Characters

“Always remember, don’t worry about anything,” Robert “Bobby Z” Zemburski

Bobby Z on drums

 

1963 East Chicago Washington grad Bob Zemburski passed away.  While still in high school he played drums for the Starlighters, a three-piece polka band.  When a keyboardist and guitar player joined, they concentrated on Rock and Roll and, since a New York City house band, Joey Dee and the Starlighters, scored a huge hit, “The Peppermint Twist,” the Starlighters changed their name to the Blue Angels. In the summer of 1963 they were in such demand they were often playing gigs five days a week at VFW and Legion Halls plus other popular venues, including Midway Ballroom in Cedar Lake and Maduras Dance Land in Whiting. At a local club the Jackson Five shared the stage with them. The Blue Angels scored a minor hit, “Fame and Fortune,” and even backed up Chuck Berry at a 1965 New Year’s Day Hammond Civic Center show. The Rivieras, a band from South Bend whose hit “California Sun” made the Top Ten, was scheduled to play for Berry, but the guitar legend was so impressed with the Blue Angels, known for donning blue outfits and blue hair, the guitar legend demanded they play with him, an anecdote Billy Z never tired of repeating, often with such embellishments such as that the Rivieras wouldn’t talk to them for months.

After a stint in the marines as a combat engineer, Bob Zemburski worked for a railroad company for 25 years and then continued his education, eventually earning a master’s degree and mentoring at-risk adolescents as a member of the Lake County Juvenile Justice Task Force.  Among his favorite expressions were “Who loves you more than me?” and “What’s the best day of my life – the day I was born.” As he realized, guilt was a wasted emotion, love makes the world go ‘round, and it’s great to be alive.  RIP, good mentor. According to the Burns Funeral Home obit:

    He loved magic and doing his tricks for anyone who would give him an audience, even if the tricks themselves didn’t turn out the way he intended.  He was an amazing man and a wonderful human being.  There will never be another “Bobby Z.”

Koekkoek

For the first time since the Superbowl I watched almost an entire sports event, a Chicago Black Hawks playoff victory over the Edmonton Oilers. After winning three Stanley Cups during the past decade, the Black Hawks had fallen on hard times and wouldn’t even have reached the playoffs save for an expanded format due to Covid-19.  The team is composed of veteran stars Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, and Duncan Keith, plus frequently injured Corey Crawford and a slew of untested young players, including Slater Koekkoek (whose name is pronounced koo-koo or cuckoo).  The score was 2-2 until midway through the third period when the captain, Jonathan Toews fed a perfect pass to Dominik Kubalik, who fired a shot past the shoulder of goalie Mikko Koskinen.  Crawford made several key saves as the Oilers furiously tried to tie the score.

 

I was slightly disappointed to discover that the title of favorite author Anne Tyler’s new novel, “Redhead by the Side of the Road” refers to a fire hydrant that Micah Mortimer passed during his morning jog without his glasses on.  A self-described Tech Hermit whose humdrum life admittedly was in a deep rut, Mortimer (whose name in the Old French meant stagnant pond or dead sea; his given name in Hebrew meant faultless or like god) finds his routine complicated by a visitor who believes he might be his son. One gray Monday morning the news on Mortimer’s clock radio is as bleak as his mood:

    There’s been a mass shooting at a synagogue; whole families are dying in Yemen; immigrant children torn from their parents will never be the same, even if by some unlikely chance they are reunited tomorrow.

A client wanted Micah to strip his son’s computer of porn files and install a blocking mechanism:

    Micah got a kick out of the titles the son had given the files: Sorghum Production in the Eastern States, Population Figures Dayton Ohio.  They reminded him of those hollowed-out books designed to hide people’s valuables (or flasks), always with the driest possible titles imprinted on the spines so outsiders weren’t tempted to open them.

Nephew Chad Donahue

Hurricane Isaias caused flooding in the Philadelphia area where I grew up. In 1954 during Hurricane Hazel the street by our house, Fort Washington Avenue, became a river.  Our dog Smokey got caught in the rapids and finally managed to escape a block later.  Toni’s pet bird got swept outside when somebody opened the door and was never seen again.

According to Glenn Frankel’s “High Noon,” Gary Cooper was a natural to play Sheriff Will Kane.  Born in 1901 Frank Cooper in Helena, Montana, once called Last Chance Gulch, he spent summers on a family-owned ranch near where Lewis and Clark had camped a century before. Moving in with his parents in L.A. after three years of college, he hoped to become a commercial artist but found work as a Hollywood stuntman in westerns.  When he was in demand, his father hired an agent, Nan Collins, for him; because another actor already used his name, Nan suggested Gary, the name of her Indiana home town.  Appearing in “The Winning of Barbara Worth” (1926) with Ronald Coleman, who, unlike most silent film stars, used minimal gestures, such as raised eyebrow, pursed lips, or a sigh, Cooper modeled his stoic persona after the British actor. Tall, handsome, and a ladies’ man despite being married, Cooper was a legendary lover whose conquests included Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, and Tallulah Bankhead, who told reporters that she’d come to Hollywood to fuck Gary Cooper and after the fact, said, “Mission accomplished.”  Having turned 50, Cooper was eager to play what became the role of his career.