A History of Work

There I am, off to the office in 1953, age 12. No not really. The suit and tie jobs were still in the distant future, although I traded in that bow tie for Windsor Knots. This must have been my "Sunday-go-to-meeting" outfit.

How about the hat? This was the de rigeuer style back then.

I don't remember my first paid "job".

There was a small store on Chestnut Street, just around the corner from where I lived. (The photo on the right is how that building looks today, no longer a store.) It was a mom and pop operation, very akin to what we might call a convenience store today. It sold a variety of foodstuff and other things people regularly needed or often ran short of. It wasn't a place anyone did their weekly grocery shopping, just a place to fill in the daily needs. Early on in my boyhood, neighbor's might call me over and ask if I would run to that store and get them bread or milk or some such item. They would give me a couple pennies or even a nickel for my trouble. Pennies could actually buy things in those days, they had real worth, even if sometimes I blew it on wax lips.

So I suppose you could call that my first job.

I had a number of chores at home I was expected to do, wash the car, mow the lawn, help weed the garden when we had one and keep my room clean and neat. I hated those first three and was a dismal failure at the fourth. I had one chore I loved, taking out the trash.

Things were not like today with all our many restrictions and fears. There was less waste and there was a kind of a priori recycling. You didn't throw anything away until it was beyond recognition, let alone use. Clothes were patched and socks were darned. When you found yourself patching patches, then the item became a dust cloth and beyond that use it was a rag for the Ragman. Yeah, there was a Ragman who came about the neighborhood and took old rags.

We lived in a town bursting at the seams with paper mills (almost all gone now) and our used foolscap and magazines went to paper drives and back into the hoppers of these plants. Soda bottles and such were collected by we kids and returned to the store for a couple cents deposit. Garbage, real garbage, potato peels and apple cores and table scraps went to the curb in iron pails. The Garbage man took the contents. You knew when he was coming since you smelled him two blocks away, maybe even across town on a hot summer day if the rotting pulp from the paper mills didn't overwhelm all other scents. He drove an open bin truck. The refuge from our plates went to the slop troughs of the pig farms.

Ah, but there were some things not gathered or collected by others and this was the trash, mostly odd papers and boxes. This was the trash I had responsibility to depose of and how I enjoyed it. You see, it was burnt in large steel 55-gallon drums. Just about everyone on the street had their drum and from it regularly waifed a thin white smoke of burning trash. What made it attractive to me was I got to play with fire.

Here I am (back to the camera and wearing my motorcycle hat) with friends finding other uses for those 55-gallon trash barrels.

But those were household chores, not paying jobs, unless you count my quarter allowance. Oddly, as much as I hated doing most those at home, I jumped at the opportunities to do these things for others. I would mow a lawn, wash a car, even hoe a garden for a fee. I would solicit from a neighbor those things I tried to duck out from at home. So I guess they were my first employments.

I was in elementary school when I did those.  I was also in elementary school when I became a professional writer writing, publishing and selling a newspaper ("The Daily Star," although it came out weekly) with my buddy, Stuart Meisel. We charged a penny a copy. We did make money. We were very successful.

Newspapers were to be important in my early "careers". When I moved from Grade School to Junior High I also moved to more regular employment, Paperboy being one. That occupation came a bit later and lasted only a short period, although I loved doing it and thought it the greatest job in the world. I kinda still think it was. I guess I'm a strange fish, but one of the things I enjoyed about the job was doing it in harsh weather, pushing on through the snow and battling the rain to keep my wares dry. I could imagine myself some kind of adventurer attempting to get supplies to an isolated outpost in some godforsaken part of the world, such fun.

I didn't like the breezy days or that blowhard Old Man March, no not at all. I could cover up my product from the downpours and hail stones if need be, but if an ill wind got under my pouch papers would do what Charles Brown's kite wouldn't. They would fly, here, there and everywhere.

I took over the route from my friend, Ron Tipton, known today as "Retired in Delaware". He moved on to bigger and better things, I hope, and turned over his customers to me. I had about 100 clients for the daily and perhaps a third less for the big Sunday edition. This was the Philadelphia Bulletin, then the premier Philly rag, now defunct. I was earning between 18 and 20 dollars a week, a lot of money for a thirteen-year-old kid in the early 1950s. That would have been around $148 to $165 today. Dailies cost a nickel and the Sunday paper was $25. I had to split that four ways, a portion for me, a portion for my Supervisor, some for the delivery truck driver and the rest to the owner of the newsstand where I picked up my allotment. I got a penny-and-a-half for the dailies and five cents for the Sunday.

And it only took me an hour a day to deliver. Wow, wouldn't you like to make a $165 an hour today?

I said this bonanza was short lived.  Ron held onto his route until after Christmas the year he quit. He wanted to garner those extra-bonus Christmas tips from his cliental. I took over for the New Year, but then my parents moved out of town and in June I was living in the country and could no longer do that route.

I had held other positions in my Junior High days. I had spent a time being caretaker for my friend Stuart's family, cutting grass, watching the place and so forth.

The Meisel's had a large stone house on a good sized lot in the historic part of town. Here is a photo of the front of the home. Sadly, despite attempts by my friend to have the place preserved, it was torn down and apartments built upon the site.

