Dr. Metablog

Man of the West (1958)

Judging by its almost-allegorical title, Man of the West claims, or seems to claim, that Link Jones, its conflicted protagonist, represents something fundamental and archetypical about the American western experience. And indeed it does, if Mr. Jones, played by rugged stalwart Gary Cooper, is to be judged by his exceedingly laconic manner, his resourcefulness, his fundamental decency, his initial aversion to gun play and ultimate resort to violence. 

But in my opinion the title Man of the West is misleading. Man of the West is a noir in chaps and ten-gallon hat. Its western-ness is superficial. It's noirness is essential and real.

Here's what we've got: a reformed criminal trying to go straight who can't escape his past; a crazed egomaniacal gang leader (played here by Lee J. Cobb but James Cagney would have been a better choice); a dance hall singer who's been mistreated by a succession of men even though she's got a good heart; a bank robbery that goes south and gang members who turn upon each other. No cowboys, no Indians, no horses, no cavalry. Not even a rattlesnake curling around the heroine's shoe who is shot by our hero. Scares her temporarily, but she's grateful.

The film was written by Reginald Rose of Twelve Angry Men fame; it was directed by Anthony Mann (Side Street). Take away the cowboy hats and substitute fedoras and you could call it Man of the East. 

 

Street Talk

On East 9th Street, and probably in other parts of Brooklyn, a manhole cover was called a "sewer." I don't know why. Ignorance, perhaps. As far as I know, manhole covers provided entrance to electrical work and other utilities, not to watercourses. Openings to the sewers that were located along the channel next to the curb were also called sewers. A sewer was also a unit of distance. "He can hit a spaldeen three sewers." It was not a scientifically accurate form of measurement.  

A "gutter" is in most parts of the country a channel for water. On East 9th Street, the word "gutter" referred to the street's entire asphalted area, not just the area near the curb. "Hey, kids, keep out of the gutter. You'll get hurt."

"Stoop" referred to the stairs leading up to the porch. In "stoop ball," you throw your spaldeen at the stoop and catch it on the rebound.  Five points for a grounder, ten points for a fly ball, twenty points for a "pointer."

I don't think there was a specific name for what is here called the "park front area"-- the space between the sidewalk and the curb.  Nor a word for "curb cut." which was considered, linguistically, as a section of a driveway.

East 9th Street had a wonderful tree canopy. In retrospect, I can identify and recall a very large sycamore and a series of Norway maples, but the only trees that had names were a trio of huge old elms which were called "Mickey's trees." I have no idea why they were so called nor do I know who was this Mickey of famous memory. The elms were cut down in the late 40s (Dutch elm disease) --  a tremendous loss to East 9th Street. 

An Unpleasant Cortelyou Road Memory

Let's say I was thirteen, so this event would have occurred on or our about 1952. I had brought my Raleigh 3-speed to the Cortelyou Road bicycle repair shop which was between East 13th and East 14th. The shop was run by a small, fair, heavily-accented German man who was perhaps 50 years old. He was assisted by his father, an older and smaller, wizened, bald man who must have been in his 80s. Mr. Hart and Mr. Hart.The older Mr. Hart, whom in my adolescent wisdom I thought of as a gnome, was working on my bike -- replacing an inner tube or adjusting the gears (which were fragile and frequently busted). A group of three middle-aged women gathered on the sidewalk in front of the shop, chatting. Mr. Hart the elder, the gnome, didn't like it. He looked up from his work and muttered to me, "A real hen-party."  A few minutes later, he said, as if he owned the sidewalk, "they're still there. Hen party." 

I had never heard the expression "hen party" but I knew it was a slur. A piece of anti-woman bigotry. I mean, what was the problem with three women talking on a public street? 

But what disturbed me was that Mr. Hart took it for granted that I was on his side -- that we were linked by our maleness, our roosterness, against hens. I knew (in language that did not at that point exist), that I was being "co-opted."  But although I was uneasy, I was able to offer only silent resistance. I failed. Later I learned to challenge such mini-bigotries but at this point in life I was much too young, too unsure. 

Of all the events that occurred in 1952, this trivial encounter is one that clings and needs to be exorcised. 

But it is such experiences that shape us. As David Copperfield says, "Trifles make the sum of life."

