forces, saying “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.”

In the '70s, Elvis presented Ali with a white robe bearing the words "People’s Champion." Unfortunately when Ali wore it for the Ken Norton fight he lost. Never wore it again, but that's life.

The Civil Rights significance to our mythical heroes cannot be separated, nor cast asunder. When the Beatles covered Smokey Robinson and the Rolling Stones covered Solomon Burke, that was Civil Rights.

And no, it was not these white artists' fault that they amassed all the glory and fame on the backs of black music. They were musicians, not accountants. They were artists, and they did their jobs as artists, deriving from the influences that gave birth to their giftedness. It's the fault of a greedy, exploitative industry and an apathetic, mediocrity loving public if these unsung and beautiful black artist's arent' given their due. If the word rejects the "king of rock and soul" -- Solomon Burke, it's the world's loss, not his. Don't blame it on Elvis and the Beatles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxBs_vgW95U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5ukRkaUbMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDtCOvAEpUM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVPS0ETuUYE

The Civil Rights Movement that started a long time ago with Moses leading the Israelites through a clearing of the wilderness and about the wilderness toward a long, painful journey home. When Chuck Berry wrote about a man "bound for third, he was headin' for home," it was a veiled reference to Jackie Robinson. What I said about Moses and 40 years in the wilderness -- it reminds me of this line:

I saw a woman walking across the sand
She been a-walkin' thirty miles en route to Bombay.
To get a brown eyed handsome man

So many anniversaries lately. Don't even go there with me about how I have not yet written columns commemorating the Battle of Gettysburg or D-Day. I eat lunch with World War II veterans -- average age 88 and up -- every chance I get.

That's all part of the story, the myths, legends and heroes. The sons and grandsons of Ellis Island immigrants. The American Indians leaving alcoholism and the reservations for the U.S. Military and earth's skies. Japanese-Americans leaving California to fight Hitler's tyranny in Germany, relatives left behind in humiliating sardine camps.

They came back and claimed America for their own, didn't they? And they gave everything -- their muscle, intellect, paintings, music, wages, work hours at factories, in universities...their lives. Sports, music, the arts, are indispensable to the story. It's so much more than mythology.

Go cat. Come on, get rhythm.

Sprightly with the spirit

Old Wichita newspaper office and print store.

(for Kenzie)

She was a doll.

More so than the most treasured beauty dotting a Victorian girl's toy shelf, that precious figure, miniature dress of the finest, soft cloth, eyes of glass and with a deep blue gaping that would draw your moral soul into a sea of life that never ends. Eyes that, like the most delicate of hands, would clasp time for you, keeping it still and in safe-keeping. Such a figure, possibly from the farthest seas of the orient -- a little monument of wood, metal, paper and china, never able to match ---

"So what do you think, Little Girl? Wanna go inside the schoolhouse?" I asked my daughter, Gabby.

My daughter always loves going inside the old school building at Wichita's Old Cowtown Museum. She loves sitting behind the oak desk in center stage before a blackboard filled with white chalked representations of the alphabet, set in the most self-assured calligraphy of the Victorian Age. On the board, there is arithmetic and at the tip-top, sterling portraits of the presidents from George Washington through Rutherford B. Hays.

Bonnet falling over her eyes as she leaps sprightly from her chair, she grabs a McGuffey's reader and talks to the empty bleachers, pretending rows of 1870s children are seated in them, slates in their laps.

Gabby loves playing teacher, loves pulling the chord that rings the school bell and signals class to be in session. That's what she loves -- the play.

I want to make sure she likes it here. After all, her brother, Max, didn't want to come. Doesn't like dressing up. Not like at Halloween when you get candy for doing it. But Gabby's all for it. She and I sampled clothes in the Old Cowtown Museum wardrobe, searching for the right look and the right fit, which is sometimes elusive.

"I can hem this up at home tonight," my friend Jacky says, standing with a strip of measuring tape over Gabby's slight frame. You gotta appreciate Jacky and all she does for that place. She's really the face of the museum.

Jacky assures me that Gabby's dress will be ready for the 4th of July 1876 centennial-style celebration Saturday. That morning, I will lace up and tie in double knots the strings going up the long black boots she will wear over black stockings. I'll be in my bowler hat, suspenders and with my vest completely fastened as men of a more flowery era would never bare their cotton shirts before the public.

And there we were. On a Saturday. Just leaving the school, walking past the old Presbyterian Church --  Wichita's first real house of worship -- almost next to the tire swing and across the dirt street from the Munger House, the first permanent settlement on the land that would become Wichita.