In those times, too, some us walked just east of town and got jobs at the Farmer's Market. The Market was only open on weekends. A lot of Mennonites and some Amish from Lancaster County came down and had produce or meat stalls there. The place was something of a bizarre, selling a little of much, books and boots, clothes and clothes lines, hunting gear and records. It had a penny arcade of pinball machines. The place was our hangout on weekend nights, feeding nickels into those contraptions or making little records in recording booths. I and a friend got jobs one year with a greengrocer. I was not happy. My friend got to wait on customers. I stood in the back behind a tub of water washing celery.  I wasn't long for that job.

When we moved from town upcountry, there wasn't a lot of opportunities for a teen. It was still real country then and there wasn't much around. In the summers I got employed on some farms in the area as a picker. I picked tomatoes and I picked strawberries. It was sweaty, uncomfortable work. It isn't called stoop labor for nothing. You either spent the day bend over or waddling up the rows like a duck. You came home sticky, covered with dust, thirsty, stiff and tired.

I plucked plants for the two summers between ninth and tenth, and between tenth and eleventh. On the third summer of High School  I moved up and out, getting a job loading 18-wheelers at the farms in Lancaster County. Those Amish boys would gee their horse wagons up along side and I would offload their harvest onto the flatbeds, bushel baskets of tomatoes heading to the ketchup factories in the Western end of the state. The baskets got stacked to just above my head all down the trailer. You have any idea how many bushels of tomato you can stack six high down thirty feet of truck?

I think I got paid ten bucks a load.

That was summertime, when the livin' is easy. The winters were harsh and sparse. I got an occasional gig shoveling snow, mostly the parking lot of a restaurant called Flowing Springs Inn in Kirkwood, about four miles from my home. That was a hit or miss proposition. I only made money when a snow storm hit, otherwise I missed out on earning anything.

That's the Flowing Springs Inn as it looks today, under the name Titus Inn. That enclosed porch was open back then, so I had to shovel it and its steps off as well.

I guess I started those childhood chores for hire when I was 8. I might have done some earlier, but I was living isolated from the world in a swamp for a couple years. So all those little scraping jobs covered about a decade, from the third grade until I graduated high school.

They were the beginning of a history of work. Much more was to come and still is.

Hot and Hazy: Man Boobs and other Rambles, The Series Continues

At this time in my life I do not appear in public shirtless, for basically the same reason that Arnold (pictured left) should consider the same policy. There was a time I hated to remove my top for another reason, but we'll get to that next post.

Even so, it has been a blast furnace out there for several days, and since the "out there" I have been in the most is backwoods, I made a couple concessions to the hot and broke my rule. Doing so was not without reluctance, but a week ago I was on a trail where over the many moments I have walked it, I have almost never met another hiker and it had been months since that last "almost never" occurred. It seemed safe to throw caution, and my shirt, to the wind and I must say the shade of the forest did feel good on my bare skin.

I was indeed enjoying this freedom when what to my wandering eyes should appear, but a lady and two tiny reind...I mean, two dogs, neither really tiny, coming up the path toward me.

Oh well, nothing to do but step aside, blush, and let the lady and her pooches pass. We spoke briefly as polite people do and went our separate ways.

And yesterday I was on the same trail and made the same reluctant decision, and wouldn't you know, here comes the same woman and the same dogs and we exchanges the same pleasantries and went our same separate ways. And still I met the same woman once again before I had finished the trail. This lady has now seen my bare chest more times in recent years than anyone except my wife. My doctor hasn't even seen my bare chest three times in the last two years.

Okay, why are we talking about bare chests today anyway. It is because in a recent Post on his Blog, "Retired in Delaware", my life-long friend Ron complained he was getting "man boobs" (sometimes called "moobs"). On the right is the photo he posted as proof of his getting this condition plus a paunch. But before we deal with how if he thinks this he has a very vivid imagination, we probably should take a look at the word "boob" and gain some insight into it and this thing called "man boobs".

The word was once considered somewhat vulgar, but it has grown to such common overuse you barely go a day without hearing or seeing it, especially on the boob tube. For some of a newer generation who may think boob tube is some sort of pornographic peep show on the Internet, the term came into being about fifty years ago to describe television. Therefore, we see the word was in the common vocabulary decades ago. It is a stupid sounding word — boob — and that was its meaning during the years of my youth. If you did something stupid, you were a "boob". Crazy people were put in a "booby hatch", because they had to be restrained from doing stupid things. These terms had a different origin and had nothing to do with chests.

Boob, meaning fool, is a corruption of the Spanish for stupid, "bobo". It actually traces to the Latin word "balbus". Balbus didn't mean stupid, it meant stammering, but since the Romans thought anyone who stammered was stupid, it is virtually the same thing. Anybody ever read I, Claudius or see the PBS series based on it? Claudius had a bad stammer so everyone thought he was a moron until he became emperor.

Boob, meaning breast, has a different etymology, not Spanish nor Latin. Actually, there are some varied opinions. Some think it came from the buboes, the swelling of lymph glads, during the bubonic plague. Others place the blame on a 1762 novel by Henry Fielding, where a woman named Lady Booby tried to seduce the hero by exposing her breasts.  Since the word boob or booby didn't really come into popular usage until the mid-1900s I rather discount this theory. Somehow I don't think a lot of people were reading,  Fielding s' The History of Joseph Andrews in the 1930s and '40s.

