Clock Dance

“If Willa were to invent a clock dance, it would feature a woman racing across the stage from left to right, all the while madly whirling so that the audience saw only a spinning blur of color before she vanished into the wings, pouf!  Just like that.  Gone.” Anne Tyler, “Clock Dance” (2018)

In Anne Tyler’s most recent novel, again set in Baltimore, nine-year-old Cheryl and two friends invent a routine where they stand behind one another and move their arms to resemble the hour and minute hands of a clock. Flying from Arizona to care for Cheryl while her mother Denise (ex-girlfriend of son Sean) is hospitalized with a gunshot wound, Willa enters a world inhabited by characters much more appealing than found in her over 55 community, including her boorish husband.  Visiting Denise, she notices a nurse wearing a pajama-type uniform printed all over with teddy bears.  In the hospital commissary were tiny Saguara cacti on sale, looking forlorn and out of place compared to stately 15-foot ancestors back in Arizona. Surprised when Denise expresses hopes to marry, explaining that people are supposed to go through this world two by two, Willa thinks the sentiment resembles a line from Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” When Denise comes home, a neighbor named Sergio (Cheryl calls Sir Joe) carries her from the car to a couch, from which she watches “Space Junk” on TV and plays “I Doubt It,” only she and Cheryl say “Bullshit! to Willa’s feigned shock

Until age 61, Washington Post reviewer Ron Charles wrote:

  Willa always does what she’s told, always shifts the attention away from herself. Raised by a moody, histrionic mother, she coped by becoming exceedingly responsible at a young age. She takes after her father, a man “so mild-mannered that he thought it was impolite to pick up a telephone in mid-ring.” A peacekeeping jedi, Willa detects and soothes the first flutter of anyone’s irritation or disappointment.

Coming to prefer an eccentric new “family” to a lonely life in Arizona, Willa finds a true soulmate in precocious, ersatz granddaughter Cheryl.  She heeds the insight of an elderly Baltimore neighbor who tells her: “Figuring out what to live for.  That’s the great problem at my age.” Willa thinks to herself, "Or at any age."  Ron Charles concludes:

   The bond that develops between this lonely child and this obliging woman forms the emotional heart of “Clock Dance,” radiating what Tyler calls a “sweetly heavy, enjoyable kind of ache.”But there’s a steelier theme here, too, an existential sorrow cloaked by the embroidery of Willa’s grandmotherly demeanor.“Sometimes Willa felt she’d spent half her life apologizing,”Tyler writes. “More than half her life, actually.” She knows that the world, which has largely ignored her, expects her now to coast along that deferential rut into oblivion.

Charlie Halberstadt and I were runners-up in bridge at Chesterton Y to Rich and Sally Will.  My moment to shine came when Charlie overcalled I Diamond and bid a Heart. I only had 4 points but held 6 Spades to the King and a couple Hearts.  I passed, the person on my left bid 2 Diamonds, and after two passes, I bid 2 Spades. Charlie raised to 3 and I made the contract with a trick to spare despite him having only 10 high card points. Barbara Mort, who got married last week to 87-year-old Korean War veteran Ascher Yates, said that he is going on an Honor Flight to tour DC war memorials.  

Next day in Valpo Australian-born Naomi Goodman and I finished fourth (the Wills had 70.24 %) despite never having played together.  We meshed; when Charlie asked how things were going, she said, “I haven’t had a hissy fit yet.”   Once an exclusively American expression, now, thanks to films shown abroad, the saying is now more common elsewhere.  I called Chuck Tomes Mr. East when Naomi inquired whether it was he or his partner sitting west was playing a hand.  When I adding, “like the Merrillville basketball coach,” Chuck said, “He was a good one, his record speaks for itself.”  Chuck noted that Cardinals Hall of Famer Bob Gibson wanted to play basketball at IU but Coach Branch McCracken already had his quota of one, so Gibson went on to star for Creighton.

Phil picked up our 2004 Corolla from Dave because Tori’s old Saturn died.  Toni made a seafood feast, and my sons and I got in a game of Acquire, first time in months.  At a party in Grand Valley Phil and Delia ran into IUN public relations staff member Terry Ann Defenser, who told them she sees me almost every day.  At the time we both parked in the same lot and arrived around the same time, but since then I’ve moved to the A and S Building due to library renovation so park elsewhere.

