Letters, 1969

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The great volume of paper letters from my mother to me didn’t begin until I went away to VU, but there were a few before that, such as when I visited my aunt and uncle and cousin around the time of a certain historic event 55 years ago now.

Considering how old it is, the letter is in pretty good shape. Only slightly yellowed.

I believe Sue and Ken and Ralph had come to visit us in San Antonio in mid-July, and I went back with them for a visit to their home in Ardmore, Oklahoma, that happened to coincide with Apollo 11 landing on the Moon.

I’m positive we were driving to Ardmore on the 20th, because I remember hearing about the impending landing on the radio, and a discussion in the car about whether it would happen by the time we got to their house. I might have been eight, but I knew what was going on. I had watched the launch and was following the mission closely. As it happened, “Tranquility Base here, the Eagle as landed” moment was not long after we arrived at their house.

Moon walk or no, life on Earth goes on. My mother wrote another letter on July 27.

My mother said they were coming to pick me up on the 31st, as I’m sure happened. From there we took a driving loop around the South – from Oklahoma through Arkansas and Tennessee, reaching the northwest corner of Georgia before turning back and heading through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana before returning to Texas.

The Great Southern Loop, I called it retroactively. Maybe 20 years later. Or the Great Southern Loop of ’69 even later, to differentiate it from the Southern Solo Loop of ’09 or the more recent ones of ’19 and ‘21. It’s hard to keep track sometimes.

A Lot of Flowers

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Compared with the July 15 storm, this week’s storm, which blew through on Tuesday, was a gentleman. Some rain and enough lightning and thunder to qualify as a thunderstorm, but the sort that comes in distant cloud-to-cloud flashes and low rumbles off in the direction of somewhere else.

Summertime flora isn’t just for parks. Sometimes a luxuriation of flowers is found in unexpected places. Such as this patch.flowers of the field

Back up a little for context.

How does the verse go? Not even Solomon in all his splendor parked in a lot like this one?

Volkening Lake Summer Flora

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In summer, the north rim of Volkening Lake is all a-bloom.Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area

Contrast to December, when the color was provided by electric lights.Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area

Other parts of the park sport various flowers of various hues as well.Volkening Lake Volkening Lake

The lake is really more of a pond, and according to the Schaumburg Park District, the area is called the Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area. But all I’ve ever heard is Volkening Lake. Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area

Fred Volkening was a Schaumburg old-timer (d. 1993) who used to farm the surrounding land. I’m glad the lake and rec area has his name, rather than that of an otherwise forgettable park district functionary. Still, a park by an other name would bloom as lush, I figure.

Spring Valley Summer ’24

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A new garden has been installed at Spring Valley, which we visited over the weekend, during a run of flawless summer days. We’ve been in every season.

It’s a lush garden.Spring Valley
Spring Valley

Even better, we were all able to get out to take a look.

The black-eyed Susans have emerged.

As well as – sunflowers?

We weren’t sure, but they do have a tall presence and yellow expansiveness, like sunflowers.

Hibiscus Summer

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Hibiscus are blooming. Since last week. That seems a little early, but I can speculate that the summer’s rains might be at least part of the reason.

Only some of our bushes, however. Mainly the ones that receive extra water when we water the vegetables and flowers, which is usually in the morning and evening. That strengthens my speculation about water, but not enough to do any actual research.

They aren’t our only back-yard glories. We have morning glories rising from seeds my brother Jay gave us some time ago. They grow near the garage.

And more.

Worth the small amount of effort when it comes to watering.

Gonzovision ’82

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It’s entirely possible that this is the only place this photograph is posted anywhere. Considering the imponderable size of all the servers everywhere, that would be something. But also completely trivial, since there’s no end of physical images tucked away collecting dust.Gonzo Theater - Gonzovision Nashville 1982

I’ve had this physical print in my possession for more than 40 years. How exactly I got it in the first place, I don’t remember. It looks like a publicity shot, with the white border trimmed out for scanning, though nothing was printed there to indicate who they are, which seems like a serious lapse. Maybe that cost extra, or they couldn’t agree on a name yet.

But I know them (mostly). The five people were the members of a short-lived comedy troupe in Nashville, Gonzo Theatre.

One reference to the troupe online I’ve found is at a page on Newspapers.com depicting the July 18, 1982 Daily News-Journal of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

The entirety of the text: NASHVILLE July 23, 31 “Gonzovision” will be presented by the writers of Gonzo Theatre every weekend at The Cannery, 811 Palmer Place.

The troupe name was Gonzo Theatre and the show was called Gonzovision. On the back of the photo, someone else wrote Gonzovision, and I added 1982.

On July 23 that year – very likely, since on the 31st I was caving in rural Tennessee – I went with some of my friends to The Cannery to see Gonzovision (the venue is still around as Cannery Hall). I remember being entertained, but otherwise not much else about the show. At one point, one of the troupe pretended to be Bob Dylan, another pretended to be Ethel Merman, and they did a duet. That was funny.

Also, there was a well-known local politico in the audience, who was red-nose drunk at the time, and the troupe spent some time making fun of him. I wish I could remember who that was, and what they said, but my notes are silent on the matter. Even 20 years ago, I couldn’t remember much more about the skits.

All this brings to mind Jim Varney. Not because he was a member of the troupe at that moment – he had better, and far more remunerative things to do at that time. Rather, some of the members of Gonzo Theatre would soon be in the very first Ernest movie, Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam, a flick that took a bit of my money and about an hour and a half of my time for little in return.