The word "bubby" came about in the 1930s and over the next couple decades turned into "booby" and "boob". "Bubby" came from the German word "Bubbi", and remember Germany was a country much watched in the 'thirties. "Bubbi" means "teat" and "teat" means basically a nipple or the part of a mammal where it's young can drink milk. Teat was a fairly common term in farm country when I was a boy.

Fine, students, history lesson is over, let's get to the heart of his matter of "man boobs".

This term probably became popular in our lexicon after a particular Seinfeld episode concerning a problem of George's father and the invention of the Manssiere or Bro. It is a condition many of we males experience with age as years of gravity, decline of exercise and possible overeating have their way with our bodies. (Remember when Arnold had six-pack abs instead of looking like there were too many six-packs inside the abs.) Yes, sad but true, for many of us our once defined hard pecs become round and soft and resemble women's breasts. It generally does go as a set with a growing paunch. Look at my friend's photo again and you'll see he has pretty much failed the test of true man boobs and paunch. But he is young yet, only 69, he still has time to grow that belly and droop that chest.

In truth, this condition my friend is concerned about isn't really man boobs. It is just some flab and weakening muscle tone. There is a medical condition of man boobs called "Gynecomastia" caused by possible hormonal imbalances or other health issues and sometimes by medications. Men suffering from Gynecomastia can develop quite impressive breasts.

If Ron is concerned, he need only compare himself to Arnold. He has a long way to go to boast of a paunch of such worthwhile note.

Oh, and what of myself? I've already confessed I never take my shirt off in public. I don't even walk about my house shirtless. So this is very difficult for me, but here I be shirtless on that trail yesterday. Ron can take more comfort now. I am three inches shorter than he and probably weight thirty pounds more right now.

I've always felt I had a body build by a government committee. More about that next time.


TO BE CONTINUED -- NEXT: I Sing the Body Elastic.

Hot and Hazy: Ramar Quicksand, Nightmares, Words Writers Write and Bloggers Blab, Great Blue Herons, Man Boobs and other Rambles, The Series Continues

My friend Ronald over on his Blog "Retired in Delaware" posted about having a nightmare during his afternoon nap. He woke in a sweat from images of sinking in quicksand in his neighbor's yard. Not that his neighbor has pools of quicksand laying in wait for the occasional trespasser, just that was his dilemma in this dream. There he sank like some hapless character in "Ramar of the Jungle," a show starring Jon Hall as the square-jawed jungle sawbones in both Africa and Indian. It was a show those of my generation from my portion of the land would not have missed watching each week on TV, hurrying in from our own childhood hide and seek games when he came on.

 "Be careful, guys, I think Quicksand is lurking around the corner!"

It seemed an unusual amount of times someone would fall into quicksand in Ramar's adventures. If it were a bad guy, they would sink readily until a final shot of their hand, fingers wiggling, disappearing beneath this terrible grave. If they were a good guy or the damsel in distress they would writhe about screaming for much of the half hour until Ramar would arrive. Generally he rescued them by holding a stick across the pit for them to grab. During the times of their imprisonment they would sink up to their neck, then a cut-away to Ramar racing down some trail. When we came back to the victim they would have somehow rose out to their waist only to sink to the neck again before our hero arrived.

Neither the well-educated research doctors or their intrepid, experienced guide ever seemed aware it is almost impossible to sink fully into quicksand due to its density. Nor were they aware that the easiest escape is to kick your feet and swim out.

When my friend had visited a week or so ago we had hiked back along a trail and had to jump over some mud holes (one such jump and mud hole pictured at the top of this post). He had made a comment about quicksand in Ramar and we had then discussed those scenes. This may be why the image popped up in his nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares, I awoke from one the other night. I remember almost nothing about it even though it seemed very clear while dreaming. I only know there was some kind of ghost and I felt very paranoid when I awoke, jumping at any sound and spooking at every shadow. 

By the aside, have you ever noticed ghosts always appear in films dressed in the garb of their time of death. Clothes are inanimate objects with no soul or spirit. Why would clothes remain in the spirit world? I don't believe in ghosts, but if I were ever to see one I would expect it to be naked.

Anyway, my little nightmare was startling, but harmless. The real nightmare for me came that morning after my morning walk. Now any regular reader of this Blog knows I am a fanatic walker. Any day I do not work, I set off early to hike four or five miles in our wonderful state parks. But I like variety, so am always looking for a new path to explore. Thus I decided on Monday to give Ashland Nature Center a try.

I had been there before with The Little Woman several years ago and also with the kids when they were still kids. I hadn't been there lately and I heard recently about their nice trails. I knew it could be tricky to find, so I consulted the world leading expert on finding places; that is, I looked on a Google map. Ah, looks easy, go up Rt. 52, turn left on Rt. 82, then on Barley Mill Road to their entrance. 

Yeah, sure, and okay, finding the turn off 52 on to 82 was easy. There was even a big sign with an arrow saying, "Ashland Nature Center is this way, fool!" So, I in my naivete felt assured there would be other such signs at each road juncture. I think you know the answer to that one.