They came-a-beatin' and stompin' with the vibrant kick of righteous indignation. A group of fine Christian woman clothed respectfully from their necks to their ankles called to the masses and marched onward, led by a pious man wearing a frock coat and tall black hat, King James Bible clutched like a cast iron hook.

"We gotta go, Gabby," I tell my girl. "They're having a temperance rally. They're gonna talk about how bad alcohol is, how it's from the devil and all. It'll be funny."

Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,
Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve...

Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,
"C'mon Gabby, I say. They're singing and crap, this rocks, little girl, we gotta join 'em," I tell her and she eagerly takes my hand.

An 1870s baseball player, a member of the Wichita Red Stockings, stands in the wings. He's wearing a flat hat, the brim wide enough to shield away the hot, pastoral sun, a red long-sleeved shirt, grey knee-length breeches and long red stockings.

"Well, most baseball players were lushes, but I'm game," he says and joins the ever increasing rag-tag of marchers.

Gabby and I tag along, walking long, veering around the corner past the hotel, blacksmith shop, Fritz Snitzler's Saloon and Turnverein Hall toward the train depot and a platform, from which the esteemed clergyman delivers his discourse, flanked by the town's leading dignitaries and U.S. flags with 38 stars representing every darn state in the union.

"Beloved, we gather before you, knocking at your door today, in proclamation of our blessed king and savior, the Lord Jesus Christ," he exclaims, voice booming in the outside air, traveling with the audacity of a modern telegraph.

"My friends, we beseech you this day within the ancient, mystic chords of the spirit, arms wide open and with a love as natural as that love, with which Christ loved his Bride, the Church."

Amens abound from the women. Silk handkerchiefs wipe the sweat from their unmade faces. The man leans in, an accusatory finger calling down evil like Christ over Satan at the end of a fast.

"But today, evil is upon us!" he exclaims. "Evil! An inexorable growth infesting the soul of our nation! Invisible spirit forces, upon which we have a wrestling of the flesh, have corrupted our farms, towns, cities. Demonic stimulants have entered the body and stolen the farmer from his plow, the mechanic from his industry, the banker from his till and -- beloved -- the husband, father and spiritual head of his brood from the family."

We're laughing, Gabby and me. At the hyperbole, the comic herky-jerkiness of the preacher's flailing arms, the 19th century patois.

"The fruitage of the spirit that Paul talked of in his epistle to the church of Galatia, the fruitage -- love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, faithfulness, meekness -- Temperance -- has been usurped by the vineyards and barley and hops and the distilleries of demonism.

"A brood of vipers has taken over this generation and our nation might not survive till tomorrow if it is not snuffed to the ground like dust. We must eradicate the artificial stimulants, the evil liquid spirits that put out the sunshine of life -- we must cast them like serpents from the land. We must close the doors forever of the tavern, the beer hall and the winehouse. We must pour fourth all beer, all wine, all whiskey into the rivers that will wash our nation clean and reclaim our moral souls before the blessed kingship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

Then they all get off stage, singing, "Shall We Gather at the River?"

The passers-by are laughing in the sunshine. I've met all kinds of people here. From all over the USA, Europe, Asia and Africa too. I was in the carpenter shop when a fellow told me he was from Seattle. Home of the sonic boom and grunge rock, too. Jimi Hendrix, who performed the National Anthem at Woodstock.

"Yeah, I knew his dad a little bit," the guy said. "He passed away not too long ago."

Wow!

I can generally tell what states they're from by the accents. Although I'm not as good as my dad, who's better than Click and Clack from "Car Talk." Raised in the most bucolic of Kansas farm settings, and after two years in the Army, he can tell you what town in New Jersey someone is from.

Yup. The fellow in the khaki shorts and Indiana Jones hat is from Minnesota. "I'm Lutheran," he says. "We only drink alcohol on days that end in y."

"A Minnesota Lutheran?" I say. "Just like the Lutherans in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon."

"Ohhh, those are Norwegian Lutherans," he says. "We're the German Lutherans."

Me and Gabby at Jimie's Diner, Wichita, Kan.

Back in the break room, Gabby and I return to our street clothes and the 21st century.

I pass by Denyse, who played one of the Christian Temperance women flanking the pastor. She's back in her black Nirvana T-shirt and jean shorts, grabbing a Marlboro from the pack kept tight in her purse. I've known Denyse since my first year of college. She and I and others in our circle used to hang out under the stars of her hometown in Rushing Waters, Kan., smoke, have a few beers and talk about life.

Then I see Jacky, who makes small talk with Gabby, and looks up to tell me the girl is like her own daughter. I thank her for being so good to my girl.

"She's a cutie," Jacky says.

"She's a drama queen," I say. "Superdiva, that's what I call her."

