Hold Your Head Up

“And if they stare
Just let them burn their eyes on you moving
And if they shout
Don't let them change a thing what you're doing”

“Hold Your Head Up,” Argent

 Jake Lacy as Nick in I'm Dying Up Here

Argent, a British rock group formed by Zombies keyboardist Rod Argent, recorded “Hold Your Head Up” in 1972 with Russ Ballard on vocals. “Hold Your Head Up” was subsequently covered by Steppenwolf, Uriah Heep, Phish, and many others. Over the long weekend I watched the second season finale of the Showtime series I’m Dying Up Here, set in the Seventies.  Young comedian Nick (Jake Lacy) is guest host on a radio talk show.  We see him opening up about an uncle molesting him when he was seven but then realize the program hasn’t begun.  When it does, Nick introduces Argent’s “Hold Your head Up.”

 Alissa selfie in Granger IN

Jimbo and Grace 

Blanche Trojecka at Mt. Baldy

Twenty members of the Lane and Okomski clans gathered in the South Bend suburb of Granger. Toni’s sister Marianne had flown in to stay with teenagers Grace and Oliver Teuscher while parents Lisa and Fritz celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary with a hiking trip in the Canadian Rockies.  Toni brought Golumpkis, Angie tuna salad, and Beth two blueberry pies.  With fritz’s assistance, nephew Tom Dietz grilled burgers and hot dogs and fixed bacon, eggs, and toast for breakfast.

Such occasions always include story-telling, especially since Marianne’s daughters Charlene and Michelle were present with husbands JQ and Tom. I talked about past visits by Toni’s mother Blanche to our home near the dunes.  Blanche was so impressed with Mount Baldy (a sand dune no longer open to visitors), she made sure we returned whenever other family members visited.  Her reaction to Saugatuck, Michigan, was similar, and we took her back several times, with various grandchildren in tow. A strong, feisty woman, she gave birth to seven children and flew for the first time to see Phil and Dave in the IUN musical Finian’s Rainbow,directed by Garrett Cope   She was only in her sixties then– much younger than I am now.  At a kid’s birthday party, Toni organized a scavenger hunt, and I partnered with Blanche.  Toni nabbed us trying to sneak off early (her idea); then when we’d found everything on our list and she noticed Dean and Ann Bottorff heading home from a different direction, she grabbed my hand and started up our steep hill and driveway at such a fast pace I could hardly keep up. She loved bingo, and I’d take her to a game in Portage where she’d play 8 boards simultaneously.

above, Shelly Fitzgerald; below, Elijah Mahan with rainbow banner

We played a couple Texas Hold ’em tournaments with grandson Anthony and nephews Oliver Teuscher and Nickolas Dietz impressively holding their own.  Nick’s sister Sophia enlightened us about a controversy at her Catholic high school in Indianapolis, Roncalli.  Lesbian Shelly Fitzgerald, a popular 15-year veteran guidance counselor, was placed on administrative leave after some idiot complained to the archdiocese that she had married a woman.  This technically violated a contract mandating obedience to the church teachings, including that marriage was between a man and a woman.  Students protestors have been wearing rainbow attire; teachers have rallied on Fitzgerald’s behalf, and the principal has been supportive but claims his hands are tied.  The shabby treatment of Fitzgerald has become national news. Sophia, sympathetic toward Fitzgerald, rues the disruptions and incessant media coverage.

On Labor Day the Wades invited us over for burgers and brats on the grill.  Darcey made her famous potato salad (enough for me to take home, share with Angie and Becca, and still have plenty for lunch all week). We ended the pleasant evening with Wits and Wagers.  Tom edged me out by a single chip after I guessed that 51 million households tuned in to the final episode of M*A*S*H*.The answer was 50.9.  I had exceeded the correct amount, so the winning bet was 44 million. Thirty-five years ago, we were among the households that tuned in.

