Anyway, please put us back on your list of desultory philippics. Check in periodically. We'll try not to disappoint.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Hello again
It's time once again to set fingertips to keyboard and pick up where we left off almost two eventful years ago. Friends and relatives have passed on, loved ones believed lost have resurfaced, and my novel, about a boy who thinks he's a raccoon, remains an unfinished, unfocused collection of disparate images and half baked ideas. At this point, I'm not even sure who my target audience is. But I'm content or at least reconciled to the thought that it's best to let the story unfurl at its own pace, or lack thereof.
Friday, November 2, 2007
IN PRAISE OF SANDLOT FOOTBALL
Author/novelist/nature writer Tim Ohr explains why football, for some kids, is a big First Down. -wt
ON A RECENT SATURDAY MORNING WALK, I came upon an athletic field where I was greeted by an unnerving cheer.
“We go nuts,
“We go nuts,
“We go nuts.”
The cheer was not coming from inmates at an insane asylum; it came from young boys on the sidelines, members of a football team. They proudly announced that they were capable of doing what I had tried to avoid all my life.
I paused to survey the athletic field. Eight different teams of very young males were in various states of preparation for combat. One team ran scrimmage practice. Another team possessed its very own pre-pubescent cheerleaders and mothers dressed in team clothes. All the young athletes wore numbered uniforms. Blocking practice was encouraged on part of the field by drill-sergeant-quality hollering.
“Hit ‘em harder. You hitting him like a girl,” one coach screamed.
It is fair to describe myself as both appalled and transfixed. I watched for an approximate half hour the junior titans.
In two cases, teams of males, perhaps 10 or so years of age, knelt and were led in prayer before mortal combat. This was not the only use of the Lord’s name. It appeared to me that Our Savior and The Heavenly Father were mentioned in a less respectful way much more frequently than in the elongated prayer for victory and the safety of the soldiers at war.
This scene was on my mind when my friend, Michael Sanders of Clearwater, mentioned professional football to me recently. I had just joined Mike and friends to watch the Indianapolis Colts destroy the Tampa Bay Bucs for the 2007 season.
At the risk of seeming unpatriotic, I told Mike that I had returned our season tickets to the Tampa Bay Bucs when Doug Williams was allowed to depart the team when seeking fair compensation. The quarterblack, a term he used in his biography, was my hero.
To me, I said to Mike, pro football had become too money-oriented and was no longer fun.
Now, and very sadly, I was forced to conclude that the football contest I watched wasn’t much fun for today's kids, either. What had happened to the sport?
Mike and I (and a half dozen or so regulars in Bellaire, Florida), had played hours of sandlot football, not exactly touch, but something close to it. Most of these contests were played on the expansive Eagles Nest, the yard of Winston Williams, my friend and publisher.
We began playing those games when we were about the same age as the kids that I witnessed yelling “We go nuts.” That was when Mike was 10, and so was I, in 1956.
Thank goodness we didn’t have coaches like the kids nowadays. They make me recall basic training, otherwise known as boot camp. We arrived by bus at our barracks at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to be sent to barracks where our drill instructor greeted us something like this.
“MOVE!MOVE!MOVE!GRABYOURSHEETSANDBLANKETANDMAKE YOURBUNKPOLICEYOURAREATAKEASHOWERLIGHTSOUTINFIFTEEN MINUTESNOSMOKINGGETTOSLEEPYOUWILLBEAWAKEAT0400BREAKFAST FROM0500BEINFORMATIONFORTHEDAILYDOZENAT0600DOYOU UNDERSTANDMEFRESHMEAT.”
It was all so rapid and unknown a language that I held up my hand and asked if the drill sergeant if he could repeat this a bit slower.
“WHAT?AREYOUA (slang term implying you have a female sex organ)? GETDOWNANDGIVEMETENYOU (derogatory term for homosexual).”
“What did he say?” I asked a friend.
“He wants you to do twenty pushups,” my buddy said.
I ended up doing about 80 pushups because the first 79 were not satisfactory.
I have always had trouble with authoritarian personalities. Yet out on the gridiron were at last 160 children who were willing obeying their drill sergeants, or coaches, if you prefer. Plus the other group was still chanting, “We go nuts.”
In our sandlot days, we did not need uniforms like these kids. For one thing, we knew each other by first name. For another, we wanted to change positions and be the quarterback, or the fullback, or an end. We played offense and defense.
We wanted to win but didn’t care much if we did. The fun was in the playing. A game that lasted from after school until it got dark was a good game. We would have still played it if the score was 70-7 and we were on the losing end.
We had no desire to hurt one another. We did not go nuts. We liked each other, for starters. More important, if someone got hurt, the game stopped. Worse, a parent got called.
Speaking of parents, we didn’t want them watching us. How could we swear or have a good time with our parents there?
Pray before a football game? Please. We went to church on Sunday, everyone except Winston, lucky fellow. Church was where we kept our religion. If someone had got down on his knees to pray before we played football, we would have been embarrassed for him.
Listening to the parents at the game I watched that Saturday morning, I was extra glad our parents hadn’t come to our games. I recently read in our local papers about lawsuits to reverse game results and to change coaches within the Pee Wee leagues. A lawsuit? Over a kid's football game? Not in our day.
I recall Easter a decade or so ago when a young mother in our neighborhood screamed at her son and daughter, “You ruined Easter!” I don’t know what the children did to ruin Easter, and I suspect nothing was ruined except the children’s future Easters. Their mother had crucified them on her sharp tongue so that today I imagine the brother and sister looking at each other and saying “Remember when we ruined Easter?”
It looks to me like the adults are ruining football. Every child has prematurely become a young Spartan. Football for 10 year olds is step one on a path to a high-school career, extending to the Super Bowl, a dream about one in 10,000 kids might enjoy.
Based on what I saw, I think kids need to return to our sandlot days and play by sandlot rules. No refs needed. No parents. Just a game with friends.
I have hit upon the solution to make me want to watch professional football again. Each team should be appraised as to its value. If they were located in a South American country, they would be seized and appropriated and used to pay for basic health care for all citizens. Since they are in North America, however, stock should be sold at $1 a share to all the members of the community, so that the pro teams are owned by the community, not one rich, egocentric individual or family. Coaches and players should be answerable to the community instead of wealth. Coaches should not be judged on win-and-loss records but how much fun the players and fans have.
And at least one sandlot game per season, which does not count in the in the official team record, should be played by each NFL team. At that point, I will begin watching sports again. Meanwhile, we should stop treating our youngsters as if they live in a Sparta where the ultimate combat is about to take place when they are just playing football.
-TIM OHR
ON A RECENT SATURDAY MORNING WALK, I came upon an athletic field where I was greeted by an unnerving cheer.
“We go nuts,
“We go nuts,
“We go nuts.”
