Big Al passed last Sunday morning. What that means – what I think that means – is that I will not be getting any more emails out of the blue, like: “Just asking. How good a clutch hitter was Yogelah, anyway? Ask your friend Newk.” This was a very personal barb, aimed not just at me but at the admirable Don Newcombe, still working for the Dodgers out in LA, who got creamed by Yogi Berra for two – count ‘em, two – two-run homers in the seventh game of the 1956 World Series. Oh, yes, Big Al remembered. And made sure to remind me. Big Al was a loving member of his own family, but his special charm was getting on a point and pushing it. This made him a great lawyer for a major insurance company, according to Joseph LoParrino, for whom Al was mentor and friend. “Al and I debated every major sports and news story since 1999 and since email was invented,” LoParrino wrote to me. “When the Tiger Woods scandal broke - my phone buzzed. His commentary made you fall over laughing. I could press his buttons in any category.” Big Al was a master in button-pushing. My first contact with him was via his company envelopes and company stationery, before the advent of emails. Big Al would scribble – penmanship obviously not his forte in the public schools of East Queens – lengthy screeds about how I had insulted the current Yankees or, much much worse, The Mick. Al – who was a decade younger than me – thought part of the problem was that I had attended Jamaica High in the 50’s whereas he had attended rival Van Buren High in the 60’s. (He couldn’t blame college, since we both attended Hofstra as undergraduates.) Al let me know, in six pages of briefs, that he knew more about sports than I did because he had played basketball and baseball for the demanding Marv Kessler at Van Buren. I loved his descriptions of Kessler, vilifying him in Queens billingsgate, for sins committed in games or practices. (Many years later, Kessler praised Big Al as player and mensch; Al felt that praise was a tad late.) Every journalist would be thrilled to have a critic like Big Al. We became mail pals, bonding over the long-lost Charney’s deli at 188th and Union Turnpike, and zaftig Queens girls, and Alley Pond Park, and the way the old Knicks played, and really what else is there? Al became my Yankee Everyman, a stand-in for all of them. What he felt, they all felt. Eventually we met for a few dinners at the old Palm on the west side of Second Avenue. Al would deride me for ordering broiled fish and salad rather than the double primo beef and potatoes. Sissy. Weenie. And other Marv Kessler terms. Sometimes he would order a full meal to bring home to his mother who lived in New Jersey. He was such a Palm regular that his caricature was on the wall of valued customers, celebrities or just people who liked to eat beef. (Alas, that caricature seems to have been lost in the move across Second Ave.) By then, Al was no longer the rail of a forward that Marv Kessler had berated back in Queens Village. He was Big Al, Manhattan bachelor, Eastside Al on one email handle. We would talk politics, and he would tell me tales about his service veteran/fireman/tradesman/paper hanger father who gave up his love of the Brooklyn Dodgers for his Yankee-fan wife, Ruth, who had seen Gehrig play. Al was proud to tell me how his mother loved Andy Pettitte more than she loved him. He ascribed it to Pettitte’s schnozz but knew it was about Andy’s gentleness. With no context whatsoever, Al dropped little e-bombs on me about or how Casey Stengel stuck with lefty Bob Kuzava against Jackie Robinson in the seventh game of 1952 and how Billy Martin raced across the windy, sunny infield to catch the popup. Always there was Yogelah, golfing homers off his shoetops, an endless loop of homers off poor Newk (one of the great people I have met in baseball.) Al went silent one year, and I worried, so I sent a letter to his office, and somebody told me he was out on sick leave. When his mom passed in 2009 he took over her house in New Jersey and lived near his sister and her family -- and raved to his friends at work about the joys of the Jersey suburbs. Via the email, he never stopped taunting me, or raving about the Yankees and in particular The Mick. (He loved Sandy Koufax, too.) One time he spoke for all New York fans who flocked to the ball parks on opening day over the decades: streeteasy.com/blog/baseballs-opening-day-nycs-boroughs-influenced-its-pro-teams/ Recently I sent an email: “Al, where are you?” His sister, Roberta Taxerman Smith, emailed me Monday morning saying Big Al had passed Sunday at 67 and the funeral would be held Tuesday in New Jersey. His paid obit was in the Times and on legacy.com: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=alan-taxerman&pid=188012820 I smiled when I noted that Big Al passed in the Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck. He was a loyal Jew, and a most ecumenical dude, as many of us were in Queens. He and I exchanged greetings at Rosh Hashanah and Christmas and the first day of pitchers and catchers and other holy days. He knew I had grown up with mostly Jewish friends and he called me “landsman.” When I found out, via DNA testing, that I am 47 percent Jewish, via my father, who was adopted, Big Al's reaction was: I told you so. Then again, that was often his reaction. Roberta Taxerman Smith told me Al believed, to the end, that the docs were going to take care of him and he never complained. He had saved his complaints for Joe Torre’s strategies, and we argued over that, too. Here’s what I really hate about losing Big Al: he I were both looking forward to seeing Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton in the same lineup, the same pinstripes. Murderer’s Row, 2018. If there is justice, on Opening Day they go back-to-back. Maybe Big Al will send me an e-mail. Alas, Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not be able to attend the State of the Union speech Tuesday evening because she has a speaking engagement at the Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island.
