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
Friday, November 2, 2007
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.
Monday, April 23, 2007
A Florida Keys Album, pg. 5, Parting Shots
TOP: This sign, depicting an unusually affectionate octopus, graces the front of a keys camera store.
This mural, on the side of a bait shop/gas station, shows Calusa Indian maidens playing Show and Tell.
Back in the early 60's this was a private museum called "Art Mckee's Sunken Treasure Fortress." Dad and I were members of Art's "Treasure Diver's Club." While neither dad nor I ever went "treasure diving", we attended some lectures and slide shows, along with about a dozen other folks, including Mickey Spillane and his pnuematic blonde girlfriend, who could upstage any lecturer just by showing up. The original Fortress still stands, complete with hokey ramparts and parapets, but the museum it once housed is long gone, replaced by a Montessori School. The giant spiney lobster out front is a new addition.
BOTTOM: For those lacking families of their own, Key West's Southernmost Point marker sports a ready-made black family on one side, and a Japanese family on the other.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
A Florida Keys Album, pg. 4, the Funky Charms of the Conch Republic
TOP: This primitive one-man human powered minisubmarine sits in the parking lot of Herbie's Diner, in Marathon. It was designed and built by retired naval submarine commander George Kittredge about 40 years ago. You can still find these little deathtraps for sale on the internet, but you'd have to be nuts to go down in one. The happy minnow on a fishhook was also at Herbie's.
MIDDLE: The Conch Republic sign was alongside a trailer in Marathon. Guess the owner got tired of being asked directions.
BOTTOM: When I saw the robot gorilla at Freds Beds I had to check the place out. Co-owner and Lonely Guy Ed Heeney gave me a tour, which included this wonderfully funky shark rotting away on a boat trailer in the back yard. But the real star of the place was Ed's little dog Maggie, who Ed claimed was an irresistible "chick magnet." While we were talking, a girl walked by on the street, and Maggie made a beeline for her, licking her feet until she stopped. This gave Ed the opportunity to strike up a conversation. "See what I mean?" he said later. "Man I love that dog."
Saturday, April 21, 2007
A Florida Keys Album, pg. 3, Indian Key
On day two I rented a kayak at a funky patchwork of businesses referred to collectively as Robbie's Marina, and paddled out to Indian Key, about three-quarters of a mile off Islamorada. It's a State Historic Site, and although ranger-guided tours are no longer given there, it's open to the public.
As keys go, this one's pretty small, about 10 acres. It was settled in the early 1830's. The little community thrived, and was soon designated the seat of Dade County, which at that time included much of southern Florida. Around a town square roughly the size of a football field the 40 to 50 permanent residents constructed streets, a hotel, a hospital, a general store, a blacksmith shop, a warehouse and several dwellings. In 1840 the town was attacked by a band of about 100 Seminoles, who killed a few islanders, including the respected physician and botanist Dr. Henry Perrine, and burned every structure to the ground. All that remains now are the streets, some stone building foundations, a few cisterns, and the original grave of Jacob Housman, who founded the community in 1831, and died ten years later, crushed between two boat hulls during a storm.
Humans quit the key for good about a century ago, leaving it to the tender mercies of the mangroves, poisonwood trees, and hermit crabs.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
A Florida Keys Album, pg. 2
Here are some shots from the Hemingway House. Located in the heart of Key West's Old Town District, it's well worth a visit, despite the nightmarish quest for a parking space within walking distance.
The middle shot was taken from the second floor, looking north. The Key West Lighthouse is in the upper right corner.
Admission is $11, for which you can join a tour or just roam the grounds. Keep an eye out for the polydactyl (6 toed) cats. This one's name is Spanky.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A Florida Keys Album
Just back from an all-to-brief working vacation in the keys, shooting for a pictorial book called "Florida's Fabulous Historic Places."