The cheer was not coming from inmates at an insane asylum; it came from young boys on the sidelines, members of a football team. They proudly announced that they were capable of doing what I had tried to avoid all my life.
I paused to survey the athletic field. Eight different teams of very young males were in various states of preparation for combat. One team ran scrimmage practice. Another team possessed its very own pre-pubescent cheerleaders and mothers dressed in team clothes. All the young athletes wore numbered uniforms. Blocking practice was encouraged on part of the field by drill-sergeant-quality hollering.
“Hit ‘em harder. You hitting him like a girl,” one coach screamed.
It is fair to describe myself as both appalled and transfixed. I watched for an approximate half hour the junior titans.
In two cases, teams of males, perhaps 10 or so years of age, knelt and were led in prayer before mortal combat. This was not the only use of the Lord’s name. It appeared to me that Our Savior and The Heavenly Father were mentioned in a less respectful way much more frequently than in the elongated prayer for victory and the safety of the soldiers at war.
This scene was on my mind when my friend, Michael Sanders of Clearwater, mentioned professional football to me recently. I had just joined Mike and friends to watch the Indianapolis Colts destroy the Tampa Bay Bucs for the 2007 season.
At the risk of seeming unpatriotic, I told Mike that I had returned our season tickets to the Tampa Bay Bucs when Doug Williams was allowed to depart the team when seeking fair compensation. The quarterblack, a term he used in his biography, was my hero.
To me, I said to Mike, pro football had become too money-oriented and was no longer fun.
Now, and very sadly, I was forced to conclude that the football contest I watched wasn’t much fun for today's kids, either. What had happened to the sport?
Mike and I (and a half dozen or so regulars in Bellaire, Florida), had played hours of sandlot football, not exactly touch, but something close to it. Most of these contests were played on the expansive Eagles Nest, the yard of Winston Williams, my friend and publisher.
We began playing those games when we were about the same age as the kids that I witnessed yelling “We go nuts.” That was when Mike was 10, and so was I, in 1956.
Thank goodness we didn’t have coaches like the kids nowadays. They make me recall basic training, otherwise known as boot camp. We arrived by bus at our barracks at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to be sent to barracks where our drill instructor greeted us something like this.
“MOVE!MOVE!MOVE!GRABYOURSHEETSANDBLANKETANDMAKE YOURBUNKPOLICEYOURAREATAKEASHOWERLIGHTSOUTINFIFTEEN MINUTESNOSMOKINGGETTOSLEEPYOUWILLBEAWAKEAT0400BREAKFAST FROM0500BEINFORMATIONFORTHEDAILYDOZENAT0600DOYOU UNDERSTANDMEFRESHMEAT.”
It was all so rapid and unknown a language that I held up my hand and asked if the drill sergeant if he could repeat this a bit slower.
“WHAT?AREYOUA (slang term implying you have a female sex organ)? GETDOWNANDGIVEMETENYOU (derogatory term for homosexual).”
“What did he say?” I asked a friend.
“He wants you to do twenty pushups,” my buddy said.
I ended up doing about 80 pushups because the first 79 were not satisfactory.
I have always had trouble with authoritarian personalities. Yet out on the gridiron were at last 160 children who were willing obeying their drill sergeants, or coaches, if you prefer. Plus the other group was still chanting, “We go nuts.”
In our sandlot days, we did not need uniforms like these kids. For one thing, we knew each other by first name. For another, we wanted to change positions and be the quarterback, or the fullback, or an end. We played offense and defense.
We wanted to win but didn’t care much if we did. The fun was in the playing. A game that lasted from after school until it got dark was a good game. We would have still played it if the score was 70-7 and we were on the losing end.
We had no desire to hurt one another. We did not go nuts. We liked each other, for starters. More important, if someone got hurt, the game stopped. Worse, a parent got called.
Speaking of parents, we didn’t want them watching us. How could we swear or have a good time with our parents there?
Pray before a football game? Please. We went to church on Sunday, everyone except Winston, lucky fellow. Church was where we kept our religion. If someone had got down on his knees to pray before we played football, we would have been embarrassed for him.
Listening to the parents at the game I watched that Saturday morning, I was extra glad our parents hadn’t come to our games. I recently read in our local papers about lawsuits to reverse game results and to change coaches within the Pee Wee leagues. A lawsuit? Over a kid's football game? Not in our day.
I recall Easter a decade or so ago when a young mother in our neighborhood screamed at her son and daughter, “You ruined Easter!” I don’t know what the children did to ruin Easter, and I suspect nothing was ruined except the children’s future Easters. Their mother had crucified them on her sharp tongue so that today I imagine the brother and sister looking at each other and saying “Remember when we ruined Easter?”
It looks to me like the adults are ruining football. Every child has prematurely become a young Spartan. Football for 10 year olds is step one on a path to a high-school career, extending to the Super Bowl, a dream about one in 10,000 kids might enjoy.
Based on what I saw, I think kids need to return to our sandlot days and play by sandlot rules. No refs needed. No parents. Just a game with friends.
I have hit upon the solution to make me want to watch professional football again. Each team should be appraised as to its value. If they were located in a South American country, they would be seized and appropriated and used to pay for basic health care for all citizens. Since they are in North America, however, stock should be sold at $1 a share to all the members of the community, so that the pro teams are owned by the community, not one rich, egocentric individual or family. Coaches and players should be answerable to the community instead of wealth. Coaches should not be judged on win-and-loss records but how much fun the players and fans have.
And at least one sandlot game per season, which does not count in the in the official team record, should be played by each NFL team. At that point, I will begin watching sports again. Meanwhile, we should stop treating our youngsters as if they live in a Sparta where the ultimate combat is about to take place when they are just playing football.
-TIM OHR
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Name That Band!
Today I'm inviting my readers -both of them- to submit names for a new band. Why? Maybe I just like naming bands. To get the ball rolling, here are a few contenders:
The Hoosier Daddies
The Burning Sensations
The Pooflingers
Jiggle The Handle
Geoff's Smorgasbeard
Let's make it a contest. The winner will receive effusive praise, and a cup o' Starbucks java.
The Hoosier Daddies
The Burning Sensations
The Pooflingers
Jiggle The Handle
Geoff's Smorgasbeard
Let's make it a contest. The winner will receive effusive praise, and a cup o' Starbucks java.
Friday, July 6, 2007
IDLE WORSHIP
A Bahamian ChacmoolThis cheery little beach gnome was discovered on Lee Stocking Island, near the Caribbean Marine Research Center in the Bahamas. He was about three feet tall, carved from a block of sandstone. The local Bahamians practiced Santeria, and my guide thought this was an altar used for animal sacrifices.
Ancient Mesoamerican religions employed similar altars, called chacmool. On festive occasions, the populace would get buzzed on maguey, a kind of beer made from fermented spit. A prisoner was brought forth, and draped over the chacmool. Then a priest, in a jumpsuit made from human skin, cut out his heart with an obsidian dagger.