Wisdom

I've reached the age when, neuroscience claims, the "wisdom centers" of the brain (the anterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortices) are supposed to leap into action. Do they? Tell truth, I don't know. Have I, without awareness or drama, metamorphosed from a jejune larva, dull as dishwater, into a butterfly of wisdom? When did it happen? At this moment or writing, I confess that I feel less wise than tired.  

Nevertheless, let me offer, with maximum diffidence, a few homemade aphorisms and sententiae. Whether they amount to wisdom, and whether they do credit to my anterior or prefrontal lobes, my loyal readers will have to decide.  

A) "Nothing ever happens until it happens." This proverb is slightly gnomic, so let me gloss. If you assume that just because you've carefully planned your trip to Tahiti or your visit to the new restaurant or even your outing to the local barbershop that it's going to happen, you might be in for disappointment. Wait until you're there before you get excited. There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. Rejoice appropriately -- when it's time. By doing so, you avoid elation deflation. 

B) "No one knows what's going on between two people, even if you're one of them."  I think this proverb is eminently self-explanatory. It applies mostly to marriage but equally so to all dyadic relationships. Even between you and your dog.

C)  "The only people who idealize the past are those that know nothing about it."  Slavery, plague, torture, injustice, famine, rapine, brutality, poverty, starvation. Etc.

D) "You're immortal until the day you die." Of course you are and don't let the nay-sayers and "realists" bother you.

E)  "Religion: my Prince of Peace can beat up your Prince of Peace." Tribalism sucks.

F)  "Enough is as good as a feast, and often better." Figurative meaning: a modest sufficiency is all that is needed for a happy life. Literal meaning: one hamburger (or half a hamburger) lies more easily on the stomach than two or three. And hold the fries.

G)  "The secret of life is to turn routines into rituals."  Self-explanatory, I think. Make a fuss about that glass of wine at four o'clock. Savor it.

H)  "The longer something has been believed by mankind, the less likely it is to be true."  See C above.

Durocher 1947

In 1975, Leo Durocher wrote an as-told-to autobiography called Nice Guys Finish Last. I read every word of it, but I got to tell you, it's not a good book. It's a piece of self-justifying pro-Durocher propaganda. It's argumentative, hyperbolic, unreliable. Durocher was an irascible man: he got into fights with sportswriters, players, umpires, owners, coaches, wives -- everyone he encountered. In every single case, he was absolutely blameless and they were absolutely wrong. The gambling that got him suspended for a year? -- why, it never happened.

Durocher doesn't give it the emphasis it deserves, but he had, by accident, a place in the story. Durocher was manager of the Dodgers when Branch Rickey hired Jackie Robinson. It was a watershed moment, a supremely important step in the civil rights movement, and the beginning of a major transformation of not just baseball, or sports, but of the nation and the world.

Durocher played his part, and he's proud of it, but I can't help feeling that he missed his moment. His vision was so narrow, so constricted, so unaware. I suppose he should be commended for doing the right thing, but as far as I can tell, he did it for trivial reasons and did not have a glimmer of understanding of either oppression and injustice on the one hand, or equality and freedom on the other.

When some Dodgers proposed to petition Rickey not to sign Robinson, Durocher called a team meeting. Here's what he says that he said to them:

"I hear some of you fellows don't want to play with Robinson and that you have  a petition drawn up that you are going to sign. Well boys, you know what you can do with that petition. You can wipe your ass with it. Mr. Rickey is on his way down here and all you have to do is tell him about it. I'm sure he'll be happy to make other arrangements for you. I hear Dixie Walker is going to send Mr. Rickey a letter asking to be traded. Just hand him the letter, Dixie, and your'e gone. Gone. If this fellow is good enough to play on this ball club -- and from what I've seen and heard, he is -- he is going to play on this ball club and he is going to play for me. I'm the manager of this ball club and I'm interested in one thing. Winning. I'll play an elephant if he can do the job, and to make room for him I'll send my own brother home. So make up your mind to it. This fellow is a real great ballplayer. He's going to win pennants for us. He's going to put money in your pockets and money in mine. And here's something else to think about when you put your head back on the pillow. From everything I hear, he's only the first. Only the first, boys. There's many more coming right behind him and they have the talent and they're gonna come to play. These fellows are hungry. They're good athletes and there's nowhere else they can make this kind of money. They're going to come, boys, and they're going to come scratching and diving. Unless you fellows look out and wake up, they're going to run you right out of the ball park. So I don't want to see your petition and I don't want to hear anything more about it. The meeting is over. Go back to bed."  

