Unmarked

We’ve talked a couple of times in this space about unmarked graves. And, of course, we all know that, in cultures that mark burial sites, most folks who end up officially placed in a grave without such a marker do so either because of lack of financial wherewithal or because their actions while alive have led those still walking this mortal coil to believe that their life is not worthy of any sort of commemoration.

Some of the folks who fall into the latter category include Nazis Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goring, Joseph Goebbels, and Hitler himself. All four were cremated, and their ashes were secretly scattered to prevent any possibility of a future grave. Sandy Hook murderer Adam Lanza was buried in an unmarked grave, as were British serial killers Dr. Harold Shipman and Myra Hindley. And, executed criminals have long been buried in unmarked resting places.

But, the folks we’re going to discuss in this missive are among the minority whose graves are unmarked for other reasons. Folks like Roy Orbison? Yes. Roy Orbison.

Orbison died of a heart attack in 1988 at the age of 52. His death, of course, was unexpected. He was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles, the final resting place of many celebrities. But, the burial at Westwood was supposed to be a temporary solution, so Orbison’s family never put up a stone to mark the grave. (If you find yourself looking for Roy, find the grave of director Frank Wright Tuttle. If you’re facing Tuttle’s stone, Orbison’s “final” resting place is the plot directly behind it.)

Also in an unmarked grave in a California cemetery is Steve Jobs. Jobs died in 2011 at the age of 56. His final resting place is not in Los Angeles, but in Palo Alto, at Alta Mesa Memorial Park. And, unlike in Orbison’s case, the lack of a marker is intentional. Jobs did not want “fans” coming to the grave en masse, so no marker was erected.

Another famous person whose grave lacks a marker is Frank Zappa. Zappa died in 1993 at the age of 52. He was likely buried, like Orbison, in Westwood Village Memorial Park. Likely, because the location remains in dispute. What is not in dispute is that, no matter where Zappa is, there’s no marker…and, no one, save those closest to the late singer, knows exactly why. (PS, if Zappa is in Westwood Village Memorial Park, his final resting place can likely be found by seeking out the marked grave of actor Lew Ayres. If you’re facing Ayres’ marker, the unmarked plot to the right probably contains the remains of Frank Zappa.)

Unlike Zappa, there’s no doubt about where the grave of Fred Gwynne is located. Gwynne died at age 66 back in 1993 and was buried at Sandy Mount United Methodist Church Cemetery in Finksburg, Maryland, near his home in Taneytown. Near the back of the cemetery is a dark colored stone with the name “Shannon” on it. About twenty feet to the left and in front of that stone is the unmarked grave of the beloved star of “The Munsters”.

Now, the names we’ve mentioned so far, you probably know…but you may not know Blanche Ring. She was, however, a major celebrity, a star of Broadway who had a huge hit with a song I’m sure you know, “In The Good Old Summertime”. Ring died in a nursing home in 1961 at the age of 89. She was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. And, while the grave site is not, and was never meant to be, a secret, there’s no marker on Section Q, Lot 57, Space 2.

Actor George C. Scott, who, famously, refused to attend the Academy Awards ceremony to accept his well-deserved Oscar for “Patton”, died in 1999 at the age of 71. Like Orbison, Scott is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles. But the grave has no marker. It’s easy to find, however. Just find the grave of actor Walter Matthau and wife Carol. If you’re facing that marked plot, Scott’s final resting place is the next plot to the left.

Hugh O’Connor, actor and son of Carroll O’Connor, committed suicide in 1995 at the age of 32. There’s a marker at Westwood Village Memorial Park containing the younger O’Connor’s name, along with those of his famous father and mother. But, Hugh O’Connor’s remains aren’t there. He was cremated and the ashes were originally buried at the church of St. Susanna in Rome. Later, they were moved to the North American College in that city.

There’s also a marker with the name of Bobby Driscoll, the child star of Disney’s “Song of the South”. But, like Hugh O’Connor, Driscoll’s remains are not buried at the site of the marker. Driscoll’s is a tragic story. Like many child stars, his acting career petered out as he got older and he eventually moved to New York City and became addicted to drugs. He died as a result of long term drug abuse in 1968, at the age of 31, alone in an abandoned New York tenement. His body had no ID on it, and efforts to identify the remains were unsuccessful. It wasn’t until the following year, when his mother asked officials at Disney to try to locate Bobby for a reunion with his estranged father that a fingerprint match was made, identifying the body in the tenement as Driscoll’s. (The public wouldn’t become aware of his death for two more years, when reporters, researching the cast of “Song of the South” in connection with its re-release for its 25^th anniversary, discovered and publicized his death.) By the time Driscoll’s parents discovered his passing, his body had already been buried in New York City’s Potter’s Field on Hart Island. It could not be recovered. Thus, at Eternal Hills Memorial Park in Oceanside, California, on the marker on the grave of his father, Cletus, who died in 1969, sits Bobby Driscoll’s name. But, his remains are nearly 2500 miles away.

 The remains of John Belushi, the brilliant comic who died at age 33 back in 1982, also lie in an unmarked grave…but that wasn’t always the case. Belushi, who loved Martha’s Vineyard, was buried there, at Abel Hill Cemetery in Chilmark. But, as plenty of fans made the pilgrimage to the cemetery to visit Belushi, and some did things like leave beer cans on the grave, a decision was made to move the body. Thus, a stone still stands near the entrance to the cemetery. The body’s location, however, is somewhat of a mystery. It’s likely near the back of Abel Hill, though rumors indicate it may have been moved to Belushi’s native Chicago.

But, while Belushi may or may not be buried in his native state, famed “American Top 40” host Casey Kasem isn’t even buried in his native country. Casey, who will forever have a place in my heart for his work voicing “Shaggy” of “Scooby-Doo” fame, died at age 82 back in 2014. Kasem, who’d been born in Michigan, died in the state of Washington. And, for some reason, was buried in Norway (his wife’s decision). Casey lies in an unmarked grave in a cemetery called Vestre Gravlund in Oslo.