A Tampa Yard GodThis photo of a Yard God was sent by George Byers and his friend Barbara Lewis. As for its provenance, Barbara volunteers the following:
"...in 1979 i married steve lewis and we went off to australia where he had lived and gotten a degree in anthropology. it was part honeymoon, part shopping trip, as we were embarking on a business
adventure on a shoestring: cultural artifacts. we bought an old holden station wagon and traveled the east coast, crossed to the middle, went s. to adelaide and n. to darwin before returning to sydney... we shipped our purchases along the way. in those days it was considered original art - i think aboriginal art now has national treasure status, and it wouldn't be possible to send the traditional art/artifacts out of the country... that mask is from new guinea, i believe from the sepik river region. it is basketry and mud, mostly, with some remnants of feathers. it might be a tumbuan mask, which is worn during all ceremonial dances, particularly preceding initiation of young men... "
ConfucAs an earnest young street photographer, I thought this store window was fraught with ambiguous spiritual messages and pithy social commentary.
A deity for the new milleniumO Lord, won't you buy me
an Apple iPhone
my Blackberry's busted
please throw me a bone
I'll pray to it daily
as I face Steve Job's home
o Lord, won't you buy me
an Apple iPhone
Monday, June 25, 2007
Calm (a new post from George Byers)
The bay was glassy calm. Slight swells from nowhere in particular imparted a little motion to the deck, but the sails flopped flaccidly only in response to the lazy rolling. The ice melting in the cooler made no sound. Somewhere below, a fly was buzzing.
The helmsman worked the wheel this way and that, attempting to keep the boat on course. But without headway, there was no response from the rudder, only the faint clanking of the chain and sprocket mechanism that converts rotation of the wheel to tension in cables that pass through sheaves around the axis of the rudderpost. A complex series of mechanical contrivances to have so little effect today. The vessel drifted aimlessly and eventually someone said, "You're off course!"
The helmsman replied testily that the boat wouldn't answer her helm. And what damned difference did it make anyway since it was obvious we weren't going anywhere?
"Well if we get a little puff you'd want to be pointed the right way," offered the critic.
The man at the wheel gave a sulky sigh.
The midday sun beat down on the deck and coachroof.
I cleated off the mainsheet, which was an empty and futile gesture anyway. Wordlessly I went below to get a drink. The navigator, a big and normally cheerful fellow, sat on the quarterberth, sweat rolling down his face and neck and into the soaked folds of his t- shirt. Every so often he would snatch at the pesky fly. His glass in his other hand was empty.
Looking into the cooler I saw a few lite beers floating in slush. I groped around and found a vestige of ice to suck on. The sun overhead was brutal, but the cabin in its stillness was ovenlike. The navigator seemed lost in his own thought, or lack of, so I returned to the cockpit. The foredeck crew, normally robust with exertion and urgency, continued their idle barbs at the frustrated steersman.
"Well, one of you smartasses can steer the summbitch if you're so damned skilled!" blurted the butt of their heckling, who straightway let go of the wheel and headed down the companionway from which I had just emerged. On its own suddenly, the wheel spun for about an eighth of a turn and came to rest. Nothing else changed.
No one came to the wheel. It made no difference anyway. I could hear a slamming door down below as the disgruntled crewman apparently sought the solitude of the vee- berth. I quietly wondered how many minutes would elapse before he fled that solar crock- pot.
Off in the distance a slight kitten's paw of breeze darkened the water for a moment and vanished as quickly. Once again the bay was glassy calm.
-G Byers
The helmsman worked the wheel this way and that, attempting to keep the boat on course. But without headway, there was no response from the rudder, only the faint clanking of the chain and sprocket mechanism that converts rotation of the wheel to tension in cables that pass through sheaves around the axis of the rudderpost. A complex series of mechanical contrivances to have so little effect today. The vessel drifted aimlessly and eventually someone said, "You're off course!"
The helmsman replied testily that the boat wouldn't answer her helm. And what damned difference did it make anyway since it was obvious we weren't going anywhere?
"Well if we get a little puff you'd want to be pointed the right way," offered the critic.
The man at the wheel gave a sulky sigh.
The midday sun beat down on the deck and coachroof.
I cleated off the mainsheet, which was an empty and futile gesture anyway. Wordlessly I went below to get a drink. The navigator, a big and normally cheerful fellow, sat on the quarterberth, sweat rolling down his face and neck and into the soaked folds of his t- shirt. Every so often he would snatch at the pesky fly. His glass in his other hand was empty.
Looking into the cooler I saw a few lite beers floating in slush. I groped around and found a vestige of ice to suck on. The sun overhead was brutal, but the cabin in its stillness was ovenlike. The navigator seemed lost in his own thought, or lack of, so I returned to the cockpit. The foredeck crew, normally robust with exertion and urgency, continued their idle barbs at the frustrated steersman.
"Well, one of you smartasses can steer the summbitch if you're so damned skilled!" blurted the butt of their heckling, who straightway let go of the wheel and headed down the companionway from which I had just emerged. On its own suddenly, the wheel spun for about an eighth of a turn and came to rest. Nothing else changed.
No one came to the wheel. It made no difference anyway. I could hear a slamming door down below as the disgruntled crewman apparently sought the solitude of the vee- berth. I quietly wondered how many minutes would elapse before he fled that solar crock- pot.
Off in the distance a slight kitten's paw of breeze darkened the water for a moment and vanished as quickly. Once again the bay was glassy calm.
-G Byers
Monday, June 18, 2007
The Yarrr Of Living Dangerously
When our friend George Byers (AKA Bubba) says he's at sea, he's not just being metaphoric. This is his brief, vivid description of an incident that took place during a recent yacht race off Davis Island.
Seems like George is always off on some seafarin' adventure, to Cuba, Mexico, or the Everglades. We're hoping he'll keep us updated, and maybe become a frequent contributor.
He's also a very fine sculptor, whose award-winning work is widely exhibited.
Yarrr!
w t
How We Broke The Nan Shan's Mainmast
It was a breezy evening and we were in a hard- driven first place. I was facing aft from the cockpit, tidying up long, wet loops of the mainsheet after hardening up at the first mark. Yes, for you purists, it had been a leeward start.
I heard a sharp report but thought it was the jibsheet popping off the self- tailer. I glanced up to see the masthead and triangle of dacron sliding down the cupped face of the lower part of the main. That seemed very not right, and as my eye followed up the skewed spar I could see the tubular aluminum stick broken cleanly right above the spreader.
Most of the crew was on the windward rail and unthreatened, but the tactician had been standing with his hand on the port shroud when its chainplate broke in two. Thus the turnbuckle and eye were yanked up past his hand. We could tell it had been painful but he kept moving all his fingers.