(Williams is one of the great early Americans, remembered for “advocating separation of church and state in Colonial America. His views on religious freedom and tolerance, coupled with his disapproval of the practice of confiscating land from Native Americans, earned him the wrath of his church and banishment from the colony,” according to one history site. Make of this what you will.) The justice, age 84, has given clear recent signals that she intends to remain on the highest court for the foreseeable future. https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/01/27/us/politics/ap-us-justice-ginsburg-staying-put.html Good move, Madam Justice. I can’t speak for her – nobody should dare – but speaking strictly for myself, I don’t want to observe that generally affirmative evening soiled this this time around. For the inauguration a year ago, some of us in the family went to an Afghan restaurant on Long Island on the theory that the event would not be on the tube, and we were right. Aushak all around, for starters. As for the State of the Union speech and the bustle surrounding it, I’m going to listen to Terrance McKnight on WQXR-FM instead. Much healthier. (I ducked out on the Grammies after 10 minutes Sunday night; guys in fatigues and boots? Where were Stevie Wonder and Dolly Parton? What ever happened to songs?) Of course, I could be missing a one-time-only event Tuesday night. A year ago, I predicted 18 months from inauguration for this guy; it is still a possibility, given the collusion and money-laundering and racial slurs and general debauchery and ignorance emitting from the White House. But I’ll read about the event in the Times the next morning. What is the over/under (gambling term) for how many times he says “no collusion, no collusion?” Or waves his stubby fingers and says, “Truthfully….” I always enjoy the State of the Union because, even with the loyal opposition sitting on its hands for much of the speech, there is a sense of vestigial dignity to the evening. Plus, I love the way some public officials hang over the railing to shake hands, get an autograph, or offer sage if truncated advice. I always love to spot my fellow Jamaica High School grad (a few decades younger than my crowd), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, engaging President Obama or President George W. Bush from her adopted state of Texas. I just discovered that Rep. Lee and her companions are known as “aisle hogs” because they line up hours and hours before the big event, to get up close with the President. The latest information is that Rep. Lee is undecided about attending Tuesday night. Old habits die hard. I’m guessing she will be there, perhaps to eyeball this office-temp president. Take a good look. Next year we might have President Pence – I know, I know -- not that he would want to get too close to a female legislator. Anyway, I’ll be listening to classical music Tuesday evening. I think Roger Williams would approve. Echo Helmstrom Casey died in California last week at 75. She was said to be the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s haunting song, "Girl From the North Country" – and for the wonderful covers that live to this day. The song will be a classic as long as people have drifting thoughts of the first girl/first boy they loved. I didn’t know anything about Echo Helmstrom until Laura Vecsey, my eldest, sent me a link from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Of course, there had to be an Echo Helmstrom. Echo. Not even Bob Dylan could make that up. She echoes in the soul. It’s a winter song. Winter in New York, early 60’s, and the former Bobby Zimmerman is thinking how cold it must be in Hibbing, so he writes: Well, if you go when the snowflakes storm When the rivers freeze and summer ends Please see for me if she’s wearing a coat so warm To keep her from the howlin’ winds What kinder thoughts could anyone have for a girl back home in the north country? According to the very nice article by Matt Steichen in the Star Tribune, Echo Helmstrom was a seeker, much like young Bob Zimmerman; they met in high school and then parted. Later, he must have known – Bob knows everything – that she also got away from the howlin’ winds, and moved to California, and lived her life, often complicated by the Dylanologists. (One of them even went through Dylan’s garbage in Greenwich Village but that’s another story.) There’s no sense that Bob and Echo ever met again, or kept in touch. Then again, Dante met Beatrice only twice, fleetingly. But Dylan thought enough of Echo and her piercing eyes and blonde hair that he wrote the song about her, and really, what else is there?