Route 82 did a bit of twisting and turning and it came into what seemed an intersection, but no sign no how. I guessed left and entered more twists and turns and somehow ended up at Ashland by pure luck.  So far so good, I was there. I walked up the entrance path and went into the office. I didn't know if there was a fee or not. A lady, most likely a retiree who volunteered as receptionist, greeted me and said there was a $4.00 donation asked. I in return offered to take a senior membership for the year. This made her very happy, she took my credit card info and bid me have a good time for I was now free to walk their trails.

She did not give me a token or barge or anything, so I don't know how anyone would know if I had paid or not. I suspect I could have just bypassed the office and trod my merry way for free, but I'm not the type of guy to do such a thing. 

I went off and walked the Succession Trail. It was nice and I enjoyed my jaunt, but being warm I left after that one path, it had taken about an hour. I got in my car and drove out to the road I had come in on and disappeared into outer darkness.

I do not know where or how I turned the wrong way, but soon I realized the buildings I saw were different from any I had passed coming.  But never no mind, Delaware is a small state, I would come to something I knew, some crossroad whose name was familiar. But I didn't. I drove and drove and nothing was anything I knew. I soon realized I had turned enough I wouldn't find my way back. I had to keep going in hope I would pop out on I-95 or something. I mean, honestly, this was one of the few times I actually wished I would be popping out on I-95.

The landscape became more and more strange. I saw barn-like structures with no windows that I assumed were mushroom farms. But nowhere was there a route sign or a direction sign. Even the road I was on kept changing names. I had no idea which way was north, south, east or west.

Now I don't get nervous when I get lost in the woods. Been there and done that and stayed calm.  I knew where east was and I knew where the creeks flowed and if I kept one or the other to my side I would wander out somewhere. You know, Tuesday afternoon I watched The Blair Witch Project on TV. That I watched that whole movie tells you just how dreary the other selections were. But I was tired and didn't really want to do anything but lay on the couch and watch the tube. So I watched those stupid kids meander and whine through a Maryland woods.

Golly, what was with these guys. They were supposed to be highly intelligent college kids on a well-planned project. Yet they got lost in this woods next to a stream they had found by following a map. Okay, they lost the map, the one jerk threw it away, but they had used it to find the stream and they were at the stream and yet they kept going in circles. Follow the stream, you morons. The current flows one way. If it was flowing that way when you started off, then go the way it wasn't flowing for pete's sake. And if you follow the way it flows you'll eventually come to a river and people live by rivers. And for corn's sake, you had a compass. But so what? Even if you didn't, you could figure out which way was north. Just stick a stick in the ground and mark the shadow with a twig. Wait a few minutes and mark where the shadow is now. Put your left foot by the first mark and your right by the second and, by gosh, you're facing north!

You know something, most of the dialogue, such as it was, in The Blair Witch Project was ad-libbed by the actors. The producers made two mistakes. They hired actors who's vocabulary didn't extend much past four-letter words and who didn't know how to aim a camera. I mean, really, you let the actors do the filming? And they were supposed to be good students of the craft of making documentaries and they didn't have a clue on how to aim a camera? My shaky films of my trail walks, as stomach-churching as my cinematography can be, is academy award caliber next to the shots in Blair Witch. Come on, didn't you really root for the witch to get these annoying creatures sooner than later?

Anyway, I couldn't stick any sticks up on the car dash to get my bearings, so I drove on and speaking of being in weird territory, I had news on the radio.

The next thing my radio gave was a weather report. It talked about rain. When had rain been in any forecast? And then the weatherman said, "It might even rain of the Fourth of July." The Fourth of July? Wasn't this Monday, July 18? Why is the radio giving weather forecasts for the Fourth of July weekend? Had I went through a time warp? Was the next voice to be heard that of Rod Serling?

"Observe this man. He thought he was just going home from a walk. What Larry didn't know was he had just made a wrong turn into The Twilight Zone!"

This wasn't good. Where was I? I plowed ahead and came into the center of Kennett Square. I turned left onto State Street, the avenue where we had ambled during the Mushroom Festival last year. This didn't help. I kept going and was out of Kennett into more unknown territory. I had been driving quite awhile now, still not certain which direction I was going and still seeing no route or directional signs.

Maybe I was heading into Maryland. Man, all I had on were thin white running shorts and a tee shirt. One saving grace, I had a bit of money and a credit card. Usually I only carried my ID when hiking, but since I didn't know if Ashland charged a fee I had tucked the card and some bills into my little belt pouch.

Suddenly I saw a route sign and number I knew, Junction 41. I came out on Route 41 in Avondale, Pennsylvania. There was even a directional sign, Wilmington to the left. I still had a long ride through unfamiliar scenery, but I knew 41 got me somewhere around home. Soon I knew I was back in Delaware and my own stomping grounds, I ran into road construction delays.

Eventually I stumbled into my own living room. What should have been my twenty minute drive home had turned into an hour and twenty minute nightmare, which brings me to that fuel preservation I mentioned in my last post.

You see, originally I was scheduled to work three days this week, but last Sunday I got an email telling me my entire schedule had been cancelled, I was to take off the whole week. Okay, at least I'll save some gasoline. Then on Monday I get lost driving for over and hour and on Wednesday we have a power outage and we drive for an hour to keep cool. So much for saving any fuel. I just filled up again this morning.