Other crews, good sportsmen all, checked up on us they whooshed by to vie for our lost lead.
We examined the broken chainplate and could see to our horror that a hidden stress crack had reduced its effective cross- sectional area by 75%. And to think we had been bouncing around out in the Gulf and in the Yucatan Channel and off the coast of the communist island.
-G Byers
Seems like George is always off on some seafarin' adventure, to Cuba, Mexico, or the Everglades. We're hoping he'll keep us updated, and maybe become a frequent contributor.
He's also a very fine sculptor, whose award-winning work is widely exhibited.
Yarrr!
w t
How We Broke The Nan Shan's Mainmast
It was a breezy evening and we were in a hard- driven first place. I was facing aft from the cockpit, tidying up long, wet loops of the mainsheet after hardening up at the first mark. Yes, for you purists, it had been a leeward start.
I heard a sharp report but thought it was the jibsheet popping off the self- tailer. I glanced up to see the masthead and triangle of dacron sliding down the cupped face of the lower part of the main. That seemed very not right, and as my eye followed up the skewed spar I could see the tubular aluminum stick broken cleanly right above the spreader.
Most of the crew was on the windward rail and unthreatened, but the tactician had been standing with his hand on the port shroud when its chainplate broke in two. Thus the turnbuckle and eye were yanked up past his hand. We could tell it had been painful but he kept moving all his fingers.
Other crews, good sportsmen all, checked up on us they whooshed by to vie for our lost lead.
We examined the broken chainplate and could see to our horror that a hidden stress crack had reduced its effective cross- sectional area by 75%. And to think we had been bouncing around out in the Gulf and in the Yucatan Channel and off the coast of the communist island.
-G Byers
Monday, June 4, 2007
June 5th, Wang Weilin Day
On June 5th, 1989, Wang Weilin stood alone before a row of tanks in Tiananmen Square.
Not much is known about what happened to him next. Some say that he was executed, or imprisoned, others that he is alive and free. Although his fate remains a mystery, what he did is not in dispute. Singlehandedly, while the world watched in disbelief, he stopped a column of tanks.
When the American press mentions the Tiananmen massacre, seems like it's always with a hint of smugness, as if that couldn't happen here. As if Kent State, or the '68 Democratic Convention, or Selma were the literary devices of liberal historians. But demonstrations occur wherever there's deep polarization and one segment of the population finds itself under another segment's boot heel. That such events take place is evidence of a dynamic society, just as their bloody suppresssion is evidence of institutionalized cancer.
It's a safe bet China will never honor Wang Weilin. And if America did it would probably be for the wrong reasons. Still, I wish we would. I wish June 5th could be Wang Weilin Day, a day to commemorate such selfless acts of courage and defiance, regardless of nationality.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Anne's Lauren Hutton Story
My sister Anne is cultured, elegant, beautiful and brilliant. She's a former ballerina with the Miami Civic Ballet, and an accomplished actress, with a Masters Degree in drama.
In the early 1960s, Anne attended USF. One of her classmates in the Theatre Department was Lauren Hutton. The two became friends. Anne has written this reminiscence of that time, and her friend, which I'm pleased to post here.
-w t
LAUREN HUTTON - EARNESTLY WILDE
"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing." Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Somewhere deep in the archives of the University of South Florida Theatre Department, circa fall, 1961, are some production photographs of a striking young actress. Her soon-to-be-famous face is framed by a huge hat. Her expression, disdainful and prim, conceals the now familiar gap-toothed grin of countless Revlon promotions. The body that was to launch four decades of magazine covers, is tightly corseted, enveloped in a long gown. But the 18 year-old is still unmistakably alluring, in every way abreast of her time. And at this particular time, she is posing as Gwendolen in a memorable 1960's production of The Importance of Being Earnest.
Wild's haughty 19th century heroine was the only major role she would play at U.S.F. before emerging as a more complex character - herself- on an international stage. Both as Gwendolen, and later as Lauren Hutton, the girl I knew as Mary Laurence Hall was supremely stylish, at once elegant and earthy. Amazingly, she has retained the same qualities that first wowed Tampa audiences nearly forty years ago.
Mary's role (I have never been able to think of her as "Lauren") was an inspired bit of casting - one that seems to have both reflected and affected her life. All the cool sophistication of the character was in her, even as a teenager. She also had an "earnest" sense of drama, both on and offstage, and it was this that drew us together after I entered college in 1962. For four months, until Mary's sudden departure to become a Playboy bunny, we shared acting classes and dorm rooms on the second floor of Alpha Hall. More importantly, we shared feelings, experiences, and confidences, both on and off the stage. In both areas, Mary was a revelation. She had a definite sense of earnestness, through which ran a steak of "wild" unpredictability. Oscar would have loved her.
Like the scandal-plagued Wild, Mary wore clothes wonderfully - even in her college days when she had almost none. Occasionally we double-dated, and it was not good for my self-esteem. Never have I felt uglier than sitting next to Mary, frumpy in my post-fifties crinolines, while she was fabulous in a plain brown pantsuit. This was practically the only clothing she owned, aside from jeans and a few men's shirts. The woman who would later wear Dior, Chanel and Calvin Klein had a threadbare closet and possessed not one stitch of underwear - a deprivation of which she seemed proud.
What she did possess was a unique gangly grace, on daily display in our acting class. Mary really did not need these acting lessons, which were mostly aimed at helping students lose their inhibitions and gain confidence. Mary had no inhibitions whatsoever and seemed born for the spotlight. Her classroom performances bore this out. As students we were given a succession of exercises to prepare, then perform for classmates. With each exercise Mary seemed to reveal more of herself, and to take a sly delight in her ability to casually shock us. Our mid-term exam was to be a pantomimed bath. Mary's "bath" took some forty minutes to perform, and was so fully realized that the rest of us either gawked in fascination or averted our eyes.
And Mary could do more than pantomime; she could improvise dialogue with disarming skill, creating one-liners with a deft sense of comic timing. One unforgettable effort was a "blind date" scene in which her unscripted partner could do little more than stammer uncontrollably. Twenty years later, playing opposite her in American Gigolo, Richard Gere would be similarly inarticulate.
Mary was a great conversationalist offstage as well. And at those times, I had glimpses of a personal life that was not at all comic, but that held poignant realities. One of those realities was that she was poor. She did not explicitly tell me this, but it seemed self-evident from her meager wardrobe and bare dorm room. I knew that her father had died before she had known him, and that she had a mother and younger sisters towards whom she felt extremely protective.
I learned also that she was one-eigth African-American, and consumed by the injustices and pain which would soon ignite the Civil Rights Movement. She loved black artists, notably Billie Holiday, and kept a collection of scratchy old 45's which she played on a small portable record player. To the soulful background of Billie singing "God Bless the Child" we'd sit on the floor of her room and have intense conversations about Art, Life, and Black and White America in the early, segregated sixties.