The music and the lyrics live on – in Dylan’s original, and in the covers which can be tricky, ranging from the ridiculous to the masterful: Levon Helm and The Band acing Springsteen’s “Atlantic City;” and KD Lang owning Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” in my opinion.) I came to Bob Dylan via my kid brother Chris, who sang and played guitar and harmonica in coffee shops in the mid-60’s. In 1969, Dylan made the immortal album “Nashville Skyline” in the city that had long resonated with me. Johnny Cash, who admired the brash kid, welcomed him to town and came into the studio, clearly not having totally mastered the lyrics to “North Country,” and he fluffed some entries, but Dylan let it flow because it was Johnny Cash and because it was real. (NB: the version above is from Dylan’s respectful visit to Cash’s TV show later. Cash had long since mastered the lyrics and the beat of the song.) Impromptu or rehearsed, what a duet – Dylan’s cutting brilliance, Cash’s throbbing pain, singing about a girl from back home. See for me that her hair's hanging down That's the way I remember her best The song is perfect today, nearly half a century later. Rosanne Cash included it in her 2009 CD. “The List,” springing from the 100 songs her father deemed vital to the American soul. There is a very sweet guitar riff by her husband John Leventhal, and backup by three other musicians. “The Girl From the North Country” lives, whether by Bob Dylan, or Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, or Rosanne Cash, back-to-back-to-back, on my iPod. Now Laura Vecsey has an idea, which she has posted on Twitter: Rosanne Cash and Bob Dylan should record a duet, to complete the circle, to honor the girl from the north country. For she once was a true love of mine. George Weah might have been remembered as one of the greatest players never to take part in the World Cup tournament.
That category is an honor – good enough to win a World Cup if all those players were assembled in their prime. Now George Tawlon Manneh Oppong Ousman Weah has another honor – president of Liberia. He was sworn in Monday after being elected last December, fall, the first footballer to run a country, as far as I can see. Weah is also a New Yorker, married to an American, with a home in the area, and also a presence on the playing fields. There are legends of a fleet and resourceful player, with an assumed name, popping up at Metropolitan Oval in Queens or some other local den, playing with some semipro club. ''The Concorde,'' he told me in 2001. ''I'd be in New York on Sunday and go back on Monday.'' He is a myth – who was that masked man, making a run toward goal? Now he is a president, and good luck with that. He has come through the fire of Charles Taylor’s murderous regime, having relatives beaten and raped in a home he owned in Liberia. I could feel the sizzle of anger as he alluded to the troubles he had seen. Now he is a duly-elected leader. Weah’s inauguration comes at a visible time for Africa. The President of the United States, a dangerous ignoramus named Donald J. Trump, recently referred to “shithole” countries, including Africa, during a diatribe in front of senators, some of them suffering serious memory loss. Also, PBS has been showing a marvelous series by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., called “Africa’s Great Civilizations,” showing the rich and complicated roots of all humanity. My wife and I watched the final four hours Sunday night, seeing ruins of castles and ports that thrived due to the trade winds. Gates told of vastly diverse cultures, fierce and wise and benevolent rulers, female warriors and scholars and traders and artists. Gates’ most passionate moment comes when he says if there is a hell, he is sure it contains the monarch who exported a million or more slaves to willing markets in Africa and the New World. There was also a segment on a great Zulu chief and tactician named Shaka who deployed armies. I have heard the name, including the Trinidad & Tobago goalkeeper Shaka Hislop, who held Sweden to a 0-0 draw in the 2006 World Cup and has a master’s degree from Howard University. Most Americans, including myself, know little about Africa but