To me, his speech, though apparently effective, is trivial -- an opportunity wasted. He opposed the petition for three reasons: one, it defied authority (his and Rickey's); two, Robinson is going to help us win and therefore make us money, and three, there are "others" on the way, who also want to make money, so get out of the way.

The idea that Jack Roosevelt Robinson and others of his hue should be allowed to participate out of simple fairness and equity did not occur to him. Slavery, racism, segregation, justice, equal opportunity -- not part of his thinking. Durocher's awareness of his place in history -- zero. What a disappointment!

Where I Live: Now

1655 Walnut Street, Boulder, Colorado. On the second floor, just to the left (as you look from the street) of the main entrance. It's not a handsome building, in my opinion, but the condos are clean and comfortable and new. I've been here since 2009 and plan to stay. Going to go out feet first, as the cliche would have it. There's ample but not too much room and lots of sun (my living room windows are south-facing) and convenience. We're here more than half the year -- the rest of the time in Vermont (almost 5 months) and New Orleans (one month during the winter). We're one block off the semi-famous Boulder Mall, with all sorts of foody restaurants that we don't patronize as well as coffee shops and marijuana outlets. There's also an outdoor gear shop every few feet. Things could be worse. 

Missing Megafauna

Many years ago, sometime during the previous millennium, I was taken to an African game park -- elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, and lions (the hippos were AWOL). It was astonishing to see these huge beasts. I didn't realize at the time that it was semi-miraculous that these creatures had survived to our day, even in a de facto zoo, when so many other massive animals had recently gone extinct. When homo sapiens arrived on the scene, say 50,000 years ago, there were many animals that would have made a zoo park several orders of magnitude more remarkable that the one I visited. Why did these beasts go extinct?  Disease, habitat change, and competition are likely culprits but it's hard to deny that our predatory ancestors must take some of the blame.   

Yes, the game park had lions, but it would have been infinitely more exciting if it housed not only the African lion, but the European lion which was half again as large and which survived lately enough to be well known to the Greeks.

Other big cats were also missing: the famous saber tooth, everyone's nightmare, as well as the American false cheetah, a cheetah-like cougar weighing 190 formidable pounds. I would also have liked to see the thylacine, the so-called "marsupial lion" or sometimes "Tasmanian tiger" which survived until 1936, late enough to be photographed.

I would also have liked to see a cackle of European hyenas. Even more, the two-ton short-faced Bear, with whom our paleolithic ancestors competed, which was three times the size of a modern polar bear. The equally large ground sloth, even the bones of which are impressive.

And the sloth lemur, the size of a big male gorilla. The Irish deer, as big as a moose, with an outsized, out-of-proportion rack. Then there were the elephant-like animals: the Columbian mammoth of the American southwest, smaller than its modern African cousin, but with astonishingly curved tusks. The wooly mammoth, surviving until just 3700 years ago on Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast. The straight-tusked elephant, two or three times the size of modern African elephant. The North American mammoths. And also Cuvier's gompothere, which looks like an elephant but isn't one, but which was seven feet tall at the shoulder and which lasted until about 14,000 years ago:

And along with them, the morningstar-tailed glyptodon, a five thousand pound armadillo: 

I would have loved to cast my eye on the diprotodont, the largest known marsupial, which weighed in at three tons and lived until 45,000 years ago

The wooly rhinoceros, as large as a diprotodont. The sivathere, an odd-looking  giraffid. The tree kangaroo. The short-faced kangaroo, three times the size of any living kangaroo.

And right there in Vermont, rustling and stomping in the forest, were the stag moose and Jefferson's ground sloth and the long-nosed peccary and Harlan's musk ox and the Vero tapir and the giant beaver, all recently gone. (You wouldn't have wanted to come face-to-face with a giant beaver. Or swim in its pond, if it made ponds. You'd be better off listening to it slapping its tail in a game  park.)

 And then there were some true avian oddities worth taking a gander at: the flightless moas of New Zealand, the female at 440 pounds, two-and-half times the size of the male. The cursorial owl, a three-foot tall flightless owl, which pursued its prey afoot. Haast's eagle, with a wingspread of seven and a half feet. The five hundred pound Elephant Bird, which survived in Madagascar until a thousand years ago. 