TO BE CONTINUED - NEXT: What or what not should we writers write.

Wave to Uncle Ron (Written January 29, 2011)

Retired in Delaware found himself visited by the Black Dog of Depression the other day. That can be almost as bad as being hounded by the Hounds of the Baskervilles I understand. Such beasts have tracked down The Little Woman many times in her life. It isn't a pleasant thing.

Ron seems to be recruiting cats to hiss and claw away the Black Dog, so here is another cat trying to cheer him up.

This little guy, Kerouac (yes, named for the "Beat" writer), a few months ago was on the road himself. Do not know his history, but my son and his co-workers found this tiny kitten huddled beneath the carts outside their store.

He had apparently been hiding out there a couple days. My son brought him home and here he is.

 If he wasn't here, he would have probably died, either from starvation, because he was skinny and famished when we took him in, or run over by the many cars in the parking lot of that mall.

He is the cutest little rascal, who nows likes to sleep in the crook of my arm when he isn't finding something new to play with.

Last year about this same time in similar conditions, that is much, much snow, this other cat showed up here. He was the opposite of Kerouac, being very large and black. Where he came from we do not know either and we assumed for a long time he was feral, but it turned out he wasn't. We were putting out food for him through two blizzards and the entire winter, finally luring him close that May. Now he is not out in that stuff this year, but cozy and warm and happy to snooze in a bed too small.

He had headed to this bed when we took him in and I guess he considers it his and compared to sleeping beneath a house in freezing weather, who cares if it is a bit snug.

The cat in the new Profile Picture is Mark. Mark came here (just for overnight) five years ago when he was a kitten. My middle daughter brought him home. He had been found wandering the road in front of St. Marks High School by a shelter worker, who rescued him and brought him to the shelter. My daughter, also a shelter worker, brought him home because there was no room for him at the inn. "Just overnight," she said. Mark made a beeline for my chest as I lay watching TV and nuzzled up against my chin. So much for this just overnight nonsense.

Cats always know who the big softie is.

On the Days of Deaths

The funeral of Rudolph Valentino in New York, 1926. 100,000 people came, two women committed suicide and a mysterious Lady in Black lay flowers on his grave for years after.

Everybody died, the known and unknown. Perhaps some of us are remembered by friends and relatives until they go, a few are recalled by their life achievements beyond generations. Then there are some who remain indelibly impressed in the memory of many; people who's death for some reason, whether sudden, shock, surprise or sadness of loss remains within our memory.

Rudolph Valentino was such a one for many, he was only 31 at death, but not for me. He was before my time. Once I would have said: "well before my time", but truthfully, his death was much closer to my birth than my last birthday and 15 years doesn't seem like much time before anymore.

For my friend, Ron, at Retired in Delaware when Elizabeth Taylor died on Wednesday, March 23, 2011, she was such a person for him. "I will remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard," he said and he wrote about a list of people who he can say the same about.  Most of those he listed, perhaps all, were memorable deaths, that probably those of us alive for each do remember well. I can't claim I remember exactly where I was or doing when each passed, except perhaps John F. Kennedy. However, I may recall it because I wrote a long essay about what happened that November day at the time.

Anyway, here is my brief recall of those deaths on his list.

I was on my computer early that Wednesday morning, as usual. I receive my local paper online and had just read the obituaries. They made no mention of Elizabeth Taylor yet. I was contemplating another's death, John J. O'Toole at age 83. A few minutes later I saw a blurb on the web that Taylor had passed. My first thought was, "Poor John, you picked the wrong day to die." If you have some minor celebrity you may receive some coverage on your death, but not if a mega-star dimmed at the same time.

I didn't know John, but I had met him, had spoken to him. I can't say the same for Taylor. I also know many are asking who's John J. O'Toole. He was an actor, dancer, singer, producer, director legend in the area of Arden, the founder  and owner of the Candlelight Dinner Theater for thirty years.

Now I doubt thirty years from now I will remember where I was or doing when O'Toole or Taylor died. I doubt thirty years from now I will be around. Will you remember where you were when you hear the news of my death? But here are the people who I do remember even if I had to put on spurs and dig a bit to recall where I was at the time.

While we are on Elizabeth Taylor we probably should mention three people not on Ron's list, but who's parting  did grab the same type of attention. I even remember very well where I was and doing when word came on one of these. All three also had close ties to Elizabeth Taylor.

The most recent was Michael Jackson, apparently a somewhat popular singer. He died at age 50 of questionable circumstances on Thursday, June 25, 2009 in Los Angeles. This was two days before my birthday and  death was announced at 2:26 Pacific time. It was 5:26 here on the  East coast and we were just getting ready to have dinner when the report came over TV. Coincidentally, this past Thursday, the day after Taylor died, jury selection began in the trial of Jackson's doctor for manslaughter.

Many, many years before Michael Jackson's last moon walk, another pop idol died suddenly. He also was friends with Elizabeth and co-starred with her in a little movie called "Giant", along with another actor's whose death caused some stir, Rock Hudson. This young man, for he was only 25 when he died and already something of a legend in films was James Dean. He was killed on Friday afternoon, September 30, 1955 at 5:45 PM Pacific time (8:45 in the East). He had just bought a new sports car that morning and he collided with another car that evening and was killed. I was 14 years old and can't say exactly what I was doing at the time.