 Paul and Jean at Miller beach

At Paul and Jean Kaczocha’s Fourth of July picnic were huge pans of grilled chicken, ribs, beef tips, hot dogs, and hamburger patties even though Paul and Jean are now vegetarians.  I gave him Steel Shavings, volume 48, which contains his moving eulogy to rank-and-file steelworker Eddie Sadlowski.  Sue O’Leary, whose delicious mac and cheese was from a Queen Latifah recipe, recalled Toni and Alissa eating orange day lilies at a previous July 4 party.

Kaczocha and brother Tim are big White Sox fans. Paul has a framed Carlton Fisk No. 72 jersey on his garage wall along with union posters.  At a table with Sue and Mike Olszanski, Tim recalled one of Oz’s relatives telling about working for Sox owner Bill Veeck and getting dressed down (but not fired) in 1979 for having endorsed what became known as Disco Demolition night, which ended in a riot and forfeiture of game 2 of the scheduled doubleheader.  I became a Sox fan in 1972 when my favorite player, former Philly Dick Allen, joined the team and had an MVP season, batting .308 with 37 home runs.  Five years later, after Allen was released by Oakland, I phoned Veeck to suggest he bring him back to Chicago.  His secretary put me right through, and Veeck told me he’d spoken to Dick, but he preferred to retire to his Pennsylvania farm and breed race horses.

Famed drummer Henry E. “Riggs” Guidotti, who moved to Highland, Indiana 70 years ago with wife Ella, is dead at age 96.  According to an obit, Riggs’s career spanned 60 years and that after touring with several famous big bands, “he spent 17 years with WGN Radio, playing for Orion Samuelson's Country Fair and on a few occasions filling in with the Bozo Show's Big Top Band. In the mid-1960s he was invited to play the Calgary Stampede and returned every year for the next 29, performing for Queen Elizabeth II when she opened the Stampede in 1973.”

In Chesterton Strack & Van Til’s parking lot was the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile but without Little Oscar. A 1952 model came to Fort Washington when I was a kid with Gary native George Molchan the likely “Little Oscar,” passing out the hot dogs – at least that’s my memory. One came to Toni’s north Philadelphia neighborhood, and kids only received little whistles shaped like hot dogs.   Molchan enjoyed a 36-year career until retiring in 1987, his last 16 at the company’s Disney World restaurant.  When Molchan hung up his Chef’s Hat, Oscar Meyer retired the character.  Molchan died in 2005 at age 82 while living in Hobart. According to Timesreporter Myrna Oliver, a Wienermobile appeared at the Merrillville burial site, and mourners sang the enigmatic jingle, “I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener.”

Inside Stracks, a man was wearing an East Chicago Washington t-shirt.  I told him my son Dave taught at EC Central, and he said that he knew him. When I brought up Pete Trgovich, who led the Senators to a state title and coached the 2007 state champions, he said he was a friend of the family.  A 1964 graduate named Jerry Craven, he played for legendary coach Johnny Baratto. Dave recently had a memorable student whose last name was craven, so Jerry was likely his grandfather.

                                         Senators Foote and Sunmer

Virtually all students of American history are familiar with South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks’s brutal 1856 caning of Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the Senate floor. Joanne Freeman’s “The Field of Blood” reveals that at least 70 other violent outbursts occurred in the chambers of Congress in the 30 years leading up to the Civil War.  The Congressional Globemade no mention of such pushing, shoving, knife-wielding and pistol-waving incidents.  During debate on the Compromise of 1850, for instance, according to a New York Review of Books essay by James Oakes, when Mississippi Senator Henry Foote pulled a pistol on Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, “Benton defiantly bared his chest and dared the would-be ‘assassin’ to shoot.”

Gary ruins photographer Cindy C. Bean posted a shot taken from inside the to Emerson School, captioned “Grand entrance to one of my favorite buildings.  Lyn Pellett replied: “We had to stop on the stairs with one foot on each step, if necessary, and stand perfectly still when the bugle played each morning. Emerson was the grandest of schools in her prime.”