But Gabby really loved being here, dressing up like a little girl from another place and time. "It's like being in a movie," she said.

Jacky tells her that from time to time movies get filmed at Old Cowtown and perhaps someday she can be an extra.

"Maybe someday, Little Girl," I tell her. "Maybe someday."

                                          "Stars and Stripes Forever."

4th of July

         Turn that sky into a birthday cake, baby. Have a happy 4th of July. And be careful.

Uneasy communication

A lot of things rolling down the pike, but probably no more than usual. It's always a challenge, keeping up with news events and giving them the attention I feel they deserve in this blog. Supreme Court delivers historic rulings on DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) and Prop 8. I was happy, especially after feeling apprehensive, following the insane ruling they'd leveled a day earlier on the Voting Rights Act.

Nelson Mandella's on his deathbed. There's stuff I've been trying to write about him, but there may not be enough time while he's still for this world. The cord has been severed.

Paranoia strikes deep. The IRS, under Obama's watch, was exerting undue pressure on progressive as well as conservative groups. This news goes full circle to where the Big Brother stuff started when the news was nothing but the IRS putting it stiffly to the Tea Party. Then it was Obama's attorney general Eric Holder and the seizure of AP reporters phone records. First and Fourth Amendments jeopardized. When government, the military or business starts strongarming the press, it's (as I've been telling you since the '90s) hitting me where I live.

Bradley Manning. Edward Snowden. Julian Assange.

I wanna have a party for the '70s. Bring back the ditchweed and freshly freed sex. Paranoia like Tricky Dick eating laced brownies at an ABM sumit with Leonid. Sesame Street and America for all of us. Daniel Ellsberg facing the rest of his life in the Big House.

do you remember...your president nixon?

"So you gonna wave a rainbow flag?" Paul asks every new customer at the bar. TV's above the jukebox. Turned on to MSNBC. Occasionally, I look up from my laptop and share some intellectual exchange with Kal. He's been coming here for years, probably longer than he's worked in the antrhopology department of Wichita State University.

I never felt pressure, nor a compulsion to announce to anybody: "I like pussy."

People just let you be what you wanna be here anyway. This is good because there's so damn much pressure.

What's the stupid blog going to do? Put my wife and kids into the poorhouse? You're ruining my life, here. Brother calls up. "You're always in a bad mood after he calls," Maria tells me. Can I watch Mom? Can you? My daughter has a game in Briarwood (big ol' southern suburb of Wichita). My son has a Boy Scout campout. "I'm about ready to put her in a home," I almost say of Mom, but figure, not now. Not now. Let's just get all this shit over with.

I tell my friend Lele that a college student wants to interview me about my blog and use of social media. Don't think I'm the best person to talk to on the subject, but not telling her that. Maybe it'll help bring in some traffic.

"Your blog doesn't have a niche," Lele tells me.

"You don't promote it enough," Jackson tells me by secret untapped phone from far away in Wyoming.

I know I need to write something comprehensive about the civil liberties threats from within the House of Obama. With work and kids and Mom and stuff, there hasn't been time to sit at the computer and gather facts like a reporter.

"If it happened under a Republican president, you would've written something the first day," Lele tells me.

She had to go there, but I concede it's a fair assessment. Hope it's not true.

Fingertips slappin' keys. (Pause) Posting resumes for jobs. Admissions counselor at a small Methodist college. A similar position at a Quaker college. Security guards. They're always hiring for security guards. I hear the ol' guy, a retired detective, likes to help people. Farmhand, rock n' roll band, Target sales team.

Three instructors from the local community college

(home base in Skelly, nearby in Brewster County).  Someone says she doesn't have her master's.

"A good buddy of mine teaches English there and doesn't have his master's," I say.

"For certain things you can get by with that," the gal with tatoos tells me and adds something about needing to have 18 extra credit hours in the area beyond your bachelor's.

I get ideas, but not too many.

I talk to Kal about about how much I loved working in the pasture all morning when I did that. Cleaning up all the horseshit. By myself with only my thoughts and the sky. I'd slip my
Staples notepad from my pocket and jot down a few ideas, clean more horse manure.

"That's a lot of shit, Jeff," the man tells me.

Soprano Street

The first TV shows I ever remember watching? Mister Rogers Neighborhood, Gilligan's Island, Major Astro, Sesame Street...

There were always celebrities on Sesame Street when I was a little boy. People like Johnny Cash, Flip Wilson and "Broadway Joe" Nammath and Carol Channing stopped by the neighborhood. They bantered with Oscar the Grouch, had chats about the letter of the day with Big Bird and performed musical numbers with the Count. A number, say seven, might pop up before a background that looked like a gothic Romanian castle in the Carpathian Mountains.