As it were, a reporter has just published a story that he claims Elizabeth Taylor whispered in his ear during the filming of "Giant". She and Dean had become friends and confidents and he told her as a boy he had been sexually molested by his preacher several times. The reporter says Elizabeth told him, but swore him to secrecy until after she died. I always approach such things with a grain of salt. Now she is dead and Dean is long cold, he has released it and who is there to confirm or deny?

Oh, the picture on the left is me in 1958 attempting to look my most James Deanest.

The third person connected to Elizabeth Taylor, and this is the one where I remember where I was at the time, is Mike Todd (birth name: Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen), a film producer best know for "Eighty Days Around the World" and being Elizabeth Taylor's third husband. I suppose there is a certain irony that Todd was killed in a plane crash in Grants, New Mexico on March 22, 1958 and Elizabeth on March 23, 2011. She had very much wanted to be on the trip with Todd, but because she had a cold he insisted she stay home; otherwise, she would have died with him at age 26. Todd was 48.

I recall the news of Todd's dead because his plane had been effected by the bad weather that week. A great blizzard had hit the country on March 20 and on Saturday, March 22 my family and I were still snowbound in a house with no electric, heat or water. The news came over a little transistor radio I had.

Just short of a year later, on February 3, 1959 at 1:00 AM Central time another plane went down in bad weather and crashed in Iowa. It took three performers to their grave, Jiles P. Richardson (known as The Bog Bopper), Richie Valens and the very influential Buddy Holly.

Holly was tired of the tour bus and paid for a seat on this charter. There was room for two others. Dion didn't want to pay the $36 fee and Ritchie Valens flipped a coin with another member of the group for a seat. Waylon Jennings was to take the third seat, but J. P. Richardson felt he was coming down with the flu, so asked if he could go on the plane. Jennings relented, thus sparing him for a long and distinguished career.

Given it was 2:00 AM where I was on a Tuesday morning and I had school the next day, I guess I was asleep in my bed.

I do know where I was when I heard of Marilyn Monroe's death. She died sometime in the night either late on August 4 or early August 5, 1962. She was discovered by a housekeeper dead upon her bed. The housekeeper called her psychoanalyst, rather than the police. Her doctor came to the room, as apparently did a number of others before the police got involved. It was ruled she died of an overdose of sleeping pills, but her death has remained in the throes of speculation and mystery, some of which involved Jack and Robert Kennedy. She was 36 years old.

My wife and I were on vacation at the time. We had first spent six days touring Virginia by car, but on Sunday, August 5, we were on our third and last day staying in New York City. We first heard the news while walking down a street looking for a restaurant to have lunch.

Speaking of the Kennedys, they are on the list and chronologically, President John F. Kennedy was the next to go. He died on a Friday in Dallas, Texas at 12:30 PM Central time (1:30 here) on November 22, 1963. I was at work when rumors circulated the president had been shot. I tried to call home, but you couldn't get a line. That confirmed it for me. I remember this death vividly, but as stated earlier, this may be because I wrote about the day it happened. You can read my full account of that day by clicking here - "Reflections on a Friday".

In 1968 I was following the Hippie crowd, even though I worked full time for an oil company. I was also writing for several publications and in 1969 I left the corporate world for a while to simply be a writer. 1968 was a hot year politically. The Vietnam war was raging, the Civil Rights Movement was cresting and Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for the white house again. There were several candidates vying for the Democratic nomination and the most appealing to a lot of young people was Robert F. Kennedy. During his campaign that year, he came to Philadelphia.

Kennedy was to hold a rally in front of the Democratic Headquarters on Chestnut Street around lunchtime one day. I walked down there on my own lunch break and the place was mobbed. Kennedy was late arriving and the mob just kept growing and were somewhat restless. The police were all about and they were pushing everyone up off the street and cursing at us none too flatteringly. I was along side a stone building on what, 15th or 16th Street. I had a good view of where Kennedy did finally come and stand in his open top car to speak. It didn't hurt that I was taller than most around me. However, the constant compression of the people was threatening the well-being of a young woman in front of me. She wasn't all that big and she was being crushed into the stone wall of the building. I stepped up and put myself between her and the crowd, because I wasn't as easy to push.

Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel where he had made his victory speech after winning the California primary. He died just around 24 hours later at age 42. He was shot at 11:30 Pacific time on June 4, 1968. It was 3:30 of the morning of June 5 where I was, but we were watching the telecast of the speech in our living room, and then the chaos that erupted.

Those years were years of assassinations. Besides the Kennedys, leaders of the Black Rights movement were targets, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and then in 1968, the Face of Civil Rights, The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee. It was April 4, 1968 at 7:05 PM, a Thursday evening and it send shock waves throughout the nation. These were very volitive times.

I was working in the headquarters of that oil company at the time. We came to work the next day, but then they sent everyone home early because their was rampant fear of riots breaking out in the city.

The last person that was on Ron's list was Princess Di. I'm not much of a Royal family follower. Don't have much time for him to tell the truth, but I do know where I was when this death happened. She was killed in that Paris tunnel just after Midnight on August 31, 1997. It was just after 7:00 PM on a Saturday night here. My wife, three kids and I were just entering the Grandview Speedway near Boyertown, Pa. for the stock car races. We didn't hear the news when it happened, but we did on the radio driving home. If I recall correctly, it began to rain late in the evening and it was miserable driving in the dark, hard to see. It came on the radio and we were all shocked.