The shotlist included sites in both Key West and Islamorada, so I got a room inbetween, in Marathon. I'd intended to stay at the Hidden Harbor Motel, a quaint combination hostelry and sea turtle hospital, but Hurricane Wilma put the motel part out of commission, most likely for good. So I stayed at the cheap, cheerful Yellowtail Inn. It was quiet and comfortable until the last night, when the Fraternal Order of Water Buffaloes held an impromptu blowout in the next room. Or maybe it was just an earthquake- hard to tell. Thank god for MP3 players.
The first day of the trip was pretty much a washout. As I boarded the 7 Mile Bridge shortly after dawn a heavy squall blew up, pounding the islands for two solid hours, then intermittently the rest of the day. Here's a shot taken that morning, looking north from Spanish Harbor Key, showing the rusted remains of Flagler's Overseas Railway partially obscured by the rain.
The second shot -same subject- was taken that evening, looking southwest from Bahia Honda State Park.
Once the storm let up, everything was Jake. I'll add more shots and text over the next several days.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
another Springs story: music lovers
Back around 1972, my future wife and I lived in a small house in Sulphur Springs -- I think it was on Sitka. Next door lived an older couple who we exchanged pleasantries with as we came and went. Eventually, they asked us over for a visit.
Inside, we saw that their house was home to a number (10+) of large, wildcat-sized, cats. These were apparently inside-only cats -- we hadn't previously noticed any cats outside. A little unusual we thought, but lots of people like cats. The house was otherwise fairly clean and well-kept.
We were offered some soda and cookies, and sat on the couch in front of a large console stereo. We soon learned that this was a prized possession, and casually agreed that yes, we would like to hear some music.
As we ate our cookies, drank our soda and chatted, the man put on a succession of country music records. Things were pretty normal except that from the Chipmunks on speed sound of the stereo, it was apparent that the LP records were being played at 45 rpm. We kept thinking that some mistake had been made, but didn't want to embarrass our hosts. However, eventually it seemed our duty to say something. I tried to be diplomatic: "You know, I was thinking that those records might sound better if the stereo was set at another speed". Luckily they weren't offended: "Oh, we know that. We just figured that this way you'll have time to hear more records".
Inside, we saw that their house was home to a number (10+) of large, wildcat-sized, cats. These were apparently inside-only cats -- we hadn't previously noticed any cats outside. A little unusual we thought, but lots of people like cats. The house was otherwise fairly clean and well-kept.
We were offered some soda and cookies, and sat on the couch in front of a large console stereo. We soon learned that this was a prized possession, and casually agreed that yes, we would like to hear some music.
As we ate our cookies, drank our soda and chatted, the man put on a succession of country music records. Things were pretty normal except that from the Chipmunks on speed sound of the stereo, it was apparent that the LP records were being played at 45 rpm. We kept thinking that some mistake had been made, but didn't want to embarrass our hosts. However, eventually it seemed our duty to say something. I tried to be diplomatic: "You know, I was thinking that those records might sound better if the stereo was set at another speed". Luckily they weren't offended: "Oh, we know that. We just figured that this way you'll have time to hear more records".
Monday, April 2, 2007
True Tales From Sulphur Springs: The Death Of Al
When somebody hijacked my beatup old garbage cans the other day and dumped garbage all over the yard, it brought to mind the sad fate of my neighbor Al, and how after he died in his shabby Sulphur Springs bungalow, penniless and alone, somebody purloined one of his few possessions -his slop pail- which was full at the time.
As any longterm resident will tell you, Sulphur Springs isn’t what it used to be. When I moved here in the 1970’s, it was quiet and peaceful, and the rent was dirt cheap. They say Kerouac lived here once, although no one seems to know exactly where or when. I’m pretty sure he didn’t live in my house, which was a tiny shack in the shade of a magnificent live oak. I never liked the house much, cheap as it was, but I loved the tree, and spent a lot of quality time in and under it. Mrs. Dillon, who was ninety-five, lived next door. She passed away after a year or two and I acquired her place, which had a new roof and by Sulphur Springs standards was pretty cozy. I’ve lived here ever since.