Like Blanche Ring, the name Florence Labadie doesn’t mean much to most folks today, but, in the early days of film, she was a huge star. Labadie made over 80 silent films, including the 1912 “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. In 1917, the actress, just 29 years old, was driving down a hill when the brakes on her car failed. She was seriously injured in the resultant accident, lingering for a couple of months before succumbing to those injuries. She was the first female movie star to die at the height of her popularity, and her passing resulted in national mourning. (And, just to prove that conspiracy theory nuts have always been with us, in the wake of her death, rumors flew that she’d been murdered because she’d been pregnant by a prominent political type.) But, despite her fame, Labadie was buried in an unmarked plot in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Said plot remained unmarked for a nearly a century. Until her fans stepped in. Money was raised, and, in April of 2014, a marker was placed on the grave of Florence Labadie.

A similar and even more tragic story involves child actor Judith Barsi. She began acting in commercials at age five. Judith quickly moved into film and television and was getting so much work that, by the time she entered fourth grade, she was making $100,000 a year in 1980s money. Tragically, however, Barsi died in 1988 at the age of ten as a result of a murder-suicide perpetrated by her father. Judith and her mother Maria were buried in unmarked graves at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California. But, again, fans stepped in. Markers were purchased for the graves of Judith and Maria in 2004, the former containing the inscription “Yep! Yep! Yep!”, the catchphrase of Judith’s character from the film “The Land Before Time”, her favorite acting role.

Also unmarked is the grave of Pittsburgh’s own Ted Cassidy. Famed for his portrayal of “Lurch” on “The Addams Family”, Cassidy died of complications from open heart surgery in 1979 at the age of 46. He was cremated and his ashes were buried in the back yard of his home. And, from there, it gets weird. (OK, weirder.) It seems that, when the Cassidy’s family moved out of the house, attempts were made to unearth the urn…but it could not be found. Rumors of a gardener accidentally finding it and stealing it have flown. Other rumors hold that the new owners of the house accidentally dug up the urn, realized what it was, and reburied it. One thing seems certain. Cassidy’s surviving family has no idea where the urn and ashes are. And, the site of Ted Cassidy’s remains, no matter where it is, is most definitely unmarked.

Freddie Mercury may or may not be in an unmarked grave. OK, he probably is, but, for a while, maybe wasn’t? What’s known is that after Mercury’s death in 1991 at the age of 45, he was cremated at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. The ashes were given to someone, likely former girlfriend Mary Austin, who has claimed to know where the ashes are, but says she promised Mercury, on his death bed, that she would never reveal the location. Rumors have them being scattered all over the world, and even Mercury’s partner, Jim Hutton, who thought they were buried at Freddie’s home, admitted he wasn’t sure. Then, in 2013, a small plaque was discovered on a plinth in Kensal Green. Said plaque, which had gone unnoticed as it was buried among tributes to other people, said “In Loving Memory of Farrokh Bulsara” (Mercury’s birth name), contained the singer’s birth and death dates, and was signed with the letter “M”. Speculation was that the “M” stood for Mary Austin and that Austin had scattered the ashes at that location. The plaque disappeared just weeks after its discovery. Cemetery workers have no idea how long it had been in place or what happened to it. Just like no one, save, possibly Mary Austin, has any idea of Mercury’s final resting place.

It CAN’T Always Get Worse

The NFL Draft is coming, and, if you’re a football fan, you’ll have some level of interest, if only to see how your team does. But, let me stress, this piece is not just for football fans. It’s for anyone who enjoys looking back at things failed completely and spectacularly. But, I digress.

There’s, obviously, no way to predict how your team will do next week. But, I can tell you two things for sure. It won’t do as well as the Steelers did in 1974 (Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth, Mike Webster…four Hall of Famers in one draft class), nor will it do as badly as the Kansas City Chiefs did the following year. Because, like the former, the latter is not, frankly, within the realm of the possible.

It all started with John Matuszak. And, if you’re going to start a complete and utter cluster, well. Matuszak is a good place to start. Big John was awesomely talented, no question of that. At 6’8”, 280, he was an All American defensive end out of the University of Tampa (back when the University of Tampa had a football program), and such was his ability that he was the first player taken in the 1973 NFL Draft, by the Houston Oilers.

Tooz, however, marched to the beat of a different drummer, so to speak. One that was playing with one hand. And using a sledgehammer. After signing with the Oilers, he also signed to play with the Houston Texans of the fledgling WFL and actually played seven plays for the team before being served with a restraining order that barred him from playing in both leagues at the same time. The Oilers, as you might imagine, were not amused, so they decided to deal Tooz, who had played only one season (1973) in Houston. The Kansas City Chiefs were interested.

KC had a defensive lineman of their own they wanted to get rid of, Curley Culp, who was also threatening to jump to the World Football League. The Chiefs sent Culp and their 1975 number one draft pick to the Oilers for Matuszak. That trade was the first domino. Before the rest fell, the Chiefs would have compiled the absolute worst draft in NFL history.

But, back to Tooz. He played eight games for the Chiefs in 1974, having joined Kansas City in October, and then played a full season for the team in 1975. But, the free-spirited Matuszak was a poor fit for the straight-laced Chiefs, who finally admitted their mistake and shipped him off to Washington. Where that “different drummer” stuff got him cut. Now. This was the 70s. And, there was a place where guys who marched to different drummers went in the 70s. Oakland. The Raiders pounced, signing Tooz, who starred for the team for the next several seasons and helped it win a pair of Super Bowls. The story doesn’t have a happy ending, though. Matuszak retired from football after the 1982 season and ramped up an acting career that had begun while he was still playing. Unfortunately, he did not survive the 80s. On June 17, 1989, Tooz died of an accidental overdose of the prescription drug Darvocet. He was 38 years old.

As for the Chiefs, in the nine seasons from trading for Matuszak until Tooz’s retirement, the franchise managed one winning season and no playoff berths. And, that 1975 draft was a big part of the reason why.  So, what did the Kansas City get for that number one draft choice? 22 games of Matuszak. Eight wins. And, um, one incident in which Tooz was placed in a straight jacket. And, one in which Paul Wiggin, the Chiefs’ head coach, had to pound on Matuszak’s chest to keep the defensive lineman, in convulsions and cardiac arrest due to the ingestion of illegal substances, alive. (To be fair, they were the same incident. But, no, I am not making that up.)

But, the team had other picks in 1975. After all, the draft was 17 rounds in those days, and, despite other trades, the team had eleven choices…which gave them plenty of opportunities to add talent to the squad. They would squander them all. Every. Single. One.