"Have you heard about the survey of black children?" she asked one day. "They show black kids a white doll and a black doll, and the black kids say that the white doll is 'good' and the black doll is 'bad.' Kids are brainwashed to think that way." Somehow I could not imagine Mary being brainwashed, much less as a child who played with dolls. She seemed such a very old soul at age 18. Later I was to learn some of the reasons why.
In between our intense conversations, there were Portents of Things to Come. With typical individuality, Mary had stopped dating people her chronological age and was going out with a 40-sometihnig disc jockey who took her on fishing trips. After one trip she showed me some pictures taken by "Pat." I was stunned. In person Mary was attractive; in photographs she was glorious.
One image in particular sticks in the mid: Mary in a white shirt holding a frying pan filled with the day's catch. Her arms were outstretched and her expression was like Greta Garbo in Queen Christina. As I looked at it, a small voice inside told me that Mary would some day have much bigger fish to fry.
Meanwhile, we continued preparing exercises for acting class. Mary performed an assigned emotional recall. In semi-darkness with a single shaft of light on her face, Mary sat rigid, alone in a chair onstage, both hands clutching the seat. Her back was hunched, her eyes huge and luminous. She remained immobilized for many minutes looking truly terrified. The night after that performance we had another all-nighter in her room. Mary seemed to need to talk. "Could you tell that I was scared?" she asked. She then told me of the childhood memory she'd used - a traumatic betrayal in a place where she should have felt safest.
In the Age of Oprah, this has been an oft-repeated story with individual variations. In the early, inhibited sixties, however, it was truly shocking. I felt heartbroken for Mary. I wanted to give her something, and offered a gift which in hindsight was oddly prophetic - a gold compact containing Revlon powder. The next morning there was a knock on my door and when I opened it, there stood Mary wearing only the oversized man's shirt she used as a kind of bathrobe. Wordlessly she held out to me her favorite LP - a Judy Garland album entitled "Alone." It remained a treasured possession of mine for many years, until lost in a shipment when I moved overseas.
Several days later, Mary told me that her family was coming to see her. I did not meet them, but caught a glimpse of her mother and one of her sisters from my dorm window. Mary's mother was tall, thin, and fragile-looiking. She seemed to totter unsteadily on platform shoes that were too high, her arms wrapped firmly around Mary and another daughter. The trio formed a vulnerable and conspicuous picture as they made their way across what was then a small, barren campus. I like to think that Mary's subsequent fame gave them all great security.
When the trimester ended shortly afterward, Mary and I headed in opposite directions - permanently. I went north to become a camp counselor for a summer. Mary went to the Bahamas and began to be famous. She returned only once for a brief but memorable visit. One September afternoon I was seated in the theatre lobby at USF, studying my lines as Ophelia in Hamlet. In swept a vision in clouds of aqua chiffon. It was Mary in a dress - the first I'd ever seen her wear. She was animated, smiling, and in a hurry. This was clearly just a side trip on the way to some place more important. In front of our shy scenic designer, she threw up her skirt to reveal that she now wore underwear - the briefest of bikini pants. He looked shell-shocked and yelled, "Mary, put your dress down!" She laughed, complied, and vanished. I never saw her - at least in person - again.
In subsequent months, lurid whispers about Mary floated around the theatre department - mainly that she had made a Faustian bargain somewhat like another Oscar Wild character - Dorian Gray, the beautiful socialite who sold his soul for eternal youth. There were rumors that Mary was involved with strange people, going strange places, writing strange letters, and even drawing strange pictures. I never believed any of this. The Mary I knew was solidly grounded in reality. Somehow, her childhood pain had been a gift of liberation. She also had a shrewd sense of boundaries and just how far to go.
I could imagine her starting some of these stories. And indeed, they were colorful enough to finally make international news - not headlines exactly, but brief, intriguing gossip items. One story became infamous - her reply to a question about how she got a $200,000 contract. "I f---ed around," she said. I didn't believe that either.
I kept up with Mary's publicity while living in what became in 1971, my homeland - New Zealand. I lived there as a housewife and sometime drama coach during the height of Mary's modeling and acting career. Her image, if not her physical presence, had followed me to a remote rural area in the South Pacific, as it would follow me back to Florida many years later.
Usually Mary's image appeared on days when I felt dowdiest. And it was hard not to feel dowdy in 1970's New Zealand, where style was not exactly a priority. I saw lots of Mary's pictures at my family doctor's office. Seated between two small runny-nosed children, I would open a magazine - usually The New Zealand Women's Weekly. A radiant goddess would appear in the centerfold, usually with the words "Revlon" or "Ultima" nearby. Always it was Mary, now fully reincarnated as Lauren Hutton. She looked impossibly, perfectly gorgeous. I heartily hated her guts. Then, with a pang, I would remember the solitary figure onstage of many years past.
Mary not only changed her name and lifestyle, at times she publicly reinvented parts of her past. One evening while sitting up with a sick child in Matamata, New Zealand, I tuned in to Entertainment Tonight and watched an interview with Mary, A.K.A. Lauren. To my astonishment she insisted she had never had an acting class. "I never took a class in my life," she stated earnestly. "I though that stuff was a lot of hooey." "Oh Mary," I thought, "How could you? We had a fine teacher." (Jack Clay, professor at U.S. F. from 1961 - 1966, now a professional actor in Seattle).
Over the next decade, the 80s, Mary's acting career seemed to stall, despite her undeniable talent. I sensed a possible reason. Years before, she and I leaned that acting is, in part, recalling personal experience. She had once shared hers, truthfully but very painfully. Maybe she had found it easer to remain, like Gwendolen, focused mainly on style and appearance. And for Mary, style has truly been "the vital thing", the source of a durability rivaling even the ageless Dorian Gray. Oscar Wild's description of the character also fits Mary today: "Wonderful, with frank, dark eyes and crisp golden hair... one trusts (her) at once." Indeed. For Mary has built yet another career on making endorsements. There really is "something about Mary" which gets us to buy Revlon, Slimfast, and goodies at Burdines. She looks and sounds sublimely, earnestly, All-American.
Over the year, I have come to feel almost as close to Mary's image as I once felt to her. There is a comforting quality in the soothing, husky voice and coaxing smile. Mary has become a soft, commercial background to the different stages of my life.
I look forward, in due time, to seeing Mary become a prototype of geriatric glamour, literally "pushing" the best walkers and wheelchairs at our baby-boom generation. I am sure that she will be stylish and picture-perfect. I know she will be earnest.
-ANNE H.
In the early 1960s, Anne attended USF. One of her classmates in the Theatre Department was Lauren Hutton. The two became friends. Anne has written this reminiscence of that time, and her friend, which I'm pleased to post here.