we do know the damage committed by European and American interests. I would suggest donating to PBS and taking the gift of the Gates series. Now there is another hook for Americans to think of Africa: For me, George Weah emerged on the wavy screens of non-cable American TV on Sunday mornings in the 90s, playing for AC Milan, when Serie A was the best league in the world. Between 1995 and 1997, AC Milan brought in Roberto Baggio, who produced one of the most beautiful goals I have ever seen. I cannot find the exact video but I know I saw it: From midfield, wearing that classic red and black striped Milan jersey, Baggio spotted Weah moving fast toward the offside line and floated a ball that intersected perfectly with Weah, at full sprint, all alone, making a fake or two and lashing the ball into an unguarded corner of the goal – two brilliant football minds, meeting in time and space, on a field in Italy, lightning from a clear sky. Life is more complicated for George Weah now. He takes over an African country, settled partially by some returning slaves but also colonists from America. Much of the continent is still looking to overcome what Belgians and English, French and Americans, did to it. May George Weah’s wits and will be as fleet as when he was on the field. Need a baseball fix? Here’s one, right in the heart of Manhattan on Jan. 27 – a day-long festival of the summer sport, from SABR, the baseball research organization. The speakers include many experts in baseball and/or research, including a librarian, a major-league umpire, a scout who played for the Philadelphia A's in 1953, and an outfielder who helped win the 1969 World Series. Another speaker will be Tyler Kepner of the New York Times, who has been writing (excellently) about baseball since he was, I think, 3 years old. Speaking of precocity, if you know a youthful baseball fan who follows all the trade rumors and knows the new analytics like WAR (I have no clue what that is, but I hear it all the time), this conference might make the young savant happy on a Saturday in January. I spoke at this conference five years or so ago, and one of the highlights for me was a young fan who asked a good question and seemed to know just as much as the predominant geezers who had witnessed Carl Furillo and Monte Irvin and Whitey Ford in this city. (The rate for “students” is $20 as opposed to the rate of $35, still reasonable.) Sometimes a young pheenom of a fan actually grows up to be Tyler Kepner. I witnessed that not long ago when a kid in Philadelphia started putting out an occasional baseball magazine, with features by him, drawings by him, layouts by him, headlines by him, circulation by him, marketing by him. The occasional journal was Phillie-centric, and it was charming. The very same Tyler Kepner is now a great baseball writer for The Times, old enough to have four children. Back in the day, Tyler produced his baseball magazine irregularly, to allow him to honor other commitments, like kindergarten. The late and lamented Robert McG Thomas, Jr., of the NYT wrote a feature about him in 1989: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/13/sports/sports-world-specials-baseball-pitcher-outfielder-publisher.html. Nowadays, in the time of the Web, when sportswriters are lashed to the 24-hour hamster wheel, Tyler keeps typing away, brilliantly. I recently heard how at the seventh game of the 2016 World Series he wrote an early column and then late in the game wrote a new column on Rajai Davis when it appeared Davis’s homer would win won the Series. However, the Davis column never made the paper or the Web because, well, the Cubs won while Tyler was typing. So he started all over again, and then woke up the next morning and fed a few more columns to the beast – five columns within 18 hours, by the office's count. The program for the SABR event does not specify Tyler’s subject on Jan. 27th but notes that he is currently writing a book. Oddly enough, about baseball. The program will take place Jan. 27, 2018, from 10 AM to 3 PM at the New York Public Library, at 42nd St. and Fifth Avenue (you know, the one with the lions.) It will be held in the Celeste Auditorium, lower level of the South