And then the tarpan, the warrah, the toxodon. Strangest of all, macrauchenia, a three-toed ungulate not closely related to anything alive today, which looked something like a humpless camel with a droopy snout and which was around until about 10,000 years ago. 

It would have been quite a show if these animals had survived. Well worth the price of admission. 

Where I Lived (VI)

From 1965 to 1969, from my 26th to 30th year, I lived at 215 West 91 Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, first in a 4 room apartment on the 6th floor and later in a 5 room apartment on the 5th floor. Two babies came home to this place.

It's called a "beaux arts" building and dates from 1917. It hasn't changed much if at all in the last 50 years though it's gone from rental to coop. (I've written about the changes to the Upper West Side elsewhere.) There was nothing distinguished about the building or our two apartments but they were spacious and serviceable. I liked Riverside Park, just two blocks to the west, which was an excellent place for infants. Central Park, a few blocks to the east was off limits in the 60s because of the druggies and general violence.  

 

We made friends. We took as much advantage of the cultural amenities as our limited budget and intense schedules would allow. I wish to heck that there hadn't been an always-on-duty exhibitionist right across the air shaft from our kitchen window. 

 

I do not have very good memories of this place. I was not happy with the state of my employment. I loved the boys but they were hard work and the neighborhood was inconvenient for children. And society was in an uproar because of the foolish destructive Vietnam war. I was glad to leave this place behind. I think my happiest days were the days spent packing up, getting ready to go.  And then driving the Dodge across the country to Colorado.

For My Grandchildren: Your Great Grandmother and her Siblings

Dear Talia, Oliver, Ella, Lola, Luke, Caleb, and Asher: 

Here's a picture of your great grandmother, Anne Krull Goss (1912-2009) with her siblings.

Anne is the pretty young blonde woman, second from the left. She's the oldest.

The picture was taken during the World War II years, '42 or '43. On great grandma's right is her brother Jack, whose tank was hit by cannon fire. He was the only survivor of his crew and spent many months recuperating in an army hospital. On her left is Hy, who was exempted from service, if I remember correctly, because his business was declared an essential industry. On Hy's left is your great-great aunt Frieda. Frieda's fiance (a soldier who was named Aubrey, but I don't know anything else about him) was killed in Europe. On Frieda's left is Mendy, the youngest, who was a bombardier on a B-24.

The war disrupted many lives, not only those who served but those who stayed at home.   

I've been lucky -- too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. I hope you are similarly lucky.  Better than that --  I hope these endless wars in which we're engaged (in Afghanistan and Syria right now) come to an end.

Grandma Anne contributed 1/8 of your genetic inheritance. The people depicted here might seem to come from the remote past, but be aware that they're in you, part of you. 

Where I Lived VII

From 1973 until 2009, this was the place. My longest stay in one location and the childhood home of my children. The house had good bones, as they say, when we arrived and was well worth the $46,500 that we paid for it. But the innards had been remodeled into oblivion. Green shag carpet covering the lovely oak floors; slick craftsman woodwork covered with white paint; stained-glass window replaced and disfigured with a beaded curtain in the style of a New Orleans whorehouse; flocked wall paper; some sort of plastic substance glued onto the pine kitchen floor; and a kitchen untouched since 1917 and hopelessly out of date. It took years to get it into shape, but by the time we left, it was looking mighty fine. I was sad to leave but the time had come to move on.

I still miss the colorful spring garden, stocked with peonies both herbaceous and tree, day lilies, irises, a lovely weigela, and a wall of clematis. 

The Precious Gift of Atheism

Although my parents were pure and perfect atheists, they did not advertise their atheism or disparage the religions of others -- at least not in my hearing. They were exactly the opposite of what is sometimes called "militant atheists." To be militant would have been to give religion too much regard, too much importance -- and they wouldn't have bothered. To the best of my recollection, they were utterly indifferent. In our house, it was as if theology and worship had never been invented, practiced, or pondered. While my parents didn't enforce or evangelize their views upon their children, their unconcern, their lack of interest, was eloquence enough. Of course my brothers and I grew up to be atheists, and have remained so. Peaceful and positive atheists.

My parents were both readers. Every Tuesday my mother trundled over to the McDonald Avenue branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and trucked home a shopping basket full of books. There were volumes of all kinds -- mostly fiction and mysteries for my mother and, for my curiosity-driven father, politics, law, science, history, art, and of course, gardening. But I never saw a book on religion. Not a one. In their bookshelves at home, I remember only one volume that might have touched on the subject. It was a collection of essays by the Freethinker Robert Ingersoll. 