A generation of little people like myself sat on shrug carpets, perched in front of four-legged Zenith box television sets and drinking Tang, taking our Flintstones vitamins and learning our alphabet and numbers. Why could I count to 20 at 3-years-old? I'd been with the gang, sweepin' up clouds away.

Little boys and girls born just after the Baby Boom -- 20 years later when the media would label us "Generation X" and we might be sitting in college classrooms, singing all the words verbatim to Schoolhouse Rock songs, naming the Brady Bunch kids in reverse order and many would be listening to Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

But those adults interacting with Jim Henson's muppets on Sesame Street? We didn't know they were celebrities -- Big Names.

Around 30 years after I'd watched Sesame Street, my boy, Max was watching. Of course the show jumped the shark 20 years ago, the best mini-films and skits back in a time capsule the size of a bank vault and everything went downhill after that annoying Elmo came along. But it was still Sesame Street, still teaching kids things like numbers, letters and how to be kind and share our toys.


Buzz Aldrin with Cookie Monster comparing the shape of the moon to a cookie.



Christopher Meloni was among the children and muppets, wearing a coat that was Columbo-like except for the long, tall length. He was self-parodying, a detective just as tough as a 3-year-old would imagine.

Dang, this guy's on Law and Order: SVU, you know...The SEX CRIMES unit! Iced-T has been on the street too, right there with the apartment buildings, sidewalks and Mr. Hooper's Store. Man, who else has been there? Jay Z and Dirty Ol' Bastard?

James Gandolfini (gonna miss that guy) was there, talking sensitively to a little Muppet in a white dress about feeling scared. At the end, there's a veiled parody of his Tony Soprano role as he ducks -- scared of the celery and all vegetables coming at him like flying felt pellets. A little something for the parents watching with their children.

The talented actors, actresses, singers and musicians making guest appearances on Sesame Street over the years have included people who have made dark, gritty films, sometimes portraying lethal violence and promiscuous sex. They have written songs addressing adult problems -- in the bedroom and every other room and outside space where the ways of the world finds us.

I bet these artists -- many of whom are compassionate, contemplative people -- would be among the first to champion the care and nurturing of children that will help ignite their creative energies. With all the phony talk in society about "family values," these artists -- straight, gay or whatever -- will be among the most vocal about preserving childhood for our kids and not rushing them into adulthood before they're ready.

Naturally, celebrities would relish the opportunity to be on Sesame Street. Artists continue in life to keep activated the creative spark we're all born with, yet have quashed before we're out of T-ball. They continue to prune and season the creative sparks within their brain synapses. They engage the culture, holding a mirror to society and prompting reflection of the most probing questions of our times. In other words, they spark critical thinking.

It's like my son's pre-school teacher, Mrs. Costello, said: "He's gonna need that in life."

Artists tend to promote higher order thinking skills. I knew Edie Falco as the host of PBS's Independent Lens before I'd ever seen The Sopranos.

But it's artists of all stripes. An actress who did a nude scene? Sure, but also Taylor Swift. Richard Pryor? Yes, but Bill Cosby also guested on Sesame Street. Tony Danza, too.

Diversity is a hallmark of public broadcasting, like it is of America. Michele Obama appeared on Sesame Street, showing kids how to plant vegetables. But Laura Bush has been there too, reading to children from Wubba Wubba Woo by Christine Ferraro and Mike Pantuso.

I was surprised to hear that Bill O'Reilly has appeared on Sesame Street. I still don't like the guy, but I have a smidgen of respect that wasn't there before.

There's a part of me that's always been skeptical of that axiom: "Prejudice isn't innate. It's a learned behavior." It seems I was aware of color differences from quite a tender age, but when I really take my memory back -- at 3 or 4-years-old (and yes, I do have some memory of it), I didn't think anything of the white, Hispanic, black and Asian American kids romping past urban parks and rural farms to where the air is sweet.

I actually think I did pick up prejudice, or at least knowledge of prejudice, from adults. Social stratifications are humanly erected walls, not intrinsic human responses.

As a guy trying to make his way, struggling to make sense of the crap society throws at us, I've had to confront my own prejudices. As someone who likes to write junk on a blog, a newspaper and whatnot, I don't think I can afford to harbor prejudice. I have to draw back within the recesses of my life and subconscious to revive the creative gene present in early childhood  ----

in bedrooms, backyards, sandboxes, Sunday school classrooms, before educational television.

If I'm accepting of people of different national origins, religions, sexual orientations, political beliefs and philosophies, that's not me -- that's Mister Rogers. I decided I would tell my kids exactly what Mister Rogers told my generation of kids: There's nobody else like you in this whole world and you're special just for being you.