Court, of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. The event is officially the New York City Casey Stengel Chapter’s annual meeting, as part of the Society for American Baseball Research. The participants, recruited and moderated by Ernestine Miller, are: Virginia Bartow, the Senior Rare Book Cataloger in the Special Collections at the New York Public Library, whose illustrated presentation includes photos, graphs, trade cards, newspaper features and other memorabilia of baseball in New York. Ed Randall, moderator of a panel on: “Standouts of the Game”-- author and on-air personality for WFAN, Sirius and ESPN Phil Cuzzi, Major League umpire who has worked for 22 years in 2,428 games including three MLB no-hitters. Tom Giordano, age 92, long-time scout and official who scouted Cal Ripken, Jr., and in 1953 played 11 games for the 1953 Philadelphia Athletics under manager Jimmy Dykes. Art Shamsky, who platooned with Ron Swoboda on the 1969 Miracle Mets, and remains the only player in MLB history to hit three home runs in a game in which he was not in the starting lineup. Jon Springer, SABR research presentation on Edward "The Only" Nolan, the star pitcher of the 1884 Quicksteps, a team that played a role in the first battle of the Reserve Clause war, the establishment of post-season play, and the evolution of playing rules and equipment. Nolan was recognized for his unique pitches as well as his notorious behavior which led to fines, suspensions, being kicked off a team, and eventually, his being blacklisted from the league. (I have never heard of Nolan. This is what SABR does so well: telling about fascinating players from long-ago times.) Diane Firstman will make a SABR research presentation, “The Three True Outcomes,” shedding light on the relationships among walks, strikeouts, and homers from her research on “three true outcomes” (TTO). She will highlight trends comparing Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Aaron Judge in those categories. After this warmup it will soon be time for that glorious annual event called Pitchers and Catchers. It’s coming, honest, it’s coming. Please pre-register if possible, with David Lippman at: kiwiwriter47@gmail.com Martin Luther King, Jr., was 39 when he was assassinated. That fact shocked me when I was reminded Monday night. I knew he was young, but I might have said 49 or 59. That’s young, too.
But Dr. King was 39, and he had done so much, by April 3, 1968, when, not feeling well and speaking without notes, he delivered what would be his final speech, in Memphis, when he said he had been to the mountaintop and he was not afraid. He was killed the next day. Dr. King could be alive today, like John Lewis, the national treasure, still on the front line, about to turn 78, or he could have matched Harriet Tubman, born in slavery, date unknown, but around 90 when she passed. I was reminded of this Monday night, on what would have been Dr. King’s 89th birthday. I did not go golfing but then again I did not perform any symbolic service on the national holiday, the way George W. Bush and Barack Obama did as president. I just hunkered down inside and at 9 PM I made a point to listen to the annual King celebration from Terrance McKnight on WQXR-FM. McKnight is a civic asset here in New York – beautiful speaking voice and matching knowledge, reminds me of where-have-you-gone, No. 44. McKnight is a Morehouse grad, like Spike Lee, like the Olympian Edwin Moses, like Donn Clendenon, the 1969 Miracle Met, who was mentored by a Morehouse grad – why didn’t I know this? -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Every year McKnight stresses the influence of music on Dr. King and his wife Coretta Scott King, who trained to be another Marian Anderson. Dr. King played classical music in his car as he drove north to grad school at Boston University. McKnight played some Mahalia Jackson and he played some Sam Cooke and he played some classical, too. He did not play Dion DiMucci, but I found myself thinking of the singer from the Belmont section of the Bronx who wrote “Abraham, Martin and John,” which ends with a coda to Robert F. Kennedy. One key line, you know it, goes: “The good they die young.” McKnight told the story of the premiere