-w t
LAUREN HUTTON - EARNESTLY WILDE
"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing." Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Somewhere deep in the archives of the University of South Florida Theatre Department, circa fall, 1961, are some production photographs of a striking young actress. Her soon-to-be-famous face is framed by a huge hat. Her expression, disdainful and prim, conceals the now familiar gap-toothed grin of countless Revlon promotions. The body that was to launch four decades of magazine covers, is tightly corseted, enveloped in a long gown. But the 18 year-old is still unmistakably alluring, in every way abreast of her time. And at this particular time, she is posing as Gwendolen in a memorable 1960's production of The Importance of Being Earnest.
Wild's haughty 19th century heroine was the only major role she would play at U.S.F. before emerging as a more complex character - herself- on an international stage. Both as Gwendolen, and later as Lauren Hutton, the girl I knew as Mary Laurence Hall was supremely stylish, at once elegant and earthy. Amazingly, she has retained the same qualities that first wowed Tampa audiences nearly forty years ago.
Mary's role (I have never been able to think of her as "Lauren") was an inspired bit of casting - one that seems to have both reflected and affected her life. All the cool sophistication of the character was in her, even as a teenager. She also had an "earnest" sense of drama, both on and offstage, and it was this that drew us together after I entered college in 1962. For four months, until Mary's sudden departure to become a Playboy bunny, we shared acting classes and dorm rooms on the second floor of Alpha Hall. More importantly, we shared feelings, experiences, and confidences, both on and off the stage. In both areas, Mary was a revelation. She had a definite sense of earnestness, through which ran a steak of "wild" unpredictability. Oscar would have loved her.
Like the scandal-plagued Wild, Mary wore clothes wonderfully - even in her college days when she had almost none. Occasionally we double-dated, and it was not good for my self-esteem. Never have I felt uglier than sitting next to Mary, frumpy in my post-fifties crinolines, while she was fabulous in a plain brown pantsuit. This was practically the only clothing she owned, aside from jeans and a few men's shirts. The woman who would later wear Dior, Chanel and Calvin Klein had a threadbare closet and possessed not one stitch of underwear - a deprivation of which she seemed proud.
What she did possess was a unique gangly grace, on daily display in our acting class. Mary really did not need these acting lessons, which were mostly aimed at helping students lose their inhibitions and gain confidence. Mary had no inhibitions whatsoever and seemed born for the spotlight. Her classroom performances bore this out. As students we were given a succession of exercises to prepare, then perform for classmates. With each exercise Mary seemed to reveal more of herself, and to take a sly delight in her ability to casually shock us. Our mid-term exam was to be a pantomimed bath. Mary's "bath" took some forty minutes to perform, and was so fully realized that the rest of us either gawked in fascination or averted our eyes.
And Mary could do more than pantomime; she could improvise dialogue with disarming skill, creating one-liners with a deft sense of comic timing. One unforgettable effort was a "blind date" scene in which her unscripted partner could do little more than stammer uncontrollably. Twenty years later, playing opposite her in American Gigolo, Richard Gere would be similarly inarticulate.
Mary was a great conversationalist offstage as well. And at those times, I had glimpses of a personal life that was not at all comic, but that held poignant realities. One of those realities was that she was poor. She did not explicitly tell me this, but it seemed self-evident from her meager wardrobe and bare dorm room. I knew that her father had died before she had known him, and that she had a mother and younger sisters towards whom she felt extremely protective.
I learned also that she was one-eigth African-American, and consumed by the injustices and pain which would soon ignite the Civil Rights Movement. She loved black artists, notably Billie Holiday, and kept a collection of scratchy old 45's which she played on a small portable record player. To the soulful background of Billie singing "God Bless the Child" we'd sit on the floor of her room and have intense conversations about Art, Life, and Black and White America in the early, segregated sixties.
"Have you heard about the survey of black children?" she asked one day. "They show black kids a white doll and a black doll, and the black kids say that the white doll is 'good' and the black doll is 'bad.' Kids are brainwashed to think that way." Somehow I could not imagine Mary being brainwashed, much less as a child who played with dolls. She seemed such a very old soul at age 18. Later I was to learn some of the reasons why.
In between our intense conversations, there were Portents of Things to Come. With typical individuality, Mary had stopped dating people her chronological age and was going out with a 40-sometihnig disc jockey who took her on fishing trips. After one trip she showed me some pictures taken by "Pat." I was stunned. In person Mary was attractive; in photographs she was glorious.
One image in particular sticks in the mid: Mary in a white shirt holding a frying pan filled with the day's catch. Her arms were outstretched and her expression was like Greta Garbo in Queen Christina. As I looked at it, a small voice inside told me that Mary would some day have much bigger fish to fry.
Meanwhile, we continued preparing exercises for acting class. Mary performed an assigned emotional recall. In semi-darkness with a single shaft of light on her face, Mary sat rigid, alone in a chair onstage, both hands clutching the seat. Her back was hunched, her eyes huge and luminous. She remained immobilized for many minutes looking truly terrified. The night after that performance we had another all-nighter in her room. Mary seemed to need to talk. "Could you tell that I was scared?" she asked. She then told me of the childhood memory she'd used - a traumatic betrayal in a place where she should have felt safest.
In the Age of Oprah, this has been an oft-repeated story with individual variations. In the early, inhibited sixties, however, it was truly shocking. I felt heartbroken for Mary. I wanted to give her something, and offered a gift which in hindsight was oddly prophetic - a gold compact containing Revlon powder. The next morning there was a knock on my door and when I opened it, there stood Mary wearing only the oversized man's shirt she used as a kind of bathrobe. Wordlessly she held out to me her favorite LP - a Judy Garland album entitled "Alone." It remained a treasured possession of mine for many years, until lost in a shipment when I moved overseas.
Several days later, Mary told me that her family was coming to see her. I did not meet them, but caught a glimpse of her mother and one of her sisters from my dorm window. Mary's mother was tall, thin, and fragile-looiking. She seemed to totter unsteadily on platform shoes that were too high, her arms wrapped firmly around Mary and another daughter. The trio formed a vulnerable and conspicuous picture as they made their way across what was then a small, barren campus. I like to think that Mary's subsequent fame gave them all great security.
When the trimester ended shortly afterward, Mary and I headed in opposite directions - permanently. I went north to become a camp counselor for a summer. Mary went to the Bahamas and began to be famous. She returned only once for a brief but memorable visit. One September afternoon I was seated in the theatre lobby at USF, studying my lines as Ophelia in Hamlet. In swept a vision in clouds of aqua chiffon. It was Mary in a dress - the first I'd ever seen her wear. She was animated, smiling, and in a hurry. This was clearly just a side trip on the way to some place more important. In front of our shy scenic designer, she threw up her skirt to reveal that she now wore underwear - the briefest of bikini pants. He looked shell-shocked and yelled, "Mary, put your dress down!" She laughed, complied, and vanished. I never saw her - at least in person - again.
