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. 

 

Amish in my Heart

Trying to do the right thing

Play it straight

The right thing changes

From state to state.”

  “Without a Trace,” Soul Asylum

Soul Asylum’s greatest hits has moved into heavy rotation on my CD player, thanks to “Black Gold” and “Without a Trace,” along with Collective Soul.

I tuned in the Olympic Men’s soccer final to root for the Brazilians against Mexico and found them down a goal after just 29 seconds.  Losing 2-0 with two minutes left, a Brazilian named Hulk scored and then with just seconds left Oscar mis-directed a header that would have tied the score.  And who says soccer isn’t exciting?  The Mexicans mugged Brazilian prodigy Neymar whenever he had the ball, picking up several yellow cards but no red ones.

After scrambling some eggs I went to Duneland Library and asked for them to order “Valor,” then checked out the latest issue of Vanity Fair.  In an interview National Public Radio’s Terry Gross repeated the advice of Mel Brooks to hope for the best but expect the worst.  I once looked forward to Esquire but detest its format.  The only memorable thing in the new issue was this joke: a grasshopper enters a saloon and the bartender says they have drink named for him.  “Oh, you have a drink named Steve?” the grasshopper asks.  At European Market I bought two yummy tacos from the folks who clean our condo twice a month.

Meg Grandfield Demakas was selling her children’s books at Lake Street Gallery during Pop Up Art in Miller.  Years ago, the IUN Education professor put on plays with our kids, and in a volume entitled “Hot Potato Poetry” she included an ode to her a high school teacher who inspired her to follow her muse.  Other titles include “Captain Jeb: Pirate Cat” and “Jeb Joins the Circus.”  Up the street at the former Miller Drugs were displays organized by Corey Hagelberg that included work by him and other Ball State alums.  Both Meg and Corey make use of Region themes and scenes in their work.

 

For the finale of “A Century of Music” in Highland the weather was perfect, a good crowd was on hand, and the performers shined.  In addition to “American Pie” and “Babe” solos Dave did a duet of “Don’t Stop Believing” and was in several other numbers in addition to scrambling around making sure the correct mikes were on.  Even though he got home late, Dave won two out of three games Sunday morning before attending tennis player Ashley Pabey’s graduation party.  In Amun Re Tom was way ahead after the first round, so I challenged him for most pyramids on one side and Dave edged both of us out with two power cards to our one.

Sunday while watching the PGA tournament, won by Rory McIlroy by a record eight strokes, I read an excellent afterword by Henry Farag for his autobiography “The Signal” and finished a manuscript my high school girlfriend Suzanna Murphy sent me entitled “Amish in My Heart.”  It describes her childhood friendship with a neighbor woman who cared for her after World War II while her father was in the Philippines and her mother had cancer and bouts of schizophrenia.  Now 65 years later Suzanna is living a simple life among Amish and Mennonite friends.  I told her she should get someone to help her market the story as an ebook.

On HBO’s “The Newsroom” Jeff Daniels plays anchor Will McAvoy and Sam Waterston his hard-drinking, compulsive gambler boss.  It looks promising.  Will’s ex-girlfriend MacKenzie, hired to be his new executive producer, is determined to emphasize quality over ratings.  The premier dealt with covering the 2010 BP oil spill.

Monday I appeared on Jerry Davich and Karen Walker’s “Out to Lunch” radio show at WVLP in Valparaiso.  Beforehand I chatted with Gregg the engineer about eccentric IU Northwest professor George Roberts, who helped him get into grad school and was his most unforgettable teacher. Jerry had recently visited Reiner Senior Center in Hobart and learned that I been a hit talking about the postwar “Age of Anxiety.”  After they asked me to compare those years with the present, I then brought the subject around to Latinos in the Region and “Valor: The Odyssey of Roy Dominguez.”  The 35 minutes went quickly and then the subject changed to a dress shop that suddenly closed, leaving brides who had paid for wedding dresses high and dry. 

Davich invited me back for next Monday’s show and “tagged me” on his Facebook page, thanking me for sharing my “wit, wisdom, and extensive knowledge of NWI history.”  Nice.  Next time I’ll talk about my latest Shavings, “Calumet Region Connections,” in which Jerry appears nine times.  Michele Gerke-Burton wrote Jerry that she loved my class so much she took a second one, adding, “He had crazy curly longer hair back in the day.  It was great.  He is a super hip top notch prof.”  Thanks, Michele.  Hope she tunes in next Monday.  In 1987 she wrote an article about June and Bill Fletcher that I published in my “Age of Anxiety” issue.  Due to a postwar housing shortage they rented a tiny two-room Hammond apartment until finding “a four-room shell” in East Gary (now Lake Station, but that’s another story) that “they finished themselves right before their third child Teresa arrived in 1949.”