of “Gone With the Wind” in Atlanta and how Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen were excluded, and how the Ebenezer Baptist Church choir sang, directed by Alberta King, wife of the pastor, mother of 6-year-old Martin, Jr. Listen for yourself: https://www.wqxr.org/story/11702-beautiful-symphony-brotherhood-musical-journey-life-martin-luther-king-jr Toward the end of the chronological journey McKnight noted that Dr. King was 39 when he gave his extemporaneous speech in Memphis. Thirty-nine. The speech ended: “I'm not worried about anything. “I'm not fearing any man! “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” Somebody on WINS news radio asked people on Monday what Dr. King would be doing if he were alive today. One woman said, "He'd stand up to them, the way he stood up to Bull Connors" -- a reference to the commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, who unleashed the dogs, tolerated the bombers. Dr. King studied Gandhi. Stood up to Bull Connor. The good they die young. The eyes see, the brain wonders. This happened recently, just before the snow. I was looking out the kitchen window and saw an animal moving, not unusual in our wooded area: A neighborhood black cat roams freely. Squirrels store acorns on our lawn. The occasional dog makes a break for it. Raccoons stare brazenly near the garbage cans. This was something else – red, handsome, erect. The brain said: “Cat.” Then the brain said, “Dog.” Then the brain said, “Neither.” My mouth said, “Fox!” My wife picked up her head and saw it. This was all in a few seconds. I grabbed for my smartphone to take a photo, too late. The animal was vigilant, ears up, perfect posture. He looked around, like a UPS driver unsure which house is No. 9. Then he/she padded, straight-legged gait, unlike dog or cat or squirrel or raccoon, toward the neighbor’s lawn, and onto the golf course. I had never seen a fox outside a zoo. Stumbled upon deer while hiking in the Appalachians. Laura has coyotes around her country house upstate. (Keep an eye on the pup.) We see signs depicting moose along I-95 in Maine. (I maintain it is a tourism ploy.) One crisp day years ago, near Sedona, a pack of javelinas, snorting, kicking up sand, rushed past me in the bushes, so close I could see smell them, see their bristles. But never a fox. I mentioned “our” fox to our children, and Corinna reminded me she uses a fox for her logo, as a well-connected consultant for do-good projects in Pennsylvania. “My choice of a logo was easy — it had to be a fox!” she wrote. “I have always loved foxes; my house is full of fox paintings, photos, and knickknacks. “But I also think they’re the perfect symbol for a consultant. While foxes occupy a spot near the top of the food chain, and are, in fact, predators, most people are excited – not scared – to see them in the wild. This struck me as not a bad role model for a consultant! “So my dear friend Diana Robinson created a beautiful fox logo for me, a handsome fellow leaping up towards success!” Corinna alluded to the classic book by Isaiah Berlin, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” in which he describes an over-eager fox getting a face full of hedgehog quills. Nevertheless, she prefers foxes. Coincidence: my Australian cousin Jen Guttenplan is married to Sam Guttenplan, an American professor in London and longtime associate of Sir Isaiah. (Jen once sent me a brilliant description of Sir Isaiah’s funeral.) Double coincidence: Sam and Jen have foxes on their lawn in Islington, North London. “They like to sleep in the sun on the patch of grass visible from our kitchen window. Bold as brass,” Sam reported, sending me a photo of a greying fox, sunning on their lawn.
Corinna is right. We are thrilled at knowing that a beautiful red fox resides near our house. My wife says one fox means more foxes. I am vigilant for another glimpse of red coat, bright fur, alert eyes and ears. The fox undoubtedly is on guard for us. There's nothing like a good old movie. My wife and I were reminded of that Saturday night when we kept warm together and watched the local PBS station in New York present “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” which came out in 1961.
