Let Me Down

“Don’t go changing to try and please me

You never let me down before.”

         “Just the Way You Are,” Billy Joel

 Billy Joel

The final request of Jeffrey Riegel, dead at age 56, was that 8 Philadelphia Eagles serve as pallbearers at his funeral so that his favorite pro football team could let him down one more time. I was privileged to attend the Eagles’ Last Hurrah, the 1960 championship when they prevailed over Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers.  Since then, it has been disappointment after disappointment.  But, to paraphrase Cub fan Walter LaFeber, any team can have a bad half-century.  Philadelphia is 0-2 in Superbowl appearances, losing to the Oakland Raiders, 27-10, in 1981 and to the New England Patriots, 24-21, in 2005.  Down ten with six minutes to go, Donovan McNabb took over four minutes to engineer a scoring drive but had one final chance with 46 seconds to go before tossing a desperation pass from his own four-year line into the hands of Patriot Rodney Harrison.

A sure sign Fall is on the way: Fantasy Football draft day for our 8-team LANE league.  With my fourth pick, I drafted Steelers stud wide receiver Antonio Brown.  The only Eagle on Jimbo Jammers is wide receiver Alshon Jeffery, a former Bears who will start on the bench behind Doug Baldwin of Seattle.  If the past is any indication, injuries will play a key role.  For example, my three tight ends, Jordon Reed, Tyler Elfert, and Eric Ebron, are all questionable for game one.

Another harbinger of autumn: opening week of bowling.  Worried how my knee would hold up, my caution probably accounted for having more splits than strikes.  I was pain free, at least until the endorphins wore off.  Despite two poor games on my part, the Engineers won three of seven points, barely winning series after I finally rolled my average.  Bob Robinson is battling liver cancer, so Frank Shufran got affable Joe Piunti, a veteran of the Wednesday evening Sheet and Tin League, to join the team.

 Little Richard in 2007

In a Rock Music Studies review of “1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music,” critic B. Lee Cooper argues that author Andrew Grant Jackson neglects the mid-1950s birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, a time when, in his words:

The marginalized music of hillbilly cats and R&B honkers and shouters overwhelmed traditional pop tunes.  Rockabillies and doo wop groups bid farewell to country-and-western isolation and ghettoized, chitlin’ circuit life as they attained nation-wide acclaim for their recordings.  Teenagers rejoiced at the new records.  Parents and civic groups grumbled loudly.  But the musical revolution, an integrated rebellion, reached both television and theater screens as well. 

Cooper adds that Bob Dylan was a self-proclaimed Little Richard fan, and Jimi Hendrix played in Little Richard’s band.  Before they teamed up with Dylan, members of the Band played rockabilly numbers such as “Susie Q” with Dale Hawkins.  At age nine, David Bowie heard “Tutti Frutti” when his dad brought the record home and later claimed it was like hearing God.  Long before achieving commercial success, both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were collecting Chess LPs and devouring discs by Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Carl Perkins, and Larry Williams and covering Little Richard’s “Tutti Fruiti”.  Both bands opened for Little Richard in 1962, and his organist, Billy Preston, played on several of their albums. 

Originally an ice cream flavor that contained tiny bits of candied fruit and then a chewing gum flavor, “Tutti Fruiti” in Italian means “all fruits.”  Little Richard’s original version of “Tutti Fruiti (Oh Rutti)” was quite raunchy and contained the lyrics, If it’s tight, it’s alright/ if it’s greasy, it makes it easy.”  Specialty Records made him clean up the words before recording it.  Some claim that instead of singing “Wop bop a loo bop a wop bam boom,” the original words at the end of the line were “a good goddam,” but Richard claimed he never took the Lord’s name in vain.  He also came up with this implausible story about washing dishes at a Macon, Georgia, Greyhound bus station:

I couldn't talk back to my boss man. He would bring all these pots back for me to wash, and one day I said, “I've got to do something to stop this man bringing back all these pots to me to wash,” and I said, “Awap bop a lup bop a wop bam boom, take 'em out!” and that's what I meant at the time. And so I wrote “Tutti Frutti” in the kitchen.

 Fieldhouses on "Bridge Break"

After John and Karen Fieldhouse scored a 70.83 percent in a duplicate bridge game, Newsletter editor Barbara Walczak wrote this blurb:

  John fell in love with bridge when he was in college and has enjoyed the game for over 50 years.  He has also enjoyed teaching bridge in his community.  Karen took up bridge after she married John some 18 years ago. Since she did not want to become a bridge widow, she started to learn how to play bridge by taking lessons – but not from John!  Karen has enjoyed bridge ever since.

In Steve McShane’s class, I paired two dozen students with bridge players for their oral history assignment. I notified some of the volunteers Tuesday at Chesterton and Wednesday at Valparaiso. At Valpo’s Banta Center a record turnout of 18 couples enabled director Charlie Halberstadt to employ a so-called Mitchell Movement: North-South couples stayed at one of 9 tables as East-West couples moved a table to the left after three hands while the boards rotated in the opposite direction.  The only drawback: we didn’t get to play against some of my favorite pairs, including the Fieldhouses, Chuck and Marcy Tomes, Tom and Lori Rea, and Tom and Sylvia Luekins.  Opponent Donna Penn, 82, recalled Lew Wallace principal Verna Hoke, social studies teacher Marie Edwards, and murder victim Mary Cheever.  Dee Van Bebber and I finished fourth and naturally lingered over our mistakes more than our triumphs – in my case, trumping with a six of Spades when I held the 8-9-10 and losing to a seven (I knew I goofed the instant I did it).  Holding eight Diamonds, including the top three, plus a bare Ace of Clubs and Queen of Hearts doubleton, Dee bid 6 Diamonds after I opened a Spade. She took all 13 tricks and lamented not asking for Aces (I had two) nor bidding the grand slam.  As it turned out, nobody else did.

 Michael and EllaRose Chary

A Chary family “Thank You” card requested that we remember Michael “with a smile and by helping others find hope and justice in this world.” On the back was this postscript: “He was our lion.”  That he truly was.  While his dad and brother were soft-spoken, he was boisterous and intrepid and no doubt somewhat of a role model for sister EllaRose, who after graduating from Brown University embarked on an exciting stage and screenwriting career.

Rich Cohen wrote a Vanity Fair article entitled “Why Generation X Might Be Our Last, Best Hope.”  Those born between the mid-1960s and early Eighties (including sons Phil and Dave), according to Cohen, supposedly are more realistic and anchored in common sense than Baby Boomers or Millennials.  A Gen Xer himself, Cohen wrote:

  We are the last generation to grow up with crappy video games, with actual arcades instead of quality home consoles. If you wanted to play, you had to leave the house and mix it up with the ruffians. That is, we are the last Americans to have the old-time childhood, wherein you were assigned a bully along with a homeroom teacher. Our childhood was closer to those of the 1950s than to whatever they’re doing today. It was coherent, hands-on, dirty, and fun.

 Walter LaFeber

“Why Generation X Might Be Our Last, Best Hope” got me thinking about something historian Walter LaFeber, ten years my senior and supposedly part of the “Silent Generation,” wrote in a letter congratulating me on the publication of Steel Shavings, volume 40, my so-called retirement journal: “Ours was supposedly the generation that never showed up.  But some of us did show up.” Born in Walkerton, Indiana, the son of a grocer and a lifelong Cubs, fan, LaFeber treasured an autographed photo of Hall of Famer Ernie Banks with the inscription “Keep Going Walt.”  It adorned his office at Cornell, along with a sign warning, “Chicago Cubs Fans Parking Only.”