Apocalypse Now!

“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot

Until now, with plenty of time to kill due to the pandemic, I’d never watched Francis Ford Coppola’s 153-minute epic “Apocalypse Now” (1979) in its entirety. I’d shown excerpts in my Vietnam War class of scenes depicting American troops under commander Kilgore on a Search and Destroy mission, uprooting survivors from their ancestral villages while a chaplain says a meaningless prayer.  I’d seen highlights of Marlon Brando as Kurtz reciting T. S. Eliot’s 1925 poem “The Hollow Man” but shrank from digesting the entire nightmarish action, based in part on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” which was required reading for an English course at Bucknell.  I was surprised to discover Dennis Hopper playing a hippie photographer at Colonel Kurtz’s Montagnard camp and moved to read “The Hollow Man” when learning its opening line was “Mistah Kurtz – he dead” and closing refrain “This is the way the world would end, not with a bang but a whimper.”

 

High school English teacher Delphine Vandling, I suddenly remembered, recited “The Hollow Man” to us very movingly. Like me a Bucknell graduate, she had the rare ability to convey an appreciation of things not immediately obvious. Mrs. Vandling told us that Eliot was born in St. Louis but became a British citizen and developed a British accent, so I tended to regard him as a phony, not understanding the depths of disillusionment that the Great War had caused. I never made it through “The Waste Land” and though I recall its opening line, “April is the cruelest month,” I have no idea why Eliot might have believed such a thing. Until now.

 

It was Upper Dublin English teacher Delphine Vandling who taught me to appreciate literature, not necessarily at the time (and I still don’t like Shakespeare, despite her best efforts) but that it had the potential to teach us about life and even hints about life’s meaning. Though poetry is not my cup of tea ordinarily, the keenest insights are often hidden in its verses.  When Vandling read “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, it hooked me.  Delphine used a Word Power book, and we learned ten new words each week. Not only did we have to use them in sentences, she made us say them out loud for emphasis.  I hated the I’s and still think of her when I use indomitable, indefatigable, inimitable, or ineffable. I was very envious when Vince Curll told me that he and Wendy had been at Vandling’s house and been offered wine.

 

Some years ago, I went on an Indiana Association of Historians conference tour of Indiana University’s Alfred Kinsey Sex Institute. Our tour guide was a fifty-ish woman in high boots and stylish clothes whose features reminded me of Mrs. Vandling.  As she showed the historians X-rated 8-pagers (one featured Mickey, Minnie and Goofy, another famous actors) and Japanese dolls meant for virginal brides on their wedding night whose private parts showed when turned over, her expression bore a resemblance to Delphine reading “Jabberwocky.”

    Beware the Jabberwocky, my son!

    The jaws that bite, the claws that catch

    Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

    The fruminous Bandersnatch!

After I posted these impressions on my blog, I received an angry email from the daughter of Delphine, who had recently passed away. I replied that I had nothing but respect for her mother, who was a great, passionate, dedicated teacher.  She thanked me and told me her mom would have enjoyed what I wrote.

 

John Prine is the latest coronavirus casualty after twice surviving cancer. I’ve been watching YouTube videos of sessions he performed two years ago at West 54^th. The former Chicago mailman was a truly great singer-songwriter, humble and wise who sang of “broken hearts and dirty windows,” of memories that couldn’t be bought and souvenirs that took him years to get.  Jerry Davich started a post with these lines:

    Just give me one thing that I can hold on to

    To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

A co-host of the CBS morning news, broadcasting from his home, recently interviewed Prine and said his favorite number was “In Spite of Ourselves.”  The last song on Prine’s final album is “When I Get to Heaven.”  He vows that after shaking God’s hand and thanking him for all his blessings, he’ll start a rock-n-roll band, smoke a cigarette nine miles long, and “kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl.”  Darcey Wade posted a video of a young John Prine singing “Hello in There” about an old couple living in an apartment in the city, there kids grown up and elsewhere or, in the case of Davy, “lost in the Korean, war, and I still don’t know what for.” The chorus includes these poignant lines

    Old people just grow lonesome

    Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in There.”

 

Also dead: Detroit Tiger outfielder for 22 seasons Al Kaline, a Hall of Famer who became my favorite player after my family moved to a Detroit suburb in 1955.  Kaline hit .340 that season, becoming the youngest batting champ (by two days over Ty Cobb) ever. A consummate team player, he finally was rewarded when Detroit became champs in 1968 with Kaline batting .379 in the World Series. He ended his career with over 3,000 hits and 399 Home Runs (it would have been 400, but one was erased due to a rainout). In retirement he became a Tiger broadcaster and mentor to young players.

 

East Chicago Central social studies teacher Michelle Horst sent a note thanking me for the copy of “Jacob A. Riis and the American City” that Dave passed on to her and wanted to send me a gift card as a token of appreciation.  I emailed back:

    Thanks for the nice note, which is better than any gift card you could give me.  The book was an outgrowth of my PHD thesis at the U. of Maryland.  My adviser suggested the topic because the Jacob Riis papers were located at the Library of Congress not far from College Park.  What I particularly admired about Riis was his concern for children and the environment and how he evolved into someone much more tolerant of other cultures than the common perception one gets only from reading “How the other Half Lives.”

High school friend Suzanna Murphy wrote:

  The year was 1919.  My grandmother Jane Hook Scott was in Hang Chow China with her husband Reverend Dr. Frank D. Scott serving a mission.  They had decided she should return to the United States because of the health of my mother who had been born the year before.  She was allergic to milk and had been needing to milk a buffalo daily! Needless to say that was tedious and dangerous. There were other dangers such as once being accused of killing a sacred pig when the rickshaw in front of them ran over it. Aside from that there were many wonderful experiences there which they shared with a companion couple, the Hales. My grandfather stayed on and my grandmother took a slow boat from China to California and then a train all the way from California to Pennsylvania and cared the children until she could return and pastor a church again.  She was very courageous indeed.