One day when my son was 3, he was singing: "You'll have things you'll want to talk about" ---

"I will too," I sang, finishing the line.

"You know that song," he asked.

"Of course I know that song."

'blue moon in your eye'

 

 

I had just flipped to fakebook when I saw it -- headline splashed over the Chicago Tribune like a gangland shooting. (Recently, I had "liked" the Tribune's page so I could get through and tell 'em, "Do not ever, Ever sell out to the Evil Koch Brothers and may you burn in hell if you ever betray your friends.")

 

Actor James Gandolfini, dead at 51. Suspected heart attack.

 

I was so sad. Too many people dying. Trouble in life, I've seen...always.

 

A few weeks earlier, the same day one my best reporter friends became a first-time grandma, it came over the wire that Jean Stapleton, who played "dingbat" to Archie Bunker on the groundbreaking All in the Family had died. That half-hour Norman Lear created comedy, derived from a sitcom on the British telly, changed the game forever.

 

So did The Sopranos.

 

Tony Soprano was, I think, the first morally ambiguous character in television history. Here was a man conflicted between his innate conscience and a criminal life that had been his birth right from the moment he popped from the babyhole. Born of Italian-American stock, he was mob enforcer of a New Jersey crime family.

 

A little boy watching his capo father -- Johnny Boy Soprano -- slice off the fingers of a guy when he couldn't pay his debts. A mother, Livia, who never exactly told Uncle June -- Corrado Soprano, Jr. --- to bump off her only son in order to control the crime family, yet left no doubt.

 

Think this guy had issues? Oh yeah. His pop and uncle June would use his big sister Janice as lookout when they pulled a job at an amusement park or street deli. She was his father's favorite child, right?

 

Trying to control his Mafia Family was nothing compared trying to keep his suburban clan intact. Materialistic, self-absorbed, narcissistic, manipulating, they were ----

 

us.

 

I was driving to work one morning. Trouble at home. Trouble on the job. People talking in the hallways. Secretly plotting? How secure was my job? My family's home? Cell phone rings. Name on the screen: "Maria." ---- "Shit." A blow-up argument 'cuz I don't take out the garbage enough and it's just the way I was raised and no communication. (It happens to all couples at one time or another.) "You're breakin' my balls, here." Yelling and cussing. Connection lost.

 

I feel like Tony Soprano

 

Automatically, inadvertently, the thought shot into my head. And I realized that David Chase and the other writers of the Sopranos, James Gandolfini and the other actors were holding a mirror to America at this fin de siecle and here we were. A microcosm.

 

Tony Soprano was just another American middle-aged guy with job stress and a dysfunctional family. His job just happened to entail killing people.

 

Maybe America identified. Maria's brother Matt took to watching the show and said, "The fat guy, he reminds me of Dad with his temper."

 

Oh we've seen it. Maybe not the guy knocking a street hustler's teeth out, strangling a turncoat with piano wire or breaking some guy's arm and threatening to take away something no man can live without. No, we haven't seen it. But we know that guy. Crude, boisterous, pugnacious, emotional, quick-to-anger, likely to punch you in the nose if you're not mentally quick and able to defuse the situation before the women and children start crying.

 

We know that guy. You better believe it. I think a lot of other people in America do too. Many probably grew up with that guy.

 

It takes an intelligent and contemplative artist, a true Shakespearean actor to pull off a complicated character like Tony Soprano. That James Gandolfini could do it, shows he was a sensitive man.

 

Recently, while at the Warren Theater in Wichita, Maria and I saw a preview for a film in which Gandolfini played a kind, devoted Southern husband in a feel good movie. Now what the hell was the name of that thing?

 

I was looking forward to seeing what all this actor could do. At 51, he was taken away way too soon. But look online and you'll see a database filled with films and roles you may never have heard of.

 

Check 'em out.

 

We're sure gonna miss you, James Gandolfini. And Tony Soprano, may you swim with the fishes.

 



Father's Day 2013

Writer's Note: Yesterday was Father's Day. Did not submit this by deadline because I was too busy trying to be a good dad, myself. I was literally born late, I show up late for work, I will be late to my own funeral. Who cares?

It was around seven years ago. I had just been hired as a social worker at a nursing home in Potwater, Kan. Janice, the director of nursing, engaged me in conversation about where I was from, who my parents were and all that.

"My dad worked at the refinery in Skelly, Kan. for over 40 years," I said. "He retired a few years ago."

"Oh!" she said, breaking out all smiles. "Is your dad Gerald?"