In subsequent months, lurid whispers about Mary floated around the theatre department - mainly that she had made a Faustian bargain somewhat like another Oscar Wild character - Dorian Gray, the beautiful socialite who sold his soul for eternal youth. There were rumors that Mary was involved with strange people, going strange places, writing strange letters, and even drawing strange pictures. I never believed any of this. The Mary I knew was solidly grounded in reality. Somehow, her childhood pain had been a gift of liberation. She also had a shrewd sense of boundaries and just how far to go.
I could imagine her starting some of these stories. And indeed, they were colorful enough to finally make international news - not headlines exactly, but brief, intriguing gossip items. One story became infamous - her reply to a question about how she got a $200,000 contract. "I f---ed around," she said. I didn't believe that either.
I kept up with Mary's publicity while living in what became in 1971, my homeland - New Zealand. I lived there as a housewife and sometime drama coach during the height of Mary's modeling and acting career. Her image, if not her physical presence, had followed me to a remote rural area in the South Pacific, as it would follow me back to Florida many years later.
Usually Mary's image appeared on days when I felt dowdiest. And it was hard not to feel dowdy in 1970's New Zealand, where style was not exactly a priority. I saw lots of Mary's pictures at my family doctor's office. Seated between two small runny-nosed children, I would open a magazine - usually The New Zealand Women's Weekly. A radiant goddess would appear in the centerfold, usually with the words "Revlon" or "Ultima" nearby. Always it was Mary, now fully reincarnated as Lauren Hutton. She looked impossibly, perfectly gorgeous. I heartily hated her guts. Then, with a pang, I would remember the solitary figure onstage of many years past.
Mary not only changed her name and lifestyle, at times she publicly reinvented parts of her past. One evening while sitting up with a sick child in Matamata, New Zealand, I tuned in to Entertainment Tonight and watched an interview with Mary, A.K.A. Lauren. To my astonishment she insisted she had never had an acting class. "I never took a class in my life," she stated earnestly. "I though that stuff was a lot of hooey." "Oh Mary," I thought, "How could you? We had a fine teacher." (Jack Clay, professor at U.S. F. from 1961 - 1966, now a professional actor in Seattle).
Over the next decade, the 80s, Mary's acting career seemed to stall, despite her undeniable talent. I sensed a possible reason. Years before, she and I leaned that acting is, in part, recalling personal experience. She had once shared hers, truthfully but very painfully. Maybe she had found it easer to remain, like Gwendolen, focused mainly on style and appearance. And for Mary, style has truly been "the vital thing", the source of a durability rivaling even the ageless Dorian Gray. Oscar Wild's description of the character also fits Mary today: "Wonderful, with frank, dark eyes and crisp golden hair... one trusts (her) at once." Indeed. For Mary has built yet another career on making endorsements. There really is "something about Mary" which gets us to buy Revlon, Slimfast, and goodies at Burdines. She looks and sounds sublimely, earnestly, All-American.
Over the year, I have come to feel almost as close to Mary's image as I once felt to her. There is a comforting quality in the soothing, husky voice and coaxing smile. Mary has become a soft, commercial background to the different stages of my life.
I look forward, in due time, to seeing Mary become a prototype of geriatric glamour, literally "pushing" the best walkers and wheelchairs at our baby-boom generation. I am sure that she will be stylish and picture-perfect. I know she will be earnest.
-ANNE H.
Monday, April 30, 2007
True Tales From Sulphur Springs: Remembering The Little Museum
NOTE: I learned yesterday of the passing, in 2002, of Mike Mayfield, former director of the Hillsborough County Museum, the forerunner of the institution now known as Tampa's Museum Of Science & Industry, or MOSI. In some ways Mike was a tragic figure, and I'll devote a post to him and his ill-starred tenure as museum director at a later date. This reminiscence describes how I came to work at the little museum by the river, and what I found there.
1974 I applied for work at the Hillsborough County Museum in Tampa. My girlfriend preceded me there; she had a summer job teaching art to innercity kids. One day she mentioned that the Exhibits Department needed a temporary laborer, preferably one that could swing a hammer. I didn’t know beans about carpentry, but I was sick of driving a cab, so I gave it a shot.
For reasons I don’t recall, my interview took place on the museum grounds around midnight. It was pitch dark, and although we couldn’t actually see each other, the Exhibits Coordinator said I had an “amicable aura”, and I got the job. I kind of liked my title: “Journeyman Helper”.
The museum was on the north bank of the Hillsborough River in Sulphur Springs, a site now occupied by the county's Parks and Recreation Department. At that time there were ten buildings. Three had once been homes; the rest were portables, storage sheds, or renovated garages. About half had recently been converted to exhibit space. Appalachian quilts, antique toys, Native American artwork, and duck decoys from the Louisiana bayou were among the shows slated for the coming year, to be rented or borrowed from other museums or private collectors. For the next several months the staff struggled to meet a rigorous schedule of openings. When not building pedestals and display cases I policed the grounds, picking up trash with a pointed stick.
Just as my temporary job was ending, the Museum’s “Acting Curator of Collections” -the Property Control Clerk- resigned. I took a Civil Service exam, and took his place.
As the new Property Control Clerk/Acting Curator, my first task was to conduct a museum-wide inventory, to see what we had and how we were handling it.
Boxes of artifacts and ephemera were stashed in attics, in closets, and under buildings, exposed to the elements. Some of the most interesting, and oddest, pieces were on display, but most were stockpiled at another location, on the top floor of an old warehouse in what’s now the Channel District. Only a few items had been catalogued, by someone to whom English was at best a second language.
Most of the collections had no reliable provenance, only rumors and hearsay. A beaded buckskin wedding dress was purported to have belonged to a friend of Annie Oakley’s. My ornately carved desk was said to have once been John Ringling’s. Underneath my office in Building 7 were several grocery bags full of human bones, said to have been “salvaged” (plundered) from an Indian burial mound.
Conditions were worse -much worse- in our downtown warehouse. Objects were stacked on rickety shelves, or heaped on the floor. The place was an oven; a recording thermometer read 95 degrees at 6:00 AM. The relative humidity hovered at an arid 50 per cent, good for preserving dried fruit or beef jerky, but injurious to sensitive artifacts of wood, cloth, bone, and paper.
The inventory revealed an eclectic assemblage of thousands upon thousands of THINGS- fossils, curios, rocks, relics, antiques, and assorted objets d’art. There were stuffed animals, model trains, fake shrunken heads, handpainted Ukranian Easter eggs, old tools, a medieval Spanish breastplate, a massive amethyst geode, a matched pair of mastodon tusks. There were the original plans for the presidential palace of Nicaragua, ca. 1915, and boxes of butterflies collected in South America in the 1920s. There was a rich trove of American Indian artifacts, woven baskets, ceramic bowls, bows and arrows, lacrosse sticks, cradleboards, kachina dolls, and delicately stitched leather goods decorated with porcupine quills and tiny glass beads.