The movie is still wonderful – at least for those of us who came of age in that city, in that time. Then again, there is nothing like a good old actress, or actor. We reaffirmed that Sunday night as we watched eternal favorites Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey (delivering a righteous sermon on fairness for women in the arts; if America ever elected a television celebrity as President, at least it could choose one with brains and conscience), Shirley Maclaine, Barbra Streisand, Carol Burnett and many others warming up the night at the Golden Globes. (Some older guys, and younger people, were there, too.) Audrey Hepburn was not there, sadly, because she passed in 1993, way too young at 63, but lit up the night on Saturday, in the role of her life, lovely in her little black outfit. The second star of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is New York itself – the city that existed one way in Truman Capote’s book and another way in the movie-makers’ minds. That New York remains implanted in the memories of people who dared to dream that a one-bedroom walkup near midtown could be affordable for somebody who has not necessarily scored a gigantic deal. My wife and I, a couple of kids, had a one-night honeymoon at the Plaza – Castro and Khrushchev were also in town -- before getting back to work on Monday. There was magic in Rockefeller Center and Fifth Avenue and Central Park and the side streets with their surprises and secrets. In that apparently genteel playground, out-of-towners like Holly Golightly, a party girl, and Paul Varjak, a writer of fading potential, could meet on a fire escape -- kindred souls, both living in that playground courtesy of wealthier patrons. New York seemed to offer glamour, stability, hope. When “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was issued in 1961: --Penn Station had not yet been demolished, replaced by that contemptuous dungeon of a terminal, and soon afterward the neighborhood-strangling “new” Madison Square Garden. --The Pan-Am Building (now called the MetLife Building) had not yet been plopped down, ruining the esthetic of Park Ave. --John F. Kennedy was the new President. --Rupert Murdoch was making stuff up, but in Australia. --George Steinbrenner was still bullying his lackeys in Cleveland. --And Donald Trump was still living out in Queens and fidgeting his way through classes in college. In other words, the good old days. The movie endures despite blind spots and gaffes: --Mickey Rooney, as a put-upon Japanese photographer upstairs, is a total embarrassment with stereotypical accent and offensive false teeth. They should have known better, even then. -- There is no trace of social issues, of Vietnam, of race. The only glimpse of African-Americans is on visitors’ day at Sing Sing, and some extras at the library and a five-and-dime store. The four other boroughs do not exist. --A sub-plot involving a planned caper in Brazil contains many confusions of language and custom. I bet my friend Altenir Jose Silva of Rio, who has written movies himself, notices his middle name mispronounced the Spanish way rather than the soft, throaty Portuguese-Brazilian way. Still, the movie crackles when Holly Golightly sings "Moon River" to herself on the fire escape or lowers her sunglasses to inspect Patricia Neal, a domineering designer who is supporting the younger writer, played by George Peppard. Martin Balsam is fine as a Hollywood agent, and a familiar New York character actor of the time, Jim McGiver, is superb in a cameo as an officious salesman at Tiffany’s, who bends to Hepburn’s smile. I have been under the impression that Buddy Ebsen is cornball as a rustic face from the past but the re-viewing convinced me that Ebsen is dignified and touching. By the way, Capote’s book is much darker than the movie, including a graphic hint that Holly did indeed have adventures in deepest Brazil. That’s all I’m saying, in case somehow you have not seen the movie about a beautiful and tormented drifter, “off to see the world.” * * * (Unfortunately, on some Saturday evenings, Channel 13 switches to stale oldie pop concerts; go figure. I cannot fathom why a high-level public station cannot find a landmark movie every freaking Saturday night, for those of us who have not figured out what “streaming” or “Netflix” are. I’m sure the hardy band of regulars on this site – including screen writer Silva – could suggest 52 classic films a year to help Channel 13 present a consistent series.) My wife’s uncle, Harold Grundy, passed early Thursday at the age of 95. He was an American hero – a carpenter who learned complex engineering skills, who kept Navy ships steaming in murderous waters in World War Two and later supervised the building of observation stations and nuclear plants. He was a survivor – of bombs in the Atlantic and Pacific, of winters in the Arctic, a wartime storm off England, a typhoon in the Pacific, and of life itself. His only child Roger came home wounded from Vietnam only to die from a car wreck on a Maine highway. His wife Barbara was wracked by diabetes -- and he took care of her, with the help of dear friends. Everybody knew him in Bath, Maine, Barbara’s home town. After Barbara died in 2014, Marianne recognized the need to visit her uncle once in a while. At 93, Harold would have thick, rich chowder on the stove and fresh fruit pies baking in the oven. Harold would take us on little outings from Bath – beaches and fish restaurants and back roads. He took us to coastal towns that looked like a setting for “Carousel” and fish-fry stands and old forts. He talked about Barbara in the present tense: “Sometimes Barbara and I drive up this road in the late afternoon.”