"So I suppose you know him like everybody else?" I said. From the time I was a kid, I remember people stopping him -- "Hi Gerald" -- at the grocery store, barbershop, tire and auto store, the bank. He knew everybody, just a hail-fellow-well-met.

"Wow! You're really popular, Dad," I'd say.

Yeah, he'd talk forever to everyone. Except me. Unless he was delivering a lecture. Then he'd keep you sitting there 'till the cows came home.

Janice was in her 50s when I worked with her at the nursing home. But in the early 1970s when she was a young woman of college age, she bartended at the Amvets, a private club at the west end of town. Dad was always talking about the place in conversation, I remember. The place, as Janice, told me was owned and operated by Leroy, a tough talking, cherry Skoal chewing Korean War vet who had a soft spot for veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces.

She remembered my dad with his sideburns, dark browned hair and superfly clothes, the pipe he smoked and was never without. A plastic pouch of Captain Black, as natural to Dad's life as Cutty Sark scotch and cars with carburetors, blocks and u-joints outside the mouths of vehicles and dismantled in the garage.

Some of my earliest memories are of Dad and his friends (Dad had a lot of friends) in the garage taking apart cars and piecing them back together with a never ending supply of Craftsman tools for every occasion. Once in awhile, one of those friends might bring over a son or daughter who would play in the kitchen with my sister and me. What our dads worked on and created in that garage was always such a brilliant mystery to me. An enigma.

"He was always a gentleman," Janice said.

I've always been proud whenever any one's told me that about Dad. And in a bar too. How many guys have I seen besotted and drooling sadly in bars, scamming over women who would never ever have them?

Not my dad. He was always a gentleman.

"Dad always had a great work ethic," I said as Janice shook her head, knowingly. "That's one thing I picked up from him."

"Playin' baseball meant settin' up a bunch of rocks in the pasture. In summer, you always went barefoot. There were two kids in my Sunday school class, me and Johnny Wrampe."

"I was always really bashful," Dad told me. He couldn't say two words to anybody. "You know how I got over it? Working in a filling station." He wore a spiffy uniform with a hat, kept a rag in his back pocket, filled gas tanks, checked tire pressure, wiper fluid level, belts and hoses...talked to sheriff's deputies, school teachers, farmers, bank presidents, housewives...

For Dad, who was raised in the middle of a pasture in a community barely more modern than an Amish village, checking cars in Skelly, Kan., (pop. 4,000 at that time) constituted hitting what Grandpa Guy always called "the Big Town."

Dad saved his earnings, bought a 1958 Plymouth Fury. Later traded it in for a '58 Pontiac Chieftain he purchased from the Showroom Floor. You could do that in those days -- work in a gas station and save up enough money for a down payment on a spankin' new car.

He had a crapload of chemistry hours from Skelly Junior College, the big shivery burnt red-brick building behind a big old lawn on Main Street. (The brick building beside it housed Skelly High School.) So they hired him as a bottle washer in the lab of what was then Midian Refinery. (The place would undergo about four takeovers before Dad retired -- at which time it was called Fortress Refinery.)

"Grandma and Grandpa were making your dad's car payments when he was in the Army," Mom once told me.

I never sought confirmation from Dad on this matter. His parents -- hard working people of the soil -- made him who he is and if they sprung for a few car payments, oh well.

Upon returning home from the Army, Dad and a buddy of his entered a competition at the firing range at the county fairgrounds. A bunch of cops were taking part. Dad and his friend kicked the cops' asses. A week later, Dad, like his friend, was getting calls from the Skelly Police Dept., offering him a job. But he'd just gotten a promotion from the refinery. He stuck with the refinery.

At least that's the story Grandpa told me. The old man was always telling stories. Hard to tell what was true and what was mythology.

A few years back I wrote a children's book (unpublished) about Grandpa's life. Recently, I was at Dad and step-mom, Marcia's, house, discussing some official business when somehow we got off on a tangent about Dad's early life.

"Playin' baseball meant settin' up a bunch of rocks in the pasture." "In summer you always went barefoot." "There were two kids in my Sunday school class, me and Johnny Wrampe."

Dad and Marcia were on my front porch recently, giving me some vinyl records they'd purchased at a garage sale when I brought up some idea I'd been kicking around.

"Hey Dad, remember that book I wrote about Grandpa," I said. "When am I gonna' write one about you?"

"You think so, huh?" He's always saying that. I can remember him saying that when I was 7-years-old.

"You gonna write about how I outran the cops at 120 miles per hour?"

"I don't think I should put that in a children's book," I replied.

(Pause) I continued: "You know, someone could never get away with that today, with all the radar and satellites and sirens, all the back-up and everything."