And there were other surprises -some of them downright alarming. Rummaging around, I found a liter of mercury, and a rusty can full of highly explosive ether. Next to that was some fused sand wrapped in a bit of lead foil. A scribbled note said it was from ground zero at an atomic bomb test site. I disposed of the ether, and stored the rest as safely I could.
I was acutely aware that I was embarassingly ignorant, and lacked the skills and education needed to manage such a potpourri. I requested training, and the museum obliged, sending me to the Smithsonian for classes in collections conservation, and the Florida State Museum for a lengthy seminar on the preservation of fossils. Most importantly, I was encouraged to network with other museum professionals across the country. Then we obtained a grant for a team of college students, from various disciplines, to catalogue and conserve the bulk of the permanent collections. Carolyn Byers, Peter Owens, Robert Peterson, Loretta Hennessey, Bruce Bollman, Bertram Crawford, and Robert Soler toiled diligently for a year, documenting tens of thousands of items, preserving arcane and puzzling bits and pieces of Tampa’s legacy. If not for their combined efforts, which largely went unrecognized, many irreplaceable objects would surely have been lost.
It was understood from the beginning that our work at the Hillsborough County Museum was in preparation for a bigger, more modern facility. In 1977 the new museum was finally approved. More personnel were added, and Mike Mayfield was replaced, without forewarning, with a new director. We broke ground on MOSI in 1979, and I was privileged to work -and play- there for many years.
But it’s my time at the little museum that holds meaning for me now. Recently I went back, after almost three decades, and strolled around the grounds. Three of the original buildings are gone, and the rest are mostly office space. Still, it looked much the same. How odd to think that an institution like MOSI could have its roots here, on this shaded riverbank, in a decaying neighborhood the city has forgotten.
1974 I applied for work at the Hillsborough County Museum in Tampa. My girlfriend preceded me there; she had a summer job teaching art to innercity kids. One day she mentioned that the Exhibits Department needed a temporary laborer, preferably one that could swing a hammer. I didn’t know beans about carpentry, but I was sick of driving a cab, so I gave it a shot.
For reasons I don’t recall, my interview took place on the museum grounds around midnight. It was pitch dark, and although we couldn’t actually see each other, the Exhibits Coordinator said I had an “amicable aura”, and I got the job. I kind of liked my title: “Journeyman Helper”.
The museum was on the north bank of the Hillsborough River in Sulphur Springs, a site now occupied by the county's Parks and Recreation Department. At that time there were ten buildings. Three had once been homes; the rest were portables, storage sheds, or renovated garages. About half had recently been converted to exhibit space. Appalachian quilts, antique toys, Native American artwork, and duck decoys from the Louisiana bayou were among the shows slated for the coming year, to be rented or borrowed from other museums or private collectors. For the next several months the staff struggled to meet a rigorous schedule of openings. When not building pedestals and display cases I policed the grounds, picking up trash with a pointed stick.
Just as my temporary job was ending, the Museum’s “Acting Curator of Collections” -the Property Control Clerk- resigned. I took a Civil Service exam, and took his place.
As the new Property Control Clerk/Acting Curator, my first task was to conduct a museum-wide inventory, to see what we had and how we were handling it.
Boxes of artifacts and ephemera were stashed in attics, in closets, and under buildings, exposed to the elements. Some of the most interesting, and oddest, pieces were on display, but most were stockpiled at another location, on the top floor of an old warehouse in what’s now the Channel District. Only a few items had been catalogued, by someone to whom English was at best a second language.
Most of the collections had no reliable provenance, only rumors and hearsay. A beaded buckskin wedding dress was purported to have belonged to a friend of Annie Oakley’s. My ornately carved desk was said to have once been John Ringling’s. Underneath my office in Building 7 were several grocery bags full of human bones, said to have been “salvaged” (plundered) from an Indian burial mound.
Conditions were worse -much worse- in our downtown warehouse. Objects were stacked on rickety shelves, or heaped on the floor. The place was an oven; a recording thermometer read 95 degrees at 6:00 AM. The relative humidity hovered at an arid 50 per cent, good for preserving dried fruit or beef jerky, but injurious to sensitive artifacts of wood, cloth, bone, and paper.
The inventory revealed an eclectic assemblage of thousands upon thousands of THINGS- fossils, curios, rocks, relics, antiques, and assorted objets d’art. There were stuffed animals, model trains, fake shrunken heads, handpainted Ukranian Easter eggs, old tools, a medieval Spanish breastplate, a massive amethyst geode, a matched pair of mastodon tusks. There were the original plans for the presidential palace of Nicaragua, ca. 1915, and boxes of butterflies collected in South America in the 1920s. There was a rich trove of American Indian artifacts, woven baskets, ceramic bowls, bows and arrows, lacrosse sticks, cradleboards, kachina dolls, and delicately stitched leather goods decorated with porcupine quills and tiny glass beads.
And there were other surprises -some of them downright alarming. Rummaging around, I found a liter of mercury, and a rusty can full of highly explosive ether. Next to that was some fused sand wrapped in a bit of lead foil. A scribbled note said it was from ground zero at an atomic bomb test site. I disposed of the ether, and stored the rest as safely I could.
I was acutely aware that I was embarassingly ignorant, and lacked the skills and education needed to manage such a potpourri. I requested training, and the museum obliged, sending me to the Smithsonian for classes in collections conservation, and the Florida State Museum for a lengthy seminar on the preservation of fossils. Most importantly, I was encouraged to network with other museum professionals across the country. Then we obtained a grant for a team of college students, from various disciplines, to catalogue and conserve the bulk of the permanent collections. Carolyn Byers, Peter Owens, Robert Peterson, Loretta Hennessey, Bruce Bollman, Bertram Crawford, and Robert Soler toiled diligently for a year, documenting tens of thousands of items, preserving arcane and puzzling bits and pieces of Tampa’s legacy. If not for their combined efforts, which largely went unrecognized, many irreplaceable objects would surely have been lost.
It was understood from the beginning that our work at the Hillsborough County Museum was in preparation for a bigger, more modern facility. In 1977 the new museum was finally approved. More personnel were added, and Mike Mayfield was replaced, without forewarning, with a new director. We broke ground on MOSI in 1979, and I was privileged to work -and play- there for many years.
But it’s my time at the little museum that holds meaning for me now. Recently I went back, after almost three decades, and strolled around the grounds. Three of the original buildings are gone, and the rest are mostly office space. Still, it looked much the same. How odd to think that an institution like MOSI could have its roots here, on this shaded riverbank, in a decaying neighborhood the city has forgotten.
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