The Chiefs’ final pick, in round 17, was defensive back Mike Bulino out of Pitt. Bulino never played a snap in the NFL. Prior to Bulino, the Chiefs took Mark Petersen, a defensive end from Illinois. Petersen never played one snap in the NFL. Guard Gene Moshier of Vanderbilt was chosen before Petersen. Not one NFL snap. Of course, those three were late round picks. As was John Snider, a linebacker from Stanford…who also never played an NFL snap.

Prior to Snider, the Chiefs chose James Rackley, a running back out of Florida A&M. Rackley left college as one of the leading rushers in the program’s history. He did not add a single yard to that total in the NFL. Because, like Bulino, Peterson, Moshier, and Snider, he never played a single snap.

In the round before selecting Rackley, the Chiefs picked Dale Hegland, a guard out of Minnesota. Say it with me. “Never played a single NFL snap”. Three rounds earlier (as the Chiefs didn’t have a pick in the previous two rounds, not that, as we’re proving here, that mattered much), KC took Wayne Hoffman, a tight end out of Oklahoma. Hoffman was a converted defensive end. He didn’t play an NFL snap at either position or any position. Ever.

The Chiefs had two picks in that year’s sixth round. One was used on Dave Wasick, a linebacker out of San Jose State. Never played a single NFL snap. The other? Running back Morris LaGrand out of Tampa. LaGrand played 11 games for the Chiefs in 1975, mostly on special teams, before being released. He played two more games for New Orleans that year and never played another NFL snap. His career statistics included 13 rushes for 38 yards and one reception…for a loss of a yard. Morris LaGrand would also go down in history as the most productive member of Kansas City’s 1975 draft class.

Nine picks. One special teamer who managed 37 positive yards in a 13-game career. But. Let’s be ultra fair to the Chiefs. All nine of those picks came in the sixth round or later. And, while teams can and do find productive players in those later rounds, missing that late can be excused (though, perhaps, not missing nine consecutive times.) But. KC had two picks in prime rounds. The second and the third. Let’s take a look at what the Chiefs did with those picks.

In the third round, the Chiefs drafted defensive tackle Cornelius Walker out of Rice University. Walker had been a two-sport star in high school, playing first base and smacking long home runs in baseball while being heavily recruited as a lineman in football. Walker became an All-American, and, after his football days, worked for companies like Proctor and Gamble, Scott Paper, and Kimberley-Clark. But, those football days? They took place north of the border, where Walker played for the Toronto Argonauts and the Ottawa Rough Riders. He never played a single snap in the NFL.

In the second round, the Chiefs selected one Elmore Stephens, a tight end out of the University of Kentucky. Stephens was so terrible in practice and the first two preseason games of 1975 that Wiggin gave up on him and he was traded to the New York Giants for a conditional draft pick. If only the story ended there.

The Giants cut Stephens before the 1975 season began. A little over a month after his release, Stephens’ apartment in Lexington was robbed. The thief or thieves got away with a thousand dollars and a $500 wristwatch. The former tight end and two (or three, depending on who you believe) other men found the man they believed responsible for the robbery, Luron Taylor, and kidnapped him from his home, tossing him into the trunk of a car.

In the early morning hours of Sunday, October 12^th, a day that Stephens, had the Chiefs been right about his talents, would have been suiting up for the team’s game against the rival Raiders (a game KC would win 42-10), Stephens strangled Taylor, and, with the help of the two (or three) other men, tossed his body into the Ohio River.

Two days later, Stephens and two alleged accomplices were arrested by police based on a description from Taylor’s girlfriend. They were charged with kidnapping and jailed on $100,000 bond. A week later, a body washed up in downtown Louisville. It was identified as Luron Taylor. Two days later, Stephens and his two alleged accomplices were charged with murder. In January, 1976, Stephens was found guilty of kidnapping and reckless homicide. The following month, he was sentenced to 21 years in prison. Of course, Elmore Stephens never played a single down in the NFL.

So, let’s review, shall we? The Chiefs’ 1975 draft class included eleven players. And, by the time the 1975 season ended on January 18, 1976 with the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 21-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl X, all eleven were out of the NFL for good and one of them was about to be sentenced to a  21 years in prison. So. Your team may not draft very well this year. But. It’s going to draft better than that.

Wild Flowers In A Mason Jar

Wild Flowers In A Mason Jar

               January of ’55 we rode a Greyhound bus through the Georgia midnight

               Grandpa was sleeping and the winter sky was clear

               We hit a bump and his head jerked back a little and he mumbled something

               He woke up smiling, but his eyes were bright with tears

               He said I dreamed I was back on the farm

               Twenty years, boy, and the memory still warms me.

Yes. Yes, it does. Of course, my memory isn’t of a one room cabin in Kentucky, like the memory of the grandfather in John Denver’s song. No. Mine is of a big, rambling old house on a small town side street, a house that was, as a kid, the center of my world, and, as a preschooler, just about my entire world.

It was the only place I’d ever known as “home”, as I’d been only two years old when we moved in, my memories of living at the house I’d come home from the hospital to live in non-existent. And, in those days before school, what a world it was!

There was a big yard with a huge pear tree that created too much shade for grass to grow in nice-sized area beneath it. The result? Dirt. And, as preschoolers, what could be better than dirt to play in. Once, when I was four or five, I’d told Dad that it was fortunate he’d decided to buy “our” house, since it had such a big “dirt pile”. He smiled and said, jokingly, though, as a four-or-five year old, I had no idea he was joking, “That’s why I bought it. Because it had a big dirt pile.”

But, it wasn’t just the dirt. There was plenty of grass, several trees, and sidewalks to ride our tricycles on. Oh, it was awesome, and we spent as much time out in that fenced in yard as we could. But, this being Western PA, there were lots of times when being outside wasn’t possible. But, that was OK. Because, there was room inside, too.

Not plenty of room, mind. Because, to paraphrase Mom, we were always “running around like wild animals”. But, there was room. Not so much on the second floor, which was made up of three rooms and a bath built out of the old attic, but on the main floor.

The rooms were big and airy. The kitchen was huge with plenty of room to do some serious playing and “running around”. Now, often efforts to do so were cut short by Mom, who, you know, was out there doing productive things like cooking meals and didn’t need us underfoot, especially when, as usual, “running around” was a big part of whatever we were playing. But, at times, if we were doing more sedentary activities, like playing a game or doing a puzzle or playing with “army men”, then Mom would allow us to sit on the floor while she did whatever needed done in the kitchen.