Al lived across the street. He was about sixty, with skinny legs and a bloated belly. Another neighbor, Larry, looked after Al, and supplied him with beer, smokes, and surplus pastries from the Entenmann’s outlet on Hillsborough. Al had no electricity or water, and when he needed to bathe or drink he went over to Larry’s house, or mine if I wasn’t home, and filled a couple of gallon jugs from the tap outside.
Mrs. Dillon warned me about Al. “Don’t never give him no money”, she said. “Money goes through Al like soup through a goose.” She was right. Once he offered to mow my lawn and I naively paid him ahead of time. Weeks dragged by and the lawn remained uncut. Al made excuse after excuse. His lawnmower was busted. His back hurt. He needed gas. After a couple of months I gave up. I didn’t have much use for him after that.
Al was remarkably adept at maintaining a low profile. Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who circle these streets like hungry vultures, left him alone. His front yard, although perpetually weedy, was uncluttered and inconspicuous. There were no trash piles, abandoned appliances or cars on blocks, nothing to draw one’s attention. Most days he could be seen sitting on the steps. His clothes were always clean, his white hair was always neatly combed. After awhile I forgave him, kind of, for the lawn episode, and although we didn’t talk much, we were civil when we did.
One day I was taking a shower and I thought I heard Al yell my name. “Ah shit,” I thought, “I really don’t want to talk to you.” I shut off the water and listened, but heard nothing more. So I went about my business.
The following week Al was nowhere to be seen. Then one morning there was a stench in the air. It was faint at first, but pervasive and inescapable, growing worse as the day wore on. I turned on the AC and cranked the jalousies shut, trapping a number of big green flies. I thought something had died in the attic or there was a problem with the sewer. Around two in the afternoon Larry knocked on my front door. He seemed dazed. “Hey Jim“, he said. “Al’s dead.”
“I guess I should call the police.“ he mumbled, gesturing toward the house. “You don’t wanna go in there.”
We stood in my driveway and watched events unfold. First a firetruck came. Two firemen wearing some kind of scuba gear went inside. After a minute or two they left and a young cop went in. He stumbled out moments later and staggered to his car. Then the Medical Examiner arrived with his assistant. They looked like Jake and Elwood Blues. For them it was business as usual. As they toted Al down the steps in a body bag the postman, looking a little nonplussed, delivered his mail.
Larry opened what windows he could and let the cottage air out overnight. The next day I peeked inside. I couldn’t believe my eyes. In every corner, trash was heaped to the ceiling. One room was inundated with thousands of beer cans, another so packed with rubbish, mostly newspapers and empty Entenmann’s boxes, you couldn’t open the door. The bathroom was indescribably filthy. In the living room, where Al died, there was a hole in the ceiling big enough to drive a garbage truck through. It was the rainy season and everything was soaked. There was a waisthigh mound of soggy butts and ashes -it must have been years in the making- against one wall. Thumbtacked to another wall were a pair of Playboy centerfolds ca. 1973, Al’s only attempt at decor. Beneath them, stacked on a splintered cabinet, were about a hundred dogeared paperbacks, all westerns, mostly Louis L’Amours.
Al rode into the sunset on a spavined leatherette divan in the center of the room. Next to it there was a galvanized bucket filled with excrement. Larry made a little joke about it, about how glad he was Al hadn’t kicked it.
These are the things I saw, before the smell drove me outside.
Larry let the house air out another day. The next morning he stopped by with a bizarre update. “You ain’t gonna believe this,” he said. “Last night somebody stole that bucket.”
That sort of mischief, while not so unnerving as a drive-by, doesn’t bode well for any neighborhood. But I wasn’t really surprised. Like I said, Sulphur Springs isn’t what it used to be.
Al died hard. Felled, according to the Medical Examiner, by some sort of massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in Bushnell. He left the house to Larry. Not counting the paperbacks and the bucket, that was the extent of his legacy. Larry told me the last time Al worked was over thirty years ago, as a caddy. We decided he'd been dead for many years, he just hadn’t realized it.