Lee Johnson is at top left of the photo. He’s no doubt the reason we knew about the show at all, since we were tight with his younger brother Mike. Mac Bennett, whose career in movies was very brief, is top right. Sometime later, I heard him recite from memory, at a party and with great verve, a translation of Baudelaire’s “Get Drunk.”

Jackie Welch is bottom left. These days she’s “a professional life coach and president of Visions Manifest Coaching Services,” according to imdb, but whose web site doesn’t exist anymore. She has had a minor career in the movies – including a couple of other Ernest movies, Ernest Goes to Jail and Ernest Scared Stupid, and the short-lived TV show, Hey, Vern, It’s Ernest. Too bad Varney died when he did (2000) or she might have been in such epics as Ernest Goes to War, Ernest Rockets to Mars and Ernest and the Zombie Apocalypse, which surely would have been made in the 2010s.

I can’t remember the name of fellow in the lower center, who looks to be the head of the troupe, but I do know that to the right of him was Daniel Butler, who was also in Ernest movies, but is better known (relatively speaking) for a thing called America’s Dumbest Criminals. Again, too bad Varney’s career was cut short: Butler could have been his counterpart in My Dinner With Ernest.

Thursday Bits, Mostly About Death

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Monday’s storms were fierce, all right.

RIP, Bob Newhart. I came along too late to listen to the button-down mind record when new – I learned about it later – so for me Bob played the fellow who walked through Chicago and was a psychologist-chair straight man to a revolving group of eccentrics.

He’s one of the reasons the ’70s was a golden age for sitcoms. As a regular viewer, I must have seen almost all of The Bob Newhart Show. Because I didn’t pay much attention to TV after that decade, I haven’t seen many episodes of Newhart, but maybe now is the time to start.

Speaking of the ’70s, I found this posted online recently.

RIP to all these classmates of mine. The list was compiled by classmates who organize reunions and the like.

A few on the list were good friends of mine, including Kevin Norton and David Bommer. Most of the others I knew, or knew of. For a few I wonder, who was that again? even though AHHS wasn’t that large a high school. About 320 or 330 in the Class of ’79.

I know that because of the astonishing fact – in retrospect, at least to current or recent high schoolers – that periodically the administration would issue every student a GPA card that would not only tell you your exact GPA, but also where you ranked out of those 320 or 330. (I was always near the bottom of the top 10%.)

Twenty-seven names, though probably a few who have passed weren’t listed, so let’s say about 10% of the Class of ’79 is gone. That’s the leading edge of the bell curve of mortality, which will start to expand soon.

But death shouldn’t have the final word, at least not right now. Another way to look at it is that 90% of us have survived those 45 years, mostly as decent folk leading interesting lives, I hope.

Closer to home, in fact at home, how does our garden grow?

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Not a Ford Falcon, But Still Evoked Childhood Memories

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What’s that, I thought from far up the street. Possibly a Ford Falcon? Not a model you see much on the streets any more.

I got closer and no, it was a Chevrolet Bel Air. I’m not enough of a car aficionado to pinpoint the model year, but it looks early ’60s to me. Still not something you see much on our 21st-century suburban streets.

My grandmother drove a Ford Falcon. Shorter than the Bel Air, if I remember right, and somewhat rounder. It was the last car she owned, an early or mid-60s model. Again, I’m not enough of an expert to know the exact year, and it isn’t something I would have asked grandma.

I have scattered, but fond memories of riding in that car. It was gray and mostly, I believe, she drove (when I was with her) the short distances to shops she traded at, such as the Handy-Andy grocery store on Broadway in Alamo Heights, or to Brackenridge Park for my amusement.

Oddly enough, besides reminding me of grandma and the Brackenridge Park Eagle, the memory of that old car makes me also think of survivorship bias. There was no seat belt in the back seat, though the the front had lap belts. I usually rode in the back as a kid and, of course, survived the beltless experience. I consider this good fortune.

Some older people – my age, and I’ve seen it in writing – thus come to the conclusion that making children wear seat belts or other safety devices while in a car is merely the heavy hand of a nanny state. Hey, I survived my belt-free childhood in the ’60s! That’s an example of a statement that’s true but also dimwitted. Are there no children (or anyone else) in their graves from that period who would have survived had belts been in use?

Street Sign

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He’s back.

The light is fairly long at that place, so I had time to document his presence not long ago. I don’t know that I see him every summer at this location, at the intersection of two major roads here in the northwestern suburbs, but I know I’ve seen him there over the years. With his straightforward message.

More of the carrot approach, rather than the stick favored by a sign-holder I saw on Michigan Avenue once.

St. Swithin’s Day Derecho

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Things are quiet out in the Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center tells us. Maybe a little too quiet, as the cliché goes.

But not around here. An excerpt from a NWS bulletin this evening:

ISSUED: 9:16 PM JUL. 15, 2024 – NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

The National Weather Service in Chicago has issued a

* Tornado Warning for…

Southern Lake County in northeastern Illinois… Northern DuPage County in northeastern Illinois… Northern Cook County in northeastern Illinois…

* Until 1000 PM CDT. …

IMPACT… Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter. Mobile homes will be damaged or destroyed. Damage to roofs, windows, and vehicles will occur. Tree damage is likely.…

We got a fair amount of siren noise, plus some wind and rain, but by the end of the day not enough to do any damage (that I can see). Other places might not be able to say the same. Looks like we got off easy.