Our rooms, of course, were where we played the most, and, by the time we’d started school, those were on the first floor on the opposite side of the house as the kitchen. Both rooms were big, and mine was set up perfectly for “wild animal running”, with the bed nestled in a corner and a ton of wide empty floor between the door leading into La Soeur’s room and the one leading into what we called the “sun porch”, a small closed in porch that would later be used, mostly, as a closet.

All that space was prime for running, so prime that, eventually, I set up Nerf basketball hoops above the doors and was known to “run around like a crazy person” playing one-on-none basketball on a winter day. But, as often as our rooms were used for running around, they were used for that more sedentary play we sometimes did in the kitchen.

The fourth room on the first floor was the living room, and it was huge, so big that, in later years, there were seasonal set ups. Usually, the big sofa sat against the north wall with a chair on east wall and a love seat on the west wall. The TV sat in front of the sofa on the south wall, leaving the walkway in front of the sofa. But, in the winter months, Mom would move the sofa off the wall and closer to the center of the room and get the love seat off its wall and place it next to the sofa. For the winter, the walkway was behind the sofa. (The moving back of the sofa and love seat and the disappearance of the ever-present afghans we used to cover up while watching TV in the winter were sure signs that the warmer weather had arrived.)

But, no matter the configuration, there was lots of room in the living room, and, we spent more waking time there than in any other room of the house, including our respective bedrooms, and not just because the TV was there. The living room could also be used for that sedentary play and, briefly for “wild animal running”…but only briefly, before Mom would tell us to “settle down” or “go play in your rooms”. Sometimes, we did the former, especially if the “running” was happening during a commercial while we were watching one of “our” shows. Fearing being “banished from the living room” (a Dad phrase…and, of course, as little kids, we had no idea what “banished” meant, but we did know that being banished would get in the way of our TV watching), we’d settle down and watch…usually until the next commercial break. So, add the playing and the TV, and, yes. The living room was where we did the most “living”.

The fifth room on the first floor would later be called “The Front Room”. Initially the ‘rents’ bedroom, it eventually became like a second living room when La Souer and I moved to upstairs bedrooms and the ‘rents moved into La Soeur’s old room. The best feature was a huge picture window Dad had put in when he had several rooms remodeled. There was plenty of space in “The Front Room”, but, by the time it became “The Front Room”, we’d just about left elementary school and weren’t doing any “animal running” in the house anymore. Even without a TV or the need to run, however, that room got plenty of use.

When La Soeur and I moved upstairs, the ‘rents sold the move to smaller rooms as “having the whole upstairs to yourselves”. And, as we were approaching our teen years, well. We were buying. Besides, being beyond the “running in the house” phase, we didn’t need as much room. We each had a bedroom to do quiet stuff like read and the third upstairs room, the largest, was turned into a sort of family room for the two of us, complete with a small black and white TV and the huge sleeper sofa we discussed in an earlier missive. Even the bathroom was ours, as the ‘rents and the ‘bro used the one in the basement. (Yeah, we’re getting there.) There weren’t a lot of drawbacks to having, basically, our own space in our home space, but cleaning was one of them.

We’ve discussed before that, when we got old enough, say, six or seven, to straighten up our respective rooms, doing so became our respective jobs. Mom did the heavy stuff, but we needed to pick up our own toys and put our other things in their place. In my case, this took about 15 minutes. In La Soeur’s case, it took…a backhoe. But, I digress. Cleaning.

When we moved upstairs, the ‘rents explained that we were old enough to clean up our own rooms now, and that we’d also have the rest of the upstairs as our responsibility. So, yeah, we’d need to sweep the hall, clean the bathroom, and clean the family room. Guess how this went? Exactly the same as things had gone downstairs.

In case you’ve missed that little entry, this is what happened every single week. Mom would tell us to clean our rooms. I’d get started and be done quickly and then be cajoled into helping La Soeur use the backhoe. Well. Upstairs, my room, the hall and the bathroom were my job. La Soeur had her room and the family room. I’d knock my room out, again, in fifteen, sweep the hall, and go in and start scrubbing the tub, sink and toilet. When that was done, I’d be ready to enjoy the rest of my Saturday, only to hear La Soeur shout from the family room, “If you’re done…” Yeah. Come operate the backhoe. It was enough to make me want to go hide in the basement. Not a bad segue, right?

The basement was huge, so big that it was broken into several big rooms. At the bottom of the steps, you faced a big door. Open that and it led to what we called “The Dirt Floor Cellar”. Because, unlike the rest of the basement, this particular room had, yeah, a dirt floor. It also had a full wall of shelving that Dad used to store all sorts of things. And, it was one of the few rooms of the house we never played in, because, you know, dirt floor, and we found enough ways to get dirty. To your left at the bottom of those stairs was a long hall.

Head down that and, on your left, you’d pass a nice-sized alcove in which the ‘rents kept a steamer trunk. Years after I noticed the afghans disappearing every year when the weather got warmer, I found out where they went. Yeah. Into that steamer trunk where Mom kept all sorts of blankets and such. Keep walking and, to your right, you’d find another door, this one leading down a step into a room that, initially, had a wood floor. It also had a set of stairs that led…nowhere. (I told you this place was old and rambling…)

Of course, the stairs, which ended at the ceiling of the room, had once led somewhere. We got varying explanations from the ‘rents as to where that would have been, but, from the location, I deduced they had once gone to the bottom of the stairs that led from the first floor to the second. But, despite the fact that, by the time we moved in, they led nowhere, we still played on them and loved climbing to the top and sitting with our backs against the ceiling. The steps and the wood floor eventually went, however, as the latter was getting soft and dangerous. So, Dad had the whole thing pulled out and replaced with concrete. Mom then installed a chest freezer that she used to keep extras of just about everything you could freeze.

The room with the chest freezer had a door that led outside. It also had the all-important shutoff valve for the hose we mentioned in a previous missive. But, there was a second door in the basement leading to the outside. It was right at the end of that hall, and, when you reached the end, if you looked left, well, there was the full bath. But, that wasn’t all there was to the basement.