-walkin' tree
As any longterm resident will tell you, Sulphur Springs isn’t what it used to be. When I moved here in the 1970’s, it was quiet and peaceful, and the rent was dirt cheap. They say Kerouac lived here once, although no one seems to know exactly where or when. I’m pretty sure he didn’t live in my house, which was a tiny shack in the shade of a magnificent live oak. I never liked the house much, cheap as it was, but I loved the tree, and spent a lot of quality time in and under it. Mrs. Dillon, who was ninety-five, lived next door. She passed away after a year or two and I acquired her place, which had a new roof and by Sulphur Springs standards was pretty cozy. I’ve lived here ever since.
Al lived across the street. He was about sixty, with skinny legs and a bloated belly. Another neighbor, Larry, looked after Al, and supplied him with beer, smokes, and surplus pastries from the Entenmann’s outlet on Hillsborough. Al had no electricity or water, and when he needed to bathe or drink he went over to Larry’s house, or mine if I wasn’t home, and filled a couple of gallon jugs from the tap outside.
Mrs. Dillon warned me about Al. “Don’t never give him no money”, she said. “Money goes through Al like soup through a goose.” She was right. Once he offered to mow my lawn and I naively paid him ahead of time. Weeks dragged by and the lawn remained uncut. Al made excuse after excuse. His lawnmower was busted. His back hurt. He needed gas. After a couple of months I gave up. I didn’t have much use for him after that.
Al was remarkably adept at maintaining a low profile. Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who circle these streets like hungry vultures, left him alone. His front yard, although perpetually weedy, was uncluttered and inconspicuous. There were no trash piles, abandoned appliances or cars on blocks, nothing to draw one’s attention. Most days he could be seen sitting on the steps. His clothes were always clean, his white hair was always neatly combed. After awhile I forgave him, kind of, for the lawn episode, and although we didn’t talk much, we were civil when we did.
One day I was taking a shower and I thought I heard Al yell my name. “Ah shit,” I thought, “I really don’t want to talk to you.” I shut off the water and listened, but heard nothing more. So I went about my business.
The following week Al was nowhere to be seen. Then one morning there was a stench in the air. It was faint at first, but pervasive and inescapable, growing worse as the day wore on. I turned on the AC and cranked the jalousies shut, trapping a number of big green flies. I thought something had died in the attic or there was a problem with the sewer. Around two in the afternoon Larry knocked on my front door. He seemed dazed. “Hey Jim“, he said. “Al’s dead.”
“I guess I should call the police.“ he mumbled, gesturing toward the house. “You don’t wanna go in there.”
We stood in my driveway and watched events unfold. First a firetruck came. Two firemen wearing some kind of scuba gear went inside. After a minute or two they left and a young cop went in. He stumbled out moments later and staggered to his car. Then the Medical Examiner arrived with his assistant. They looked like Jake and Elwood Blues. For them it was business as usual. As they toted Al down the steps in a body bag the postman, looking a little nonplussed, delivered his mail.
Larry opened what windows he could and let the cottage air out overnight. The next day I peeked inside. I couldn’t believe my eyes. In every corner, trash was heaped to the ceiling. One room was inundated with thousands of beer cans, another so packed with rubbish, mostly newspapers and empty Entenmann’s boxes, you couldn’t open the door. The bathroom was indescribably filthy. In the living room, where Al died, there was a hole in the ceiling big enough to drive a garbage truck through. It was the rainy season and everything was soaked. There was a waisthigh mound of soggy butts and ashes -it must have been years in the making- against one wall. Thumbtacked to another wall were a pair of Playboy centerfolds ca. 1973, Al’s only attempt at decor. Beneath them, stacked on a splintered cabinet, were about a hundred dogeared paperbacks, all westerns, mostly Louis L’Amours.
Al rode into the sunset on a spavined leatherette divan in the center of the room. Next to it there was a galvanized bucket filled with excrement. Larry made a little joke about it, about how glad he was Al hadn’t kicked it.
These are the things I saw, before the smell drove me outside.
Larry let the house air out another day. The next morning he stopped by with a bizarre update. “You ain’t gonna believe this,” he said. “Last night somebody stole that bucket.”
That sort of mischief, while not so unnerving as a drive-by, doesn’t bode well for any neighborhood. But I wasn’t really surprised. Like I said, Sulphur Springs isn’t what it used to be.