above, M*A*S*H* final scene; below, John Updike

John Updike’s “Rabbit Remembered” takes place in Brewer, Pennsylvania, reminiscent of my hometown of Easton, in 1999, a decade after Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom’s heart gave out at age 56 after winning a one-on-one basketball contest.  Masterful at setting a scene, Updike is a joy to social historians. One constant theme is change over time, in most cases declension. The high point of Rabbit’s life, for instance, was his senior year of high school.  The novella opens with daughter Annabelle, conceived by a woman other than Harry’s wife, ringing the doorbell of widow Janice, 63, now remarried to Rabbit’s onetime nemesis Ronnie but living in the house where she grew up: “Decades of rust have all but destroyed its voice, the thing will die entirely someday, the clapper freezing or the wires shorting out or whatever they do.”  Somewhat deaf, Janice often doesn’t hear the faint ring if in the kitchen, and a twinge in one hip slows her progress as she walks through the dining room “whose shades are drawn to keep the oriental rug from fading and the polished mahogany table from drying out.”  In the front room an unused Zenith TV holds her dead mother’s dusty knickknacks.  Janice puts her hand on an old-fashioned doorknob “with a raised design worn shiny with the years, like brass lace” and opens a “heavy walnut door with its tall sidelights of frosted glass in floral arabesques that has been swollen and sticking all summer with a humidity that never produced rain.”  Janice takes calcium pills to fend off osteoporosis but, compared to her friends, is quite fit.  Outside she notices a mail van, white with red and blue stripes, not solid green like previous ones that resembled military vehicles, and nearby “a young woman with long sun-bleached hair and stocky tan legs in shorts who pushes her pouch on a 3-wheeled cart.”

At West Brewer Diner (open 24 hours a day), where she and Rabbit came after dances, Janice imagines the future of her waitress, a dark-complected Greek or Italian beauty – marriage, pregnancies, heavy meals, lost looks – reducing her blazing exquisiteness to a small, resentful spark, wondering “where it all went.” The jukebox plays “Crazy” but by a young diva, not Patsy Cline, who died young in a plane crash, like JFK, Jr.  Driving home from a four-deal party bridge game known as Chicago, where she misplayed several hands (underbidding a sure game and getting set in 3 No-Trump because she prematurely cashed her Diamond stopper), Janice ruminates over Annabelle’s unexpected intrusion into her settled life.  She passes an empty building that once housed  an upscale department store and an asphalt parking lot where ornate movie palaces had offered escape and excitement.  On the car radio came news that a man in Camden shot his estranged wife, three small children, and, cornered by police, himself. Updike wrote:

 For months there have been mass murders on television, the schoolchildren in Colorado and then the man beheading women in Yosemite Park and the man in Georgia who had lost a hundred thousand dollars at day trading on the Internet and blamed everybody but himself.  He left a long pious note asking God to take his dear wife and little ones whereas the teen-age killers in Colorado mocked and killed the girl who said she believed in God.  Either way, you killed them dead, sending them straight to heaven, or to nowhere, to an emptiness like that big orange hole in the middle of Brewer.

September’s Bridge Bulletin announced that the winter national tournament venue will be the Hilton Hawaiian Village along Waikiki beach in Honolulu.  As newlyweds in 1965, Toni and I spent our first days in Hawaii in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel reserved by my rich aunt.  After two days, I inquired how many nights she had paid for; none, was the answer.  We promptly checked out but not before parting with a giant chunk of our savings. Rooms at the Hilton start at $195 a night, about what we paid In 2006 when Toni, Miranda, and I spent several days there on the way back from Australia, I was pleasantly surprised at the price.  We toured the barely recognizable University of Hawaii, where I received an M.A., and passed by our apartment on Poki Street (we named our first cat Poki) as well as nearby Punahou School (Barack Obama’s alma mater), where I played wiffleball with neighbor Rick Simpson.

 Don and Pat Valiska 

Barb Walczak is encouraging bridge veterans to describe vacation highlights for the Newsletter.  Don and Pat Valiska toured Ireland.  Don wrote: “As a former history teacher, I could not get enough of the Celtic and Christian ruins, folklore and music – something new at every stop.  The Cliffs of Moher were breathtaking, and I did survive kissing the Blarney stone at the castle - probably why I needed the tours of the Guiness Storehouse and the Irish Whiskey distilleries.  The last night we stayed at the Cabra Castle, where we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary.”  

Bridge opponent Marcy Tomes asked when Eugene Swartz was Mayor of Gary.  After thinking a moment, I answered, “Between 1948 and 1952.”  She knew his daughter, who recently passed away.  Terry Bauer’s grandchildren played soccer atop a building in the Kowloon City district of Hong Kong.  In school they have an hour of Chinese a day with the emphasis on verbal communication and are teaching their parents, there for three years, certain phrases.