Memorial Day

Memorial Day has become, like all of our national holidays, another three-day weekend for most Americans to shop, camp, picnic, grill, or just laz around. Pools open. Ballgames play. Cars race. Everything’s on sale at Macy’s. Yes, there are still some parades and ceremonies in decorated cemeteries to acknowledge the original purpose of the holiday – honoring those who have given their lives in military service for our country. But over the past few decades, and particularly over the past decade, since 9/11 and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the thrust of the holiday is like so many others (July 4^th, Veterans Day, Flag Day, even Thanksgiving and Labor Day) a jingoistic and politically opportunistic mandate to “support our troops.” I’m all for supporting our troops, though I personally believe the best way of supporting our troops in most wars, including Afghanistan and Iraq, is not to send them there to die in the first place or to bring them home as soon as the cause is won or shown to be unwinnable.

Every Memorial Day for the past 42 years, I think of Ralph Bickford. He’s the only person I’ve known who has died in combat. (That in itself says much about the disconnect between our military campaigns of the past half century and the vast majority of the population.) Ralph was one of my best friends in fifth and sixth grades at Adams Elementary in Wichita, Kansas. We tumbled together in gym class, played bongos and limbo. One of our family’s best (and neighborhood’s most prolific) cats, Boliver, was given to us by Ralph. We migrated to other friends in junior high and grew apart, though still had occasional contact. In high school we saw each other seldom, running in different groups, pursuing different interests. After high school, I went off in fits and starts to college, while Ralph apparently joined the military, though I don’t recall being aware of it at the time. Not having been close to Ralph for several years, I have no idea if he enlisted out of patriotic duty or fear of the draft or just nothing else to do with his life.

I don’t know how I heard about Ralph’s death in Vietnam, probably from my mother who had occasional contact with his mother. I also heard from someone (probably not my mother) that Ralph had enlisted at the same time as his best friend in high school, David Lind (they had been on the gymnastic team together), though Ralph went into the army, while David went into the Navy. And I have no idea whether or not this is true or who could have told me or if it is something whole cloth from my imagination, but in my memory is the story of Ralph’s death: David was killed in action on January 14, 1969. The protocol at the time was for another service member to accompany the dead back to the U.S. for burial, and Ralph was the person who accompanied David back. After a short R&R stateside, Ralph returned to Vietnam in March, and his unit engaged in combat on March 22. According to the casualty data, Ralph “died outright” by “multiple fragmentation wounds.” What I was told (or remember being told) is that in that first enemy engagement after his return from David’s funeral, Ralph had stood up in the midst of a firefight and, in effect, committed suicide by combat.

Again, I don’t know how much, if any, of that is true. But it’s all that I have as truth in the death of the only person I’ve known, if only as a good friend for two years in elementary school, killed in combat. It’s also the only memory I carry with me each Memorial Day.

Me and Janis

October 24, 1969. I was 20 years old, working as the manager of the Hour Glass, a hippy-student bar in Wichita, Kansas, and for a few months the sometime music writer for the underground Wichita Free Press, a mimeographed publication of several pages. Janis Joplin was performing that night at Henry Levitt Arena, with the James Cotton Blues Band opening. I couldn’t afford a ticket to the concert (a then-steep $4), and the Free Press was not afforded press passes, but someone at the paper heard that the bands were staying at the Holiday Inn on north Broadway. So about noon I drove down to the hotel just to see what I could find. And what I found were members of the Cotton band having lunch in the hotel’s restaurant. Somehow I intruded on them, they invited me first to join them at lunch and then to come up to one of their rooms to smoke some pot. At one point James Cotton joined us, and a couple of Joplin’s band members. Time and dope fog my memory of that afternoon, there were guitars and harmonicas played, but at some point I was asked if I was going to the concert, I said that I didn’t have a ticket, and the Cotton band invited me to come along with them. So in the backseat of a station wagon, with half of the James Cotton Blues Band, I rode into the backstage area of Henry Levitt Arena. (Joplin and her band would be coming along later.)

In the Cotton dressing room (a locker room), there were practice amps and guitars, and at one point I actually jammed a bit with a couple of the guys in the group. When the show started, I stayed at the mouth of the tunnel to the floor where the stage had been set up, listening to the music. After a couple of songs, behind me the doors to the backstage area opened and Joplin’s cars drove in. There were no other press (if I could be called press) allowed backstage, but I was already there and a couple of Joplin’s band members who had been in the Cotton hotel room that afternoon recognized me and that provided me my introduction to Joplin herself.