Al died hard. Felled, according to the Medical Examiner, by some sort of massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in Bushnell. He left the house to Larry. Not counting the paperbacks and the bucket, that was the extent of his legacy. Larry told me the last time Al worked was over thirty years ago, as a caddy. We decided he'd been dead for many years, he just hadn’t realized it.
-walkin' tree
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Feeding Limpkin
Although limpkins typically eat apple snails, this one was snacking on freshwater clams. Photographed in the Hillsborough River, at Tampa's Rowlett Park.
-walkin' tree
The Peace Of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry
How Cockroach Bay Got Its Name (Maybe)
The People lived beside the inlet. They lived well; the waters were bountiful and the forest teemed with game. They decorated their bodies with soot and feathers and bead necklaces made from the vertebrae of fish. Lacking stone, they made tools from seashells. From oysters, horse conchs and lightning whelks they made scrapers and projectile points, ladles, awls and spoons. They fastened shells to sticks, to make axes, picks and hammers. From the biggest shells they took the heavy spines, the columellae. These they fashioned into chisels, “pounders,” to crack open clams and turtle shells.
They lived this way for countless generations, trading with some clans, skirmishing with others. Then one day a messenger brought word of a strange new enemy; a tribe of bearded men, their skins pale as the inside of an oyster. They bore sticks of fire, and were obsessed with gold.
When the strangers finally came, the chief greeted them warmly.
“We, as you can plainly see, are exceedingly poor,” he said. “But our neighbors, far to the north (a treacherous lot, rumored to hold both you and your sovereign in very low esteem) are always bragging about their gold, which, regretably, they refuse to share with us.”
“But, you look hungry -would you care for some seaweed?”
As they rowed back to their ship, the Spaniards looked around in disgust. There was nothing here, nothing but mangroves, naked savages and sea-cockroaches, their name for horseshoe crabs. Henceforth, their maps would refer to the inlet as Cockroach Bay.
-walkin' tree
Friday, March 30, 2007
Found Image #1. The best photos don't need a caption...
Still, one longs to know more.
This anonymous family snap was found at a flea market. It appears to have been taken sometime before 1940.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Lido Beach
On the restless border of two worlds
time is a shadow
in the burrow of a ghost crab,
the fleeting radiance of a
morning glory,
the fierce hunger of a heron.
In the soft sand,
every passage is recorded.
Evidence is preserved, at least
for a while.
The tide rises,
bearing gifts for the gathering gulls.
Water-worn shells tumble in the surf.
Sand returns to sand.
What the waves can't conquer,
the wind compels,
scattering the golden sea oats,
driving the dunes down, grain by grain.
-walkin' tree
time is a shadow
in the burrow of a ghost crab,
the fleeting radiance of a
morning glory,
the fierce hunger of a heron.
In the soft sand,
every passage is recorded.
Evidence is preserved, at least
for a while.
The tide rises,
bearing gifts for the gathering gulls.
Water-worn shells tumble in the surf.
Sand returns to sand.
What the waves can't conquer,
the wind compels,
scattering the golden sea oats,
driving the dunes down, grain by grain.
-walkin' tree
Hello, and welcome to my blog.
The German author Gunter Grass has a way of encapsulating the improbable and/or fantastic in a neat phrase, and his readers might recognize the title "Barbaric, mystical, bored" from a particularly pithy chapter of "The Tin Drum." In the unlikely event that he's ever made aware of it, I hope Grass won't mind this little homage.
In creating this, my first blog, it quickly became apparent that one's "display name" was critically important in setting the tone for what was to follow. I pondered, and rejected, "faux paw", "snarko polo", and "camerapithecus." I even briefly considered a line from Monty Python, as uttered, in falsetto, by Graham Chapman: "Oh, intercourse the penguin!"
But I figured the reference to penguins might make some people uncomfortable.