"No, you'd be a damn fool to try it today."

"Didn't you ever feel any compunction, regarding the safety of all this drag racing and out running the cops?" A question I'd been dying to ask him for some time.

"There weren't that many people around then."

Steve freakin' McQueen.

And then he said something about country roads and how the land west of Braum's Ice Cream and the car wash at the corner of Central and Oil Hill Roads in Skelly -- area where a strip mall, doctor's office, Wal-Mart, Burger King and Game X Change are now -- was a no man's land of dirt roads, trees and fields.

I should say that Dad entered the Army. Once when I was a kid I asked him if he ever met Elvis. "No, he was coming out when I was going in."

The summer before my senior year of high school, a recruiter spent about two hours at my house, telling me how great the Army was supposed to be. He had me chomping at the bit to sign up. Give me all I want -- the car, the college, girls who'd give you all kinds of lovin' 'cuz you wearing a uniform.

After he left, Mom told me, "You know he's just selling you a crock of shit?" Which, he was, but I now realize that was his job. I lacked such discriminating factors in those salad days and I let Mom talk me out of signing up as easily as I'd almost let the fat little recruiter talk me into joining.

It's just that -- what John F. Kennedy said about asking what you can do for your country -- that's always meant something to me. Dad served his country in uniform, which is a hell of a lot more than I've ever done and for that reason, Gerald Guy will always be a better man than me.

"I didn't go willingly. They came after me," he told me one Saturday morning as we sat in patio chairs, drinking iced tea and looking over his newly mowed lawn.

He rarely ever lectures me anymore. Guess he feels retired. Although sometimes, "Mr. Advice" still shows up from the backdoor. It's all good, I decided awhile back I prefer him as he is. Around now I'll need to appeal to his wisdom more than I have in years. Kids giving me drama and all. Dad is a great resource, from which I can tap.

But no more tapping for money. That's all over.

Back at the nursing home in Potwater, there were always fires to put out. Administration, activities director, nursing staff -- they'd all be on my ass. I'd fill up with more anxiety than news director Miles Silverberg from early '90s CBS sitcom, Murphy Brown.

"Find your happy place, Jeff," Janice told me, while standing near the bathroom by the nurses' station.

"I wish I had that stoic reserve like my dad," I told her.

"Well you will."

"No Janice, it's too late."

I take more after Mom. Emotive. Anxious. Manic. Neurotic.

Pacing around my front porch Saturday night, drinking a Leinenkugel. Maria, Max and Gabby were at the in-laws, hanging out at the clubhouse in their retirement village. I called this old man.

"What are you doing?" he answered.

"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle. You never answer the phone. It's always Marcia."

"What do you think about that?"

"Sound like you're about to hit the hay."

"Well it's almost 10 o'clock. Going to a kid's ball game in Derby at 7 tomorrow morning." (He and Marcia are always watching grandkids play ball. They say if they stopped being on the go now, they'd go downhill fast.)

"So did you get your Father's Day card in the mail?" he asked. He's always asking if I got something in the mail. He and Marcia have always been prompt about inserting things via U.S. mail. Most of the time, I've just handed Dad birthday, Father's Day and Christmas cards in person. But I made an exception this time. I mailed that bad boy. Dropped it right into the slot.

"Now that card you mailed me, was that a Father's Day card or a birthday card 'cuz it could be either one, that one that said, 'When I grow up, I'm going to be just like you' and it's underlined."

Told him it's a Father's Day card. His birthday had been a week earlier. Never made it out to hand him the birthday card.

"So I was thinking I might mix you a Father's Day cocktail."

"Like what?"

"Martini, Gin and Tonic, whatever you want," I said, adding "but only, only if it's okay. Did your doctor tell you to stay away from alcohol?"

"Oh we're not supposed to, but we'll have a beer, a margarita sometimes. Everything in moderation."

"I see," I said, making a mental note to mix his drink a little weaker, mine a bit stronger.

"By the way, I do want to be like you when I grow up."

"Okay good," he answered. No big deal.

"Well I better get my ass off the phone. See ya."

"Bye, bye."

When I was a kid (circa 1978) this song came on the radio. Dad turned up the volume.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to dads everywhere.

Loose chains in the world

Somewhere between late afternoon and early morning on a summer day. 1980. It may have been June 14 because I specifically remember having a book due at the Jett, Kan. Public Library on Flag Day. It was typed on the phish-blue card stationed on the back-packet at the hardback of the book.

Whatever that book was, I've long since forgotten.

I had walked to the library because the chain was loose on my bicycle, not an uncommon occurrence in those days. After poking around the poking around the children's book section and the record section for about an hour, I was ready to check out. (I got my initial education in Cream, Hendrix and Zeppelin from the vinyl record section of the Jett, Kan. Public Library.)