Turn right at the bottom of those steps and you’d enter the biggest of all the rooms, what we called “The Furnace Cellar”, because, yeah, it had the furnace in it. It also had kitchen cabinets in it. Because, when we’d been very small, the kitchen didn’t have built in cabinets. It had movable units that Mom had painted green. She’d also covered the counter surfaces and the doors with contact paper with a green and white pattern. And, when Uncle Bud returned from Vietnam, he took one look at them and said, “Christ, Mary Ann, those remind me of camouflaged army jeeps!” Eventually, during the remodeling, new built-in cabinets were installed and the old ones were moved to “The Furnace Cellar”.

There, the cabinets served two purposes. The first was containing overflow from Mom’s new cabinets. And, the great part was that said overflow pretty much consisted of all the stuff she used to make…Christmas cookies! So, yeah, the jimmies and all of the decorating material that didn’t need refrigerated sat down in those cabinets during the offseason, to be brought upstairs to the kitchen when the season was upon us. And, the second purpose meshed very nicely with that one. Because, at times, when it was very, very hot, and nobody was around to play ball, I’d sneak down into the basement, where it was much cooler, and read or do something with my baseball or football cards using that green camouflaged counter and one of several old kitchen chairs we kept down there. And, it wasn’t long before, on that July or August day, I’d reach up and open the cabinets and stare at all the Christmas stuff. And think about our favorite time of year.

But, that’s still not the whole basement. There was one more room. A small one. A door off “The Furnace Cellar” led into it. We called it “The Paint Cellar”, because it contained a shelving unit that covered one wall, and Dad used this for paint cans and brushes and the like. There was also a big old cabinet on the far wall that, pretty much, wasn’t used for anything and still had old junk in it that, to my knowledge, had been there when we moved in. The rest of the small room was filled with other stuff Dad stored down there. Rakes and hoes and other outside stuff during the offseason. And, there was a door that led from “The Paint Cellar” to the “Dirt Floor Cellar”, taking us right back to the bottom of the steps where we started.

By the time we were, say, eight or nine, every inch of the big house was familiar, and, with a few exceptions, bathrooms, the ‘rents’ bedroom, the dirt floor cellar, we played in every inch of it. Because it was “home”, in every single sense of that word.

Now, back to Mr. Denver, who was a fantastic songwriter. I always say it’s unfortunate that his most-remembered song is “Thank God I’m A Country Boy”, one of his four number one hits, because said tune is the worst of the fourteen singles he put on the charts, and doesn’t compare at all to his best stuff, stuff like “Wild Flowers in a Mason Jar”. Because Denver at his best was a poet in every sense of that word (He was poet laureate of Colorado, so, yeah.)

And, like all good poets and all good songwriters, Denver understood symbolism, and some of that comes out in the song’s final stanza with the line “I started drifting off and grandpa tucked his coat around me.” Because, that’s what home is, gang, isn’t it? Home and family? It’s about someone tucking that symbolic coat around you, keeping you warm and safe in what can be a cold, cruel world. The grandpa in the song had that, warmth and safety, in his one-room Kentucky cabin and I had it in that big, rambling house on a small town street.

“And I dreamed I was with him on the farm. Grandpa, I can hear the evening wind out in the corn.” Yeah. I dream I’m back there with them sometimes, and I wake up with my eyes wet just like grandpa. We’ve all done it. We all do it. In your sleep, your subconscious takes you to a time and place, because you need to go there. The conscious mind, though. It’s far less active, but it’s still there. And it knows, on some level, that you aren’t there, as much as you’d like to be, and that you won’t ever be again. And, there’s the last bit of symbolism in the Denver song. “Wild flowers in a mason jar and the bus rolling through the night.” The wild flowers in the dream. The bus in the reality. But, like much of Denver’s stuff, it goes even deeper.

Few things in this world are more fragile and short-lived than flowers. They come and we enjoy them for a brief time. And, then, they’re gone. I can’t think of a better symbol for, well, just about everything in life than flowers. How brief and fragile it all is. Someday it ends. And, you can never go back again, except in your dreams.

I’ve always liked John Denver, and I know a bunch of his stuff. But, surprisingly, I’d never heard “Wild Flowers in a Mason Jar”…until Wednesday, April 13, 2022. Wednesday, April 13, 2022 would have been Mom’s 83^rd birthday. It was the first April 13^th in my entire life that I didn’t hear her voice. “Twenty years, boy, and the memory still warms me.” Twenty. Thirty. Forty. How many ever I have left. The memory will still warm me.

The Mower

It wasn’t the first sign of summer. For us, that was usually the first time we saw baseball cards on the store shelves…or, the first time it was warm enough (according to us, not Mom) for us to break out the whiffle balls and bats and start playing in the street. Then, the actual baseball season would start and summer, never far from our minds, would begin to move to the center of them.

But. That sound. There are a lot of things, to this day, that I still associate with summer because of my childhood in the old neighborhood. And, right at the top of that list is the sound of a lawn mower. The neighborhood had dozens of houses and all of those houses had yards, and that meant, at any given moment when the grass in Western PA was growing, you might hear the roar of a mower engine. Or, a barely-perceptible hum. Depending on how far away the yard in need of a trim was.

But, all summer long, we heard that sound. Because, all summer long, we were outside. And, if we happened to be in the house for some reason, well. Nobody in the neighborhood had central air, and that meant the windows were open all summer. So, yeah. We heard that mower and knew that somewhere within hearing distance, somebody was cutting the grass. And, the first time you heard it…time for a digression.

I remember this like it was yesterday. I was a little kid, maybe six or seven. It was cool outside, sometime in October. I was planning to go out, but at the moment, I was playing on the floor of my bedroom and I smelled something burning. I immediately went out to the kitchen and found Mom and asked about the smell. She laughed and said, “That’s just the furnace kicking on. You’re only noticing it because it’s the first time it’s come on in months. Pretty soon, you won’t even notice it.”

As almost always, Mom was right. Soon enough, in a couple of days, I’d become nose blind to the smell of the furnace and, eventually, I didn’t notice even the sound or the air flow when it came on. It was fall/winter/early spring after all, and the furnace was running regularly. But, back to the summer.