Anyway, that is my take on this memorable death list, sort of a ghoulish exercise. Besides these particular people, I am certain there are others whose death remained strong in peoples minds for a long time, perhaps forever. I took Ron's list, added a couple and this is mine.

I would add one more, though. This one happened on a Sunday evening in Los Angeles on June 12, 1994. It was around 10:00 PM Pacific Time and 7:00 PM here. My son and I were driving to a pool party at one of the coaches house. This was a get together thrown by the coach for our Little League team. The outcome of this person's (actually two people's) death was to hold the public attention for months. I think I read more than a dozen books about it in the years since. It was a murder and we watch in fascination a strange slow police pursuit across the LA freeways and it gave us things like the "Dancing Itos" and an ill-fitting bra on Seinfeld.

That was, of course, was the brutal slaying of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Do You feel a Draft in Here

One fine day in the middle of the '60s The Kid received an officious looking letter.

It began, "Greetings..."

The photo to the left was basically The Kid's reaction.

The era of the "Kennedy Husbands" was over. President Johnson had rescinded Kennedy's directive against drafting married men for Vietnam. the Kid's number had come up.

The Kid had never tried to dodge the draft, and at one point very seriously considered enlisting. Things were a bit different at the time he thought about that, so let's jump in our Special DeLorean and do a little time travel.

In was the end of the '50s. The Kid had graduated high school and after a stint in a technical school and a couple of short-lived odd jobs was looking for permanent work. It wasn't easy going. Eisenhower's Presidential Term was winding down with a bit of a recession. Actually, it was to prove to be the most major recession between 1945 and 1970. Employers weren't exactly combing the alleyways and back fields for new hires, especially know-not-much-of-anything high school punks.

The Kid's friend, Ron (of the "Retired in Delaware Blog") was experiencing the same desert of desperation. Nowadays, Ron is an old goat too, so I don't know exactly what his memories of that time are, but here is the way this Old Goat recalls it. (I'm paraphrasing the conversation, I can't remember the exact words, but these are pretty close.)

The Kid's friend said to him one day, "I'm going to join the Navy. I've been talking with the recruiter and tomorrow I'm going to Coatesville and sign up."

"Why the Navy?"

"I want to get outta here, Kid. I want to see the world, travel to different places."

[To the right is Young Ron peering out to distant worlds...or something.]

A couple days later they got together again and Ron says, "I did it. I joined the Army."

"I thought you were joining the Navy?"

"I was, but when I went to meet the recruiter he was tied up. While I'm waiting this Army guy goes, 'Come here, kid', so I joined the Army."

"Why didn't you wait for the Navy guy? Why the Army?"

"Better looking uniforms."

"Better looking uniforms? Why didn't you join the Marines!!!"

[On the left is Ron in his "better looking uniform".]

"You know, Lar, why don't you join with me. They got this thing called "the Buddy System". You join with a friend and you go through everything together."

"I don't know...'

"Come on. You join, you get a private physical, you go to Boot camp together, everything."

The kid started thinking maybe it was a good idea. The job search thing was getting old and leading nowhere. There wasn't any war going on. The Kid had dutifully went into the local YMCA on his eighteenth birthday and registered for Selective Service, so why take the chance on the draft. Get it out of the way now and do it with someone he knew. The only thing about it that worried The Kid was his fear of heights. He had seen little clips at the movies of boot camp and all these recruits climbing this tower of logs, all the way to the tipsy-top, then over and down. That scared him some.

But he was a shy guy then and that "private physical" had a certain appeal. He'd talk to his parents. The Kid's parents said "No" to signing their approval (and parental permission was required for anyone under age 21 back then).

In the meantime, Ron ran into some medical problems along the way that delayed his actual getting into that "better looking uniform" and The Kid found a job.

Okay, back to the future. The Kid got married. He wanted Ron as best man, but his friend was in Training and couldn't get a pass home. The young married couple bought a house and lost a child and they had to sell the home, but then their income was improving and they were kind of settled in and comfortable when the "Greetings" and panic arrived.

The Kid didn't want to go in the Armed Forces now. There was a bloody war now! It was called Vietnam and it was becoming a mess. The Kid knew exactly where he was going to be headed once he was drafted and there was a good chance he could be killed.

And then he found himself on a dark Coatesville street with a bunch of strangers being handed a small Bible...

Coming Next: Walk Like a Duck

Walk Like a Duck

And then he found himself on a dark Coatesville street with a bunch of strangers being handed a small Bible...


In the mid-1960s The Kid got this letter that said, "Greetings". Somewhere within it he was told to be on this street corner in Coatesville at a very early hour of the morning.


So there he was and it was still dark out. He was milling nervously about, shaking a bit because it was chilly and he was a little nervous. Other young men kept arriving on the street corner and some paced along with him, others huddled along a building smoking and not a few cursed the hour and the cold.


Eventually a bus pulled to the curb and men shuffled toward its door. These two women appeared from somewhere, standing on each side of the line and as each man boarded they handed him a little book with a burgundy cover. It was a New Testament (King James Version). The Kid's stomach tightened. What were they going to do at the other end of this bus route? Ship him right from the bus door to the battlefield?