The record I checked out that day was different from my usual choices. It was a double disc filled with speeches by Bobby Kennedy. All I remember about that album now is going home,placing it carefully on the turntable and the analog reproductions of applause, cheers and hard Boston accent.

I didn't know much about him, but I would find out. Obviously John F. Kennedy was the one I would know more about, his being a President and all. There was a photograph of him near the office at Longfellow Elementary -- a picture I'd seen a million times, going back to Mrs. Alley's kindergarten class and before I knew who the man was and even noticed the picture in the first place.

"That's Kennedy," I remember my friend Myron telling me. Myron and I always played cowboy at recess.

This past school year, I'd finished fifth-grade in Mr. Turner's class. There was a slough of books on his shelves -- old books, paperbacks, pictureless hardbacks, dog-eared and bic-pen littered books. Books for children and adults. Mr. Turner was always trying to challenge you like that. One of those books, I remember, was To Seek a Newer World by Robert F. Kennedy.

a newer world

There was something in that for me. The world. Around the previous November when I was class helper for the week, I got to read my favorite "poem" from the class "language" book and I chose FDR's January 6, 1941 "The Four Freedoms" address before Congress.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world...

So I checked out the record. There was a fiftyish woman in a black dress, smiling at me as Olivia, the twentysomething librarian, ran the packet card through the Big Machine.

Olivia was...if the words had existed in my vocabulary, I would have used such adjectives as "ebullient" and "effervescent" to describe her. She had black hair and olive skin, the beautifully genetic result, I'd later learn of the pairing of her mother, a Native Indian woman, ("Some of her sisters still read the Koran," she would tell me) and her father, a typical Southern man, now living in Virginia and working at the Pentagon. When their turn in the rotation came around, the couple team taught the adult Sunday School class at the suburban church they attended in Virginia.

Never, did Olivia question me or make me feel self-conscious about checking out adult books or asking the questions of the world that kids -- born and bred for baseball and after-game pizza parlors -- would care about.

Standing there, waiting for my turn to talk, and watching Olivia listen to the woman in the black dress, I knew she was really listening. Olivia could listen to you as if she were holding your hand even if she wasn't.

"There are so many things I wish I'd said before he got so frail," the woman said. "So many things I -- I felt like I needed to be forgiven for, but Daddy said he was the one who was sorry for not -- " she kept stopping to avert any outflow of emotion "being a more attentive father. All I ever wanted was my dad. Those times -- not like it happened a lot, but -- when he took me to work with him and held my hand -- it was downtown -- I felt so big."

Olivia was consoling without saying anything.

When I noticed the break and it looked like the conversation had ended, I asked Olivia if I could use the phone. (This was long before 10-year-olds had two cell phones on their persons.) "Can I call my grandma to ask her to pick me up?"

After hanging up the phone, the fiftyish woman in the black dress looked at me, smiling. "Do you know how happy your grandma is that you asked her to pick you up?"

"No," I replied nervously. Happy? I figured she'd feel put out that I was acting like a pest, asking her to drive over and get me when I could have easily walked over myself.

"You're making a lot of memories for you and your grandma."

I don't know why I remembered that all these years, I just did.

Saturday morning videos

                                
                                  They had not a clue.

I thought it was so cool when the local American Legion in my hometown sponspored a showing of Easy Rider. I always thought of them as a conservative organization. My uncle told me he took his first hit of sweet California sunshine, while in beautiful Southeast Asia.

Ferris Bueller? He's Mr. Showbiz! They don't make entertainers like Wayne Newton anymore and that's a shame. I love him. Maybe not as much as Balki from mauldlin 1980s sitcom Perfect Strangers, but I do love him.

Rock n' Roll's first SOB. Raisin' hell back when Keith Richards was in short pants. Take a look, then two. Check out that man's confidence, the cockiness, swagger and innuendo. No doubt, he gave Elvis a run for his pink Cadillac. And I used to love his annual telethons.

 

I can remember hearing "School's Out" on the radio when I was 3-years old. A few years later I saw Alice Cooper on The Muppet Show. "I took Alice everywhere he wasn't supposed to be," he said during a recent guest appearance on Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me.

They have sainthood. True standard bearers of The Cannon. Appeared on Ed Sullivan a hell of a lot more times than The Beatles. We miss you, Liam.

Well gollly!!! Coming to you live from Motel 6. Loved him in Full Metal Jacket.

We all must love the quiet palpability of the Vulcan race. Seriously, how can anyone not love Leonard Nimoy? Especially when he shows his sensitive side?