The first time I heard that lawn mower, almost always in early April, after the baseball cards and the start of baseball season and almost always after we’d broken out the whiffle ball equipment, it was…jarring. Wait. Is that a lawn mower? Because, I hadn’t heard one since not long after Hallowe’en. But, someone was mowing the grass. And, three things always went through my head, almost simultaneously. Summer was getting nearer. I was going to be hearing that sound a lot. And, soon enough, Dad would be starting the yard work season…with my help. Three things. One good. One neutral. The third? Not good at all.

Summer, of course, was great. It was, by far, our favorite time of year, even beating out the Christmas season, because, summer meant we were, pretty much, free of all responsibilities, not just for a couple of weeks, but for months at a time. The mower sound was a lot like the smell of the furnace. You noticed it at first, and then it kind of receded into the background unless it was coming from right next door or across the street. The yard work? Well. That was the “pretty much” stone in my “free of all responsibilities” shoe.

From a young age, Dad always requested my help with the yard work. At first, being a little kid, said “help” involved only two very safe jobs, using the pre-weed whacker clippers to trim the grass along the fence line and the sidewalk, and raking after Dad was finished mowing. When I got old enough that Dad was pretty certain I wouldn’t permanently maim myself, using the sickle was added to the jobs list. And, it was downhill from there.

The back of our property was a hillside that had been terraced by the previous owners and that hillside was bordered by a sidewalk. There were, as you might imagine, plenty of weeds growing at the top of the hill among the trees and bushes. And, cutting those weeds back from the sidewalk was my job. Also my job was picking up all the papers, bottles, and cans that were tossed there by the ruffians in the neighborhood (read: my buddies), who made use of the fact that, while many of the other lots had buildings at street level and others were simply grassy slopes, ours was filled with vegetation and the sight line from the yard was blocked by trees. So, yeah, just toss that empty Coke bottle and the empty bag of pretzels into the weeds rather than carry it home to the garbage. No one will see.

So, there was the raking and the trimming and the weed cutting, and all that was ushered in by that first mower sound. And, later, there would be mowing as well. At some point, Dad figured I was old enough to be the one creating that sound, the one that still reminds me of childhood summers to this day. He pulled me aside one April Saturday and told me I was old enough to begin using the mower. He gave detailed instructions, and, soon enough, the work around the yard was all mine. But. Not just around the yard.

Dad had purchased an empty lot about a five minute walk from the house. Plans were to build a new house on it, those plans, however, never came to fruition. But, as the lot was, basically, a yard with no house on it, that meant yard work. Dad and I had done the work together for several years, with the two of us loading the lawn mower and sickles into the back of the car, tying the trunk shut with twine, and driving up to the place to take care of the grass and weeds.

When the job became mine, however, things changed, because, well, I was too young to drive. Now, if I’d wanted to wait until the weekend, I’m sure Dad would have driven me up there, but, this was my summer and I didn’t want to have any more of it than necessary taken up with yard work. So, I’d get up early on the day in question, before the guys would be around, put a sickle in my back pocket, and a gas can in my hand and push the mower up the hill to the lot. I’d shove the thing into the middle of the property and go to work with the sickle. When that was done, I’d handle the mowing, always in a big square with the sides getting smaller and smaller as I went (and the exhaust pointed away from the center of the square, shooting the cut grass into already-mowed areas…a handy dandy trick I’d learned from Dad). I almost always had to fill the gas tank before I was finished. But, when I was finally done, after a small break, I’d allow myself a little treat, taking another walk, this one to the old PX, where I’d get an ice cold soda.

My trips to the lot were as regular as clockwork, and, here’s why. Dad had a grass cutting theory from which he never deviated. In the spring and early summer, April, May, June, the grass had to be cut every week. Once July hit and things got drier, you could go two weeks between mowings. So, I’d go and mow the property and tell Dad, “I went to the lot today and cut the grass.” And, Dad would say, “Thanks, son. I appreciate that.” And, the following week (or, later in the year, two weeks later), I’d hear, “I went by that lot today. The grass is getting a little high.” Or, “Were you up at the lot today? I noticed the grass was cut.” Yeah. The first observation meant “Shag your butt up to the lot tomorrow and get the grass cut.” The second meant, “Good job, I didn’t have to tell you to shag your butt up to the lot and cut the grass!” And, any argument about putting off the next mowing would be met with a shake of the head and the same admonition. “You have to keep after it, son, because, the higher it gets, the harder it is to mow.” And, as always, Dad was right. But, that didn’t make me any happier.

But, while Dad had his theory on lawn care, he also had two, and, later, three kids and realized that he wasn’t going to have a lawn that looked like a golf course. Between the two of us, we kept the grass cut and the weeds to a minimum, but Dad was not, as he derisively referred to some other folks in the neighborhood, a “yard nut”. Like the guy who lived across the street. OK. To be fair, he was not a “yard nut”. He was just a nut.

Now, unlike our house, which sat on a double lot and, therefore, had a big yard, the Nut’s yard was about the size of a postage stamp. The house sat in the middle of said lot, and next to it on the left side was a paved driveway that led to a garage. Both the garage and the house sat up against a hillside, not one that was terraced like ours, but a steep slope. To the left of the house was a small patch of grass that ended at the next door neighbor’s driveway. In front of the house was a large tree that he trimmed, each year, to within an inch of its life, and another small patch of green bordered by hedges between the grass and the sidewalk. And, that was the extent of the “yard” the nut obsessed about, but, obsess he did.

From about the time the last of the snows melted until they were threatening to return, the Nut, who had an electric mower (which did not make the familiar sound of the gas mowers we’re discussing) and an extension cord that, had it been stretched completely, would have reached from the Postage Stamp Yard to, oh, Saturn, would be out mowing. And, while, if the Nut had been smart (and, he was many things, but smart was absolutely not one of them), the entire mowing process would have taken about ten minutes, well. It was far more involved than that.

Remember that hillside that sat at the back of the Nut’s house? Well, when we first moved in when I was two years old, that hill had been, like most of the others on our street, wooded. But, the Nut had different plans. Slowly but surely, he cut down all the trees. And pulled all the stumps. And, created the world’s steepest golf course behind his house. So that he could spend summers climbing to the top of this mountain with the electric mower and using the would-stretch-to-Saturn extension cord as a rope to slowly work the mower down the mountain side and then pull it back up only to lower it again. Year after year, we all watched as the Nut mowed the mountain side. Until, one wet spring, the pigeons of his deforestation came home to roost. With nothing to hold the dirt, the entire hillside collapsed onto the back of his house. And, he got exactly zero sympathy from the rest of the neighborhood. Because. The Nut was that guy.