I was young boy, perhaps 10 or 11, when I overheard some friend or acquaintance of my mother say something to her about prayer, or putting faith in the lord, or some such platitude. She waited politely until the person departed and then turned to me and murmured, quietly, "Well, I suppose some people need a crutch."  I think that's the sum of all I ever heard from her on the subject of religion. One might think that the dismissive term "crutch" hinted at disdain or superiority (they need crutches but we don't) but it was not so. My mother's observation was made without prejudice or judgment. 

Where other households might have worshiped or wondered or discussed, for us there was absolutely nothing. Religious education?  None, not a drop. In our home, there was no attendance at temple, mosque or tabernacle, no religious ceremonies, and not even a Bible. I can remember my father and me dribbling our basketball to the schoolyard to shoot some hoops. When we passed the local orthodox synagogue, my father said, "Bingo.They play bingo in there." But he was not condemning the religion. It was the gambling. He disapproved of gambling (even Bingo) and the idea that a religious institution would allow gambling every Tuesday night offended him deeply. 

When I was a questioning adolescent, out of a spirit of curiosity and perhaps rebellion, I liberated a bible from our local public library and secreted it under my treasured collection of Mad magazines. While others of my age cohort were squinting at smuggled Playboys or at The Amboy Dukes under the blankets by flashlight, I was acquainting myself with the holy scriptures. In my ignorance, I thought of the bible as a forbidden book, one which my parents would have disapproved. But I was wrong. They wouldn't have noticed; they wouldn't have cared. Looking back, I'm sure that they knew about my thirst for forbidden knowledge and probably enjoyed a giggle at my expense. Many years later, when my father was a widower, I gave him a copy of an annotated, edited Bible that I used as a textbook in one of my literature courses. Did he disapprove?  Not at all. He said, "It's interesting."  But of course he read it not as an inspired text but as history and as fiction. 

To have been raised in such a household was my good fortune. My atheism was an unearned gift. I got it free, and I'm perpetually grateful. Many of my friends, growing up in religious families, have struggled to achieve atheism -- often with painful inner conflicts and anger and resentments. I admire them for the strength to break free -- especially those that live with irreparable breaches to the family. I endured no such struggle. 

Philosophically speaking, it's been an easy life. There's a clarity about atheism. It's based in reality, not (dare I say what my parents wouldn't!) in wish and myth and superstition. Atheists, I think, are afforded a purer appreciation of human achievement and a clearer, less conflicted understanding of health, disease, and death. Reason and the evidence of the senses may not always lead to perfect understanding, but they're the best tools that we have, and we must cherish them.   

Our Local Gunslinger: Tom Horn

When I was a Brooklyn 'yoot', back there in the 40s and 50s of the previous century and millennium, Saturday afternoon movies at the Leader Theater were all Westerns. Randolph Scott in his sombrero, Debra Paget in her Apache buckskins, gunfights, bar brawls, cavalry charges, dreaded Comanches shooting arrows into circled Conestoga wagons or falling picturesquely from jagged cliffs, and horses, horses, horses. But what, out of all these recollections, is most memorable?  Without doubt: the landscape. Majestic purple mountains, icy rivers, extraordinary rock formations, big sky. That was the West as I imagined it.  

 

Now I live in colorful Colorado, and I've never thrown (or witnessed) a chair thrown through a barroom mirror. Not a single quick-draw pistol duel, no cavalry. Not a whit of the mythologized movie West. But the mountains persist. In fact, I can see a splendid hunk of the Front Range  right now out of the window of my downtown condo. Right over my right shoulder as I type this.

 

It's not only the mountains that survive from my childhood movie-going. Right down the street, in the Columbia (aka Pioneer) Cemetery lie the remains of one of avatars of the western myth. Right here, abutting Flatirons Elementary School, where all my children learned to read and write, lie the bones of the outlaw, bushwacker, crack-shot hired gun, murderer Tom Horn, hanged in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1903.

 

 

Although he has been mythologized, he was real. Here he is in the photographic flesh, perhaps weaving the rope by which he was famously hanged. 

And here's the movie version: Steve McQueen, slightly more glamorous.

My earlier self, the Brooklyn 'yoot', would have been happy to know that I now live only a few feet away from the mythical gunslinger.