He stuck the little Bible in his back pocket.

The door hissed closed and the bus rumbled off to Philadelphia. It was pretty quiet inside. Everyone looked a bit glum. Some tried to sleep, some flipped through the New Testament, but no one said much of anything. By the time the bus pulled up at 401 North Broad Street in the city the sun had come up.


We were herded into a long room with benches down each side and told to sit. A uniformed man entered. He had sergeant stripes on his sleeve and a lot of hash marks below. His tone said he meant business and he told us to count off by twos. Then he gave instructions in that clipped, acronym-filled style of the military and the police. The Kid didn't understand half what he said, but caught enough to know his next step.


"At 800 hours, Number Ones will fall out and proceed to the yellow line to your left." or something like that.


When the clock reached 8:00 AM someone else (not in a uniform) came in and said, "Would number ones follow me."


They didn't fall in at any yellow line yet. Number ones were told to go in a room and take off everything but undershorts and socks and only then to line up at the yellow line, which the person pointed to. Number Ones were told they would have a physical exam this morning. Afterward they'd  be allowed time for lunch and at 1:00 in the afternoon would receive a mental test in room such and such.


The Kid undressed and placed his belongings in a basket that was placed on a shelf and locked. Now The Kid was thinking of his friend Ron getting that private examination several years earlier. His friend was done with his Army time now. He had been smart, had joined when the world was at relative peace and been honorably discharged before Vietnam became hot.


As The Kid lined up in his tighty-whities amidst a motley crew of men in various briefs and boxers, his mind flashed back to a similar embarrassment.

He had been a Boy Scout and one summer went to Camp Horseshoe with his troop. Upon arrival they were sent to this open tent and told to strip bare. The Kid didn't like to undress in front of others. He was shy and self-conscious about his body. At the time he was in the Scouts, he was at his adolescent most geeky period. He was tall, gangly and rib-showing skinny. He felt freaky enough fully dressed and the last thing he wanted was people staring at his naked scarecrow body. He never liked the gang showers at Junior High for this reason and this was worse, far worse.


(The Old Goat hates this picture, by the way. The Kid has this stupid grin planted on a head that looks like a balloon about to pop. And those knobby knees between those high-waist shorts and silly stockings -- ugh! The photo should have been burned decades ago.)


All we Scouts were lined up at the front of this tent with open sides, The Kid and all the rest starkers, in Full-Monty Mode, naked as Jay Birds -- get the picture. And the line stretched out across a grass patch in the open air where more Scouts were arriving with their moms and sisters and all kind of strangers who had no business viewing a bunch of boys in the all-together. IT WAS HUMILIATING! And The Kid nor Old Goat have ever understood why we were made to strip naked. When The Kid arrived at the doctor, who was seated on a stool, all he said was, "Spread your toes apart." The Doc bend forward and visibly examined The Kid's toes, declared him free of Athlete's Foot and sent him off to dress. WHY DID WE HAVE TO BE NAKED FOR THAT?!!!!


At least the Government was letting The Kid keep his shorts on. 


Now The Kid was thinking he might fail this exam. He didn't want to end up in Vietnam so he was depending on his physical flaws to save him. He was nearsighted with an astigmatism. He had been born with a damaged ear drum that caused him problems with distinguishing some words. He had also been born with a heart murmur. 


The exam was like a comedy routine, a joke. Did they test The Kid's hearing at all, the Old Goat can't remember. He can remember the eye test and this is no kidding.


"Step up to that line," said a guy in a white coat, presumably a doctor of some kind.


The Kid toed the mark.


"See that chart on the wall, " the Doc asked.


"Yes," said The Kid.


"Passed." said the Doc, "Move on."


The line snaked through various stations in this gym like room until they wended their way to a door at the rear. Here a dozen at a time were taken into a bright, white room where three men in white coats waited. These men walked about them. "Take off your shorts," one of these White Coats said. 


Oh, they must be going to examine our feet!


"Now I want you to squat down and walk like a duck to that end of the room and back again," said the White Coat .


Do you understand what a ridiculous sight that was. The Old Goat is glad his friend Ron wasn't there in those days with his ever present digital camera. Or worse, his Flip Video. The Kid would be a comedy act on YouTube today. 

It’s a hut, hut, quack, quack, quack.

I hear ‘Nam Ain't much fun,

But this here stethoscope

Is protecting my bun

From being shot, I hope.

You guys should have become docs

But today you’re Uncle Sam’s sitting ducks.

So-o-o-o,

Don’t think twice, boys, about

Being embarrassed

Don’t think twice, boys, about

Being embarrassed

Waddling across this floor

Bent over bare-assed.

It’s a hut, hut, quack, quack, quack.

                                            
From the play, "Life Ate My Homework"

                                            by Stuart & Larry

                                            Copyright 2005

                                            Lyrics of  "Duck Walk Blues"

At the end of this disgusting display, The Kid and his fellow featherless ducks were ordered to stand at attention while the White Coats circled them again. They were ordered to do another awkward act, which we will not describe here. One of the White Coats stopped behind The Kid.


"What's that on your shoulder, " he asked.




Next: Lunchtime Lunatics, Mental Morons and Final Fate.