He was the guy who would take your ball if it went into his yard. Because, of course, he didn’t want you befouling his tiny golf course with your profane presence. So, any time a ball went into his yard, one of us would sprint in there, grab it, and race out…whether the Nut was around or not. Because, the Nut was, like Big Brother, always watching you. Oh, he might not be out in the yard or on his porch, but, if he was at home, he was probably sitting looking out the window. (No, I am not kidding.) So, when you ran into that yard, rest assured, before you made it out, he’d be at the door screaming at you.

It didn’t take long before every kid in the neighborhood knew about the Nut. And hated the Nut. And looked on with shock and amusement when, one afternoon, a kid who’d just moved into the neighborhood rode his bike right through the yard with the Nut sitting on his porch, bringing forth a stream of invective and loads of laughter from us. But, that was just one of many incidents, some funny at the time, others funny with decades of distance firmly in place.

Once, one of my friends lost a brand new football to the Nut and his yard (which became known, derisively, as The Forbidden Zone) and went home to tell his mother. And, said friend’s mother, one of the sweetest people you could ever meet, could have an edge when she wanted to. And, the Nut got the full brunt of that, as she marched up the street and let him have it with both barrels, dish towel still draped over her shoulder.

A similar incident, involving the infamous electric mower, went even more poorly for the Nut. We were tossing a Frisbee and it went in the Postage Stamp Yard while the Nut was mowing. A friend reached in to get the Frisbee and grabbed it as the nut feigned (???) running over his hand with the mower! No, I am not kidding. The friend snatched his hand away at the last second and headed up the street. We all knew where he was going. We could have sold tickets.

He came back with his father…who was absolutely no one to mess with. To say the Nut’s life flashed before his eyes at that moment would not have been to exaggerate one iota. In fact, bets were taken on whether he would be alive when the confrontation ended. He was. And he was lucky. He was also an absolute looney, as the next story demonstrates.

A different friend with a new football stars in this one. There was snow on the ground and the ball went into The Forbidden Zone. Of course, it was cold out, so the Nut was not in evidence. As a result, an argument started about who had to go in and get the ball. You threw it! You missed it. Like that. All of a sudden, the door opens and there he is and the kid who owned the football took off. He and the nut arrived at about the same time and both of them dived in the snow for the ball. Now, this was a guy in his 60s or 70s. And he literally dove into the snow to get a kid’s football. He came up with it, got up, covered with snow, and ordered my friend out of his yard. Again. He lived. And, he was lucky. Because, there was homicide in all of our eyes.

And, the Nut was committed to his efforts, believe me. A favorite trick of his, if he saw us playing ball in the street, would be to take his car out of the garage or driveway and park it in the street in front of his house. What he figured he’d accomplish by doing this, I’m sure, was getting us to move away from his house and play somewhere where no cars were parked. And, the first few times, that’s what happened. Eventually, though, we became as determined as he was, and we just kept on playing. And, hey, if a ball hit his car, it hit his car. It was on public property.

Like with the car, the rest of the Nut’s Draconian efforts to keep the Postage Stamp Yard looking like the 13^th green at Olde Stonewall did more harm than good. If he’d simply requested nicely that we stay out of his yard and keep off his grass as much as possible, we’d have done that…because, that’s what we did with the rest of the neighbors. If a ball went into a yard, we went and got it, and that was the extent of it. We kept our playing to the streets and our own yards. But. If he wanted to play rough, well. We could play rough. And, we did.

We took every opportunity to make his life miserable. Find some dog droppings lying around? Find something to scoop them up with and toss them in The Forbidden Zone. (We once filled an entire McDonald’s French fry container with said droppings and threw the whole thing into his yard.) Rotten fruit? Toss it in. Any piece of nasty garbage we could find was destined for the Postage Stamp Yard, even if we needed to squirrel it away somewhere and wait until he wasn’t around or until we had the cover of darkness. Once. Well. I need one more brief digression.

More firecrackers were lit off in our neighborhood than in Beijing during a New Year’s celebration. And, not just around the Fourth of July. Any time of the year, and, pretty much, any time of the day or night, one of the neighborhood ruffians (again, my buddies) could be lighting off some firecrackers. Yes. They were illegal. No. That did not stop us…or even slow us down. Do you know where this is going?

Firecrackers. We could get hold of them any time we wanted. And, the idea of mixing firecrackers and The Forbidden Zone was oft discussed, but nothing came of it, because like most of our plans, these were always grandiose and unworkable. But, in this case…something eventually did happen. It wasn’t some large, well-planned deal, though. A few of the guys simply had some firecrackers and decided a good place to light them off would be right under the Nut’s windows. They snuck into The Forbidden Zone under the cover of darkness, lit a bunch of firecrackers and smoke bombs, threw them, and raced away. By the time the Nut made his porch, the yard looked like Beirut, and the battle scars on the Postage Stamp yard were plenty visible the next day, with areas of grass burned and blackened.

And, the beauty of it all was that he knew without a doubt that we were responsible for all of it, the fireworks and the trash. However. There was nothing he could do about it, because he couldn’t catch us doing it. But, despite his inability to stop us, never once was an attempt made to make peace. No, he just kept escalating, and so did we. Well. What do you expect out of a guy whose lawn mower doesn’t even make the right sound?

Everybody In The Poooooollllll!

It’s not easy to take an activity that can be as enjoyable as swimming and turn it into something to be avoided at all costs, but, the folks in charge of our junior high gym classes managed the feat. Looking back on it now, I can only laugh at the series of procedures that made all of us dread the beginning of our several weeks of swimming during gym class and look forward to the end of same almost like a little kid looking forward to Christmas.

Now, the rest of this is for those of you who didn’t experience this with me to enjoy and for those of you who did to look back on and laugh…because we said we do that someday. (And, for some of us, it may still be too soon.)

OK, the first thing those of you who aren’t familiar have to know is that access from our junior high’s main building to the gym consisted of a single door that led right past the pool. Being responsible adults (and, the rest of this will make you question that, but, still…), the school’s administration kept that door locked, as it did not want a bunch of adolescents parading past a pool with no adults present. This meant that the only way to access the gym was to go outside via a second-floor door. You then walked most of the way to the gym under a portico before a brief, uncovered walk to the doors.