Eventually I settled on "walkin' tree", a descriptive nickname the early crackers gave to rhizophora mangle, the red mangrove. Florida's red mangroves are aquatic trees found on the southern coasts. They're salt-tolerant, and thrive in conditions that are hostile to most terrestrial plants. They grow above the water on stilt-like "prop roots", and look as if they might scuttle away the minute your back is turned. Despite their strange appearance, red mangroves are vital to coastal ecosystems in all kinds of ways, from preventing erosion to creating safe havens for nesting birds and baby fish. But their main contribution occurs when they shed their leaves, which sink and rot, forming a malodorous, microbe-laden goo. It's the first link in a food chain that reaches all the way to the dinner table. If not for mangroves, Florida's recreational fishing industry would be dead in the water.
Anyway, think of these blog posts as mangrove leaves, moldering away in cyberspace.
I'm a "nature photojournalist" by trade. I photograph and write about Florida's many and diverse ecosystems, which are disappearing at an exponential rate. So be forewarned: this blog may at times devolve into a rant, about developers, phosphate industry apologists, manatees, sea turtles, burrowing owls, Florida rivers, that miserable sock puppet in the Oval Office, whatever. But don't bale on me, please- I'll hold the sturm und drang to a minimum, and try to keep things interesting.
Speaking of hostile ecosystems- I live and work in a neglected slice of Tampa called Sulphur Springs. You could say it's part ghetto, part aging hippie enclave. I've been here over 20 years. If not for my good neighbors, Steve, Carol, Arnie, even the gentle and terminally reclusive Marshall, to name a few, I would've left long ago. Together, in this benighted urban habitat, we're an island, like the mangroves.
Although I'm pretty handy with duct tape, I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no blogs. So I 'spect there'll be some growing pains. I'll try to update every few days, or at least once a week. Meanwhile your suggestions, comments, criticisms, and literary contributions are earnestly solicited.
-walkin' tree
In creating this, my first blog, it quickly became apparent that one's "display name" was critically important in setting the tone for what was to follow. I pondered, and rejected, "faux paw", "snarko polo", and "camerapithecus." I even briefly considered a line from Monty Python, as uttered, in falsetto, by Graham Chapman: "Oh, intercourse the penguin!"
But I figured the reference to penguins might make some people uncomfortable.
Eventually I settled on "walkin' tree", a descriptive nickname the early crackers gave to rhizophora mangle, the red mangrove. Florida's red mangroves are aquatic trees found on the southern coasts. They're salt-tolerant, and thrive in conditions that are hostile to most terrestrial plants. They grow above the water on stilt-like "prop roots", and look as if they might scuttle away the minute your back is turned. Despite their strange appearance, red mangroves are vital to coastal ecosystems in all kinds of ways, from preventing erosion to creating safe havens for nesting birds and baby fish. But their main contribution occurs when they shed their leaves, which sink and rot, forming a malodorous, microbe-laden goo. It's the first link in a food chain that reaches all the way to the dinner table. If not for mangroves, Florida's recreational fishing industry would be dead in the water.
Anyway, think of these blog posts as mangrove leaves, moldering away in cyberspace.
I'm a "nature photojournalist" by trade. I photograph and write about Florida's many and diverse ecosystems, which are disappearing at an exponential rate. So be forewarned: this blog may at times devolve into a rant, about developers, phosphate industry apologists, manatees, sea turtles, burrowing owls, Florida rivers, that miserable sock puppet in the Oval Office, whatever. But don't bale on me, please- I'll hold the sturm und drang to a minimum, and try to keep things interesting.
Speaking of hostile ecosystems- I live and work in a neglected slice of Tampa called Sulphur Springs. You could say it's part ghetto, part aging hippie enclave. I've been here over 20 years. If not for my good neighbors, Steve, Carol, Arnie, even the gentle and terminally reclusive Marshall, to name a few, I would've left long ago. Together, in this benighted urban habitat, we're an island, like the mangroves.
Although I'm pretty handy with duct tape, I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no blogs. So I 'spect there'll be some growing pains. I'll try to update every few days, or at least once a week. Meanwhile your suggestions, comments, criticisms, and literary contributions are earnestly solicited.
-walkin' tree
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