His education had ended in high school. He and his older brother left Connecticut in 1940 for a job dredging the Kennebec River to accommodate the large warships being built for what was coming. From his cottage alongside the river, he would tell us about rowing explosives into the middle of the river. In wartime, his acquired technical and engineering skills were essential to the military; he helped win one war and fight the Cold War. He was the last survivor who had served at observation posts in Greenland and Cutler, Me., and Guantanamo Bay, keeping an eye on our new best friends from Russia. However, because he was technically a civilian employee (ducking the same bombs as the military personnel), he was denied a pension by the U.S. government. Somehow, he was not bitter. Harold moved all over the world, building sensitive structures. Recently, we mentioned that one of our daughters lives near the nuclear plants at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. “Don’t worry,” Harold assured us, “I can tell you we made them double strong.” He had a Zelig-like way of being everywhere. He once chatted with a young senatorial candidate named John F. Kennedy in a train station in Boston; Winston Churchill popped out of No. 10 Downing Street and said hello to Harold and a few other tourists. One time we were driving near the coast and Harold casually mentioned he had helped build a house for Margaret Chase Smith when she was a senator. With her politician’s memory, she once recognized him when she got off a government plane at Cutler, and asked him to accompany her on her visit. People seemed to detect the civility and knowledge behind his humble bearing. He was so valuable to a construction company that they often flew Barbara to join him overseas, and they helped with her medical treatment. When Harold was home in Bath, between projects, he and Barbara, with her crippling diabetes, expanded a house on Washington St. He built houses and boats and docks and staircases for banks and chicken coops that were more handsome and sturdy-looking than some homes along the highway. Harold and Barbara started a little woodworking business – in their spare time, you understand – which has become a major business for a close friend. Harold and Barbara had a legion of dear friends who helped them: Cookie, Ace, Eric, Martha A, Martha B, Ann, Germaine, Diane, Rich and Suzanne, Bill, his nephew Dr. Paul, many caring medical people in the area, Kristi at the Plant Home, and people in shops and banks and drugstores, who fussed over them, in a real community. Two years ago, the Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum & Arctic Studies Center at nearby Bowdoin College held an exhibition of 193 photographs Harold took when he was based in Greenland. Harold’s family – including siblings in their 90s and late 80s – came in from New England and Florida for a reunion, in Harold’s most public moment. Harold came from hardy stock -- Quakers named Watrous and Crouch and Whipple who settled the eastern Connecticut coast and people named Grundy and Clegg and Schofield who thrived in Lancashire during the Industrial Revolution. But even these rugged folk wear down. Harold was fading the last time we saw him, on his 95th birthday in September. He had moved into a lovely retirement home, but his energy was gone and he could not enjoy the party. On Wednesday night, Cookie, a surrogate daughter to Harold and Barbara, who supervised their paperwork, was visiting from Connecticut, to be near him. Harold passed as a wintry storm roared up the coast. Come spring, Uncle Harold will be interred in the lovely hillside cemetery where he used to take us to visit Barbara and Roger. In recent weeks, as I thought about Harold and Barbara and Roger, my mind moved to a song about the release from pain – “Agate Hill,” by Alice Gerrard, recorded by the great Kathy Mattea. As I type this in the snowstorm, I think of Roger and Barbara and Harold together, building and cooking and fishing on some celestial version of coastal Maine, and I hear a line from the song: “Wild and free again, oh it will be as then.” IN MEMORIAL, GERMAINE BOYNTON Harold often talked about his in-law Germaine who lived further up US 1. She invited us to lunch last spring and cooked a French-Canadian specialty and showed us the work and studios of hers and her daughter Diane, two formidable and artistic ladies. Germaine passed in hospice Saturday morning, two days after Harold. |
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