Once you got inside, you went downstairs to the locker rooms. And, if you had swimming, this is where your little foray into surrealism began. As you walked down the hallway to the locker rooms, you stopped at a half door, behind which sat the woman who doled out the suits. Behind her were a huge washing machine and a massive dryer with what looked like hundreds of blue suits spinning around inside it. You stopped at the door and asked her for a suit. And, she then asked you what size you needed. I still have no idea why. You could feel free to say whatever you wanted, because it wasn’t going to matter. Instead, she gave you the suit she thought you needed. Now, sometimes, she was close enough. But, most of the time, you either had the circulation to the lower half of your body cut off for the entire period or spent it trying not to moon the rest of the class. And, again, this was just the beginning.

From there, you walked into the locker room carrying your destined-to-be ill-fitting suit and immediately changed into it. Now. Whether it was ninety degrees outside or five degrees outside, the temperature in the dank, dark, concrete locker room was constant. Frigid. And, there you sat, at your locker in just the suit, miserable, until Mr. Newell, the swimming teacher, stuck his head in the door and yelled a single word, which echoed off the concrete walls down the locker bays. “SHOWERRRRSSSSS!”

At this point, we all piled into the showers to wash ourselves before getting into the pool. And, the water that came out of those showers also had a constant temperature. Liquid ice. But, you had to get thoroughly wet or Mr. Newell would send you back for a second soaking. So, we stood under the shower heads as pellets of, I mean streams of freezing water added to our discomfort. Then, things got worse.

Obviously, we showered as quickly as we could, because the experience was anything but pleasant. Then, we went into the towel room and stood, shivering, water dripping from us, waiting, rather impatiently, for Mr. Newell to reappear. Back then, I guess I assumed he was timing the shower period to make sure we had time enough to get clean without taking too much time away from what he wanted us to accomplish in the pool. These days, I suspect he was waiting until jusssstttttt before hypothermia set in. Either way, eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, he returned and shouted, “Let’s go!”

And, thus began another part of our Siberian sojourn. Now, we were to walk down the freezing concrete hallway into the pool room. And, just as you were entering, the final insult arrived. There was a blower just inside the door and, of course, the air it was blowing was always cold, which felt quite refreshing on our wet, shivering nearly-naked bodies covered only by suits that were either falling off or cutting us in half.

Now, this might be a good time to tell you that the water in the pool was “heated” to the same temperature as the water in the showers. That being said, what we wanted most in the world at that point, other than, you know, a thick blanket and either a hot beverage or a bottle of whiskey, was to dive into that pool. Yes, we knew it would be cold and we’d suffer, but, only for a while. Because, once we were in the water a few minutes, our bodies would adjust and we’d be (those of us who didn’t have suits three sizes too small, anyway) comfortable for the first time since just after our meetings with “the evil suit lady”. But, of course, that wasn’t going to happen.

Instead, Mr. Newell always ordered us to sit on the swim benches for a lecture about something or other having something vaguely to do with swimming, water, the ocean, the migratory habits of manatees or whatever we might be doing that day. (I’m sure that, despite my snark, these lectures were actually on point, but, with my ear canals frozen shut and my frost-addled brain thinking up creative ways to get out of doing any more swimming {a good friend had “swimmer’s ear” and sat up in the bleachers warm and smarmy enjoying our misery twice a week…why didn’t I think of that one?}, he could have been talking about Keynesian economics for all I knew.) So, we sat, listening, shivering, waiting. And. Finally.

“OK, everybody in the pooooooollllllll!” And, you never saw a group of adolescent boys move faster. As a group we leaped into the air and hit the water with one big splash. Mr. Newell, a veteran of this group cannonball, always stood well back so as not to get wet. Rumors flew about Mr. Newell and water, because, Mr. Newell never, ever got wet. Instead, he stood, high and dry with a whistle shouting instructions, refereeing games of water polo, and generally trying to prevent us from drowning one another. Said rumors involved other kids in other classes who’d deliberately gotten Mr. Newell wet and had gotten detention or a suspension or had, worse, failed gym and now needed to take gym four days a week instead of two. Other rumors indicated that Mr. Newell actually couldn’t swim at all and was afraid of the water and this is why he had such an extreme reaction when those other kids in other classes had gotten him wet.

But, truth or rumor, we weren’t worried about getting him wet. We wanted to get whatever we were going to do that day going, get moving, start to warm up. And, soon, that’s what began to happen. And, just like that, after a few more minutes, we were actually having fun. And, right about that time the whistle blew. “All right! Everybody out of the pooooooooollllll!!!”

To say that we were a bit slower getting out of the pool than we had been getting into it would be akin to saying that Franco Harris was a bit better runner than Greg Hawthorne. But, eventually, with a little prodding from Mr. Newell(“Come on! Come on! Get going!”), we got out, now dripping and freezing again and began a retreat that seemed to us to be similar to the one Napoleon had begun out of Moscow. Across the blower with its cold air, padding back down the glacial hallway into the frigid locker room and back to our locker bays to take off our suits (if they hadn’t fallen off on the way down the hall) and wait again, this time, not for the rumble of Mr. Newell’s voice, but for another rumble, that of the wheeled garbage can.

Each class, some unfortunate was tasked with wheeling the garbage can around to collect the suits (Today’s me would have suggested to Mr. Newell that we permanently give the job to Mr. Swimmer’s Ear.), and unfortunate he was. Because, by this time, our humor level was as low as our respective core body temperatures (read: dangerously low). We were standing, shivering again, waiting for this clown to push the barrel to our locker bay. And, when he got there a BLIZZARD of wet suits flew in the general direction of the barrel. After he was done dodging and ducking, he picked up the ones that hadn’t landed inside it and stomped off grumbling, while we padded off to the showers for a second dose of liquid ice, after which we got back to our lockers as quickly as possible to towel off, get our clothes back on, and…now might be the time to remind you that we had to go outside to get back into the school. So, out we went, often in the freezing cold and always with wet hair, for the return to the main building and our remaining classes, one step closer to the end of swimming and the return to regular gym. And, of course, a few steps closer to a nice case of multilobar pneumonia.