She was shorter, smaller than I had expected. Most all of the photos and film of her are taken from below stage, which makes her seem taller, and the clothes she mostly wears are loose fabrics, which hide her slightness. She was unexpectedly pleasant to me, inviting me into the band’s dressing room (another locker room). There was a rack of costumes for her and the band and a pint of tequila (not Southern Comfort, which she was noted for) on the floor. We sat on locker room benches and talked about what I have no idea. It was just passing the time and felt perfectly out of the ordinary. Not for a moment did I stop and think, “Shit, I’m sitting here talking with Janis Joplin in her dressing room!” It’s hard to imagine now, but back then the rock world really wasn’t that distant from the fans. After a while, she jumped up, saying she really liked the song the Cotton band was playing, and we together went out of the mouth of the tunnel and listened. A photographer for the Wichita Eagle (who wasn’t allowed backstage) took a photo of the two of us, documenting the moment for me, though when it appeared in the paper the next morning, I’d been cut out of the shot (the photo was sent to me whole the next week by the entertainment reporter for the Eagle, who knew me). We went back to the dressing room, but after a short while, she told me she had to dress and that I’d have to leave (in her Texas way, she referred to me as “Honey”).

I only heard a few of the songs from Joplin’s set. After her show started, I joined the Cotton band back in their dressing room, the backstage being much more interesting to me. But at the end of her set, Joplin was heard coming backstage, ranting and cursing and pissed that her feather boa had apparently been taken by someone in the audience. She was not at all the “peace” and “love” persona of her music. She went back for an encore and appealed to the crowd in what I, having seen the backstage tirade, took as a hypocritical “love plea” to return the boa. I don’t know if she got it back or not. I left with the Cotton band back to the hotel before she was finished. I learned the next day that she had gone to the exclusive Wichita Club (one could only get hard liquor in private clubs in Kansas then) and bought rounds all night for the oil and beef bank businessmen, mounting a bill of more than $1000. I don’t know how much of that is true – I do know that she did go to the Wichita Club, though, which in itself is counter to her counter-culture image. And that is what remains for me of what should be one of my great brushes with fame – not the aura of greatness, but the whiff of a diva, shorter and smaller than I had expected.

My First Eggs

My first eggs appeared today. Well, not my eggs, but the eggs the purple martins are laying in the nests of the colony I’m tending this summer. Though to be honest I do feel some small sense of ownership if only in my visiting the colony every few days for the past almost two months, so far mostly clearing sparrow nest detritus from the purple martin “gourds” (man-made plastic containers that vaguely resemble the actual dried gourds put up originally by Native Americans to house the birds). In the past week or so, I’ve seen signs of martin nesting, green leaves layered over the dried pine needles we’d placed in the gourds earlier, and been eagerly waiting for the eggs to show up, this next week or two being the usual time. Purple martins typically lay four to five eggs, sometimes up to seven, one a day at sunrise, not missing a day until the full clutch is done. As of today, I only have two eggs in each of two nests (meaning one was laid yesterday and one today) and one egg in another nest (laid today). But it looks like I have seven to nine other active nests where I’m hoping eggs start appearing. As I work the nests, the birds either fly around or sit on a wire nearby, watching and calling, not at all frightened or angry. They seem by habit or instinct aware that I’m helping them out, and as soon as I raise the nests back up the pole, they return and go about their business. Our business, I would like to think.

Thanking God (If You Can)

The past couple of weeks have seen horrific, deadly tornadoes through the south and midwest. And of course TV has jumped on the story like fleas on a mangy dog, video of death and destruction being the lifeblood of TV news (and to be fair, public interest). But troubling in the endless coverage are the many interviews, typically accompanied by tears and hugs (even by the reporters), of survivors who credit their prayers to and grace of god for their being alive. In the Joplin, Missouri, EF5 storm, with winds of 200 miles per hour, that killed at least 122 people and injured over 750, the deadliest tornado in the past 60 years in the U.S., Tussiana Mikell said that some people who were huddled in a cooler at a Dollar Tree store implored their lord: "There was a lot of calling on Jesus. People were crying, saying different things. I was calling out 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.'" David Smith also prayed to god, though not for his life but for his admittance into heaven: “I was just . . . shouting a prayer out to God. It wasn't a prayer to save my life. I just knew it was too late for that. It was a prayer for him to take me to Heaven, because I was sure I was going to die.” But after he dug himself out of the rubble, he was able to credit god with his life: “The only thing I can do is give glory to God that he chose me to live.” Too bad we can’t interview any of the 122 dead, many of whom I’m sure were also praying for their lives, or at least to get into heaven: “Bertha Rondell, an employee at Ralph’s Appliance Ranch, huddled in the corner of the business through the storm. ‘I was just praying to God to spare my life,’ Rondell said, ‘but he didn’t, and now I’m dead. And there isn't even a heaven. Son of a bitch.’”

Where's Bob?

I was putting together the roster for my summer course and was struck by how many of the 29 given names on the list would not – could not – have appeared on my first classes’ rosters some 35 years ago. The Asian names are, of course, the most obvious (though male or female, I don’t know): Yufei, Kaibo, Kok Chang, Yi, Aoyi, Shuai, and Ning. I don’t know that I encountered an Asian name on a roster until the early if not late 1980s. Now almost 25% of the class is Asian. (And this at a college in Iowa, not exactly close to the west coast where you might expect more Asian students.) The male non-Asian students’ names are more likely to have shown up on my first rosters: Mark (of course), Matthew (continuing the Biblical tradition), Jeremiah, Andrew, Seth, Darren, Dustin, and Jonathan. I suspect that the tradition of paternal perpetuation of lineage accounts for this, though I rarely see anymore a Bob or George or Roger or Ralph or Gary or Henry or Jim, names of some of my college classmates. But it’s the women’s names on my roster that are mostly new to me. Yes, there are still a few familiar ones: Susan, Erin, Jessica, Paige, and Marci (though I think the “i” instead of “y” is fairly recent). But more common are the more uncommon: Kayla, Hannah, Joelle, Laporcha, Shekina, Jazzmin, Sacha, and Aubree (or could Aubree be a male?). No doubt much of this represents simple cultural progression, especially popular cultural progression. I recall having in one of my first classes a young woman named Karma (though I remember it because it was so unusual at the time). And clearly much of it – particularly the Asian names and what might be African – comes from the cultural diversity of the past 40-50 years. Watching this change over my career certainly is just one more way to underscore my getting old (as if I needed any more reminders). But I like it. Civilization and culture should move forward, hopefully improving, even if in fits and starts. And perhaps the changing preferences for given names is a subtle sign of that continual movement.

On the Square

There’s nothing more pleasant on a trip to Europe than to spend an hour or two in the afternoon or early evening sitting at a shaded table on the square or plaza or piazza or placa or platia, sipping a coffee or cappuccino or beer or wine or ouzo or whatever the local liquid pastime might be, watching the sun pass over the umbrella or through the leafed-out trees, the parade of always interesting people, the young boys kicking a soccer ball around or engaging in a water balloon fight, careful to keep away from the tables at the edge of the square, the beggars that bother but usually don’t press or linger, the accordion or guitar or saxophone or violin or flute player standing against a building opposite with a hat at his feet or roaming among the tables, immigrants with sheets spread out on the sidewalk with sunglasses or purses or fans or hats or jewelry for sale, constantly looking out for police on motorcycle or bike or horseback come to disperse but rarely arrest, the elderly man or woman, solitary, gray, dressed in black, moving carefully across the square, in short, halting steps, supported by the Sphinx’s cane, years beyond when they were sitting at these same tables, smoking Gitanes and sipping cava, laughing and making plans for the evening, just as we do.

Barcelona

Barcelona (Catalonia, not Spain) is a marvelous European city, a little like a lot of other European cities, a mashup – a bit of ancient history like Rome (Roman, Gothic, Medieval); a bit of art like Paris (Picasso, Dali, Miro); a bit of narrow, street mazes and comfortable plazas like Florence; a bit of architecture like Prague (moderisme); and a couple of miles of Mediterranean beaches like southern France. And the crowded flurry of Las Ramblas, a shaded pedestrian boulevard, lined with shops selling birds and flowers, performing artists and caricaturists, and creepy human statues, over-priced sidewalk cafes (the Hotel Oriente, Hemingway’s favorite hotel, where a cervesera grande (large beer) costs about $25 (a block or so off Las Ramblas, on any side street, the same beer will cost about $5)). The people are friendly, if somewhat aloof, best experienced away from the tourist areas. As are the restaurants, cafes, bars, bodegas, and cervecerias. There are hawkers and beggars and homeless and pickpockets, and it’s best to keep as far away from tourist areas except when sight-seeing demands it (Las Ramblas, the cathedral, Park Guell, the harbor and beach). The police are evident on the harbor and the beach, safe but sterile, on motorcycles or horses or in small cars, a quiet presence only. The metro system is efficient and easy to maneuver. Most attendants in hotels and restaurants can speak at least a little English, or tolerate kindly idiot attempts at Spanish or Catalan. It takes a few days to figure out how to order coffee, as different places apparently have different interpretations of each type of coffee. Car traffic is light, and the honking of horns nonexistent. Vehicles stop for pedestrians crossing in crosswalks. There is supposedly no nudity on the beach, but it is possible to see a topless middle-aged woman showering at sand’s edge or a completely nude middle-aged man strolling along the boardwalk. Possible to see, but not welcomed. Much more engaging and less jiggly is the architecture, and the food.