Wheels of Fortune

Way back in 1985, I was looking for a new car. Or, rather, a new used car. I wanted a different car than the one I was already driving and that was beginning to fall apart faster than I could get it fixed. I had three criteria for the new used car I wanted. First, that it cost under $5000. Second, that it was in decent condition. Now, I'm no mechanic, so how would I recognize this decency? Well, it couldn't be too dirty under the hood, and there should be a minimum of rust. As neither guarantees against indecency, this brings us to the third criteria: the car should be no more than five years old. None of this criteria was iron clad. I could break my own contract with myself, and almost did.

It happened when I was looking through the classifieds and saw a 1977 Cadillac for sale in "good condition for only $2000." Good is certainly better than decent. True, it would be older than 1980. Three years older, but that would be at a savings of $1000 a year, or so I rationalized. What was really driving me to drive a Caddy was that at the time I was a big Bruce Springsteen fan, and "Cadillac Ranch" was my favorite song off The River album. Had the Boss sung about a Ford Pinto, I'm sure I would have wanted that. I decided to look into the ad. I called the number and found out the guy who was selling it lived in Gates Mills.

Gates Mills?

To those of you unfamiliar with Northeast Ohio, Gates Mills is a suburb of Cleveland. But it's very different from other Cleveland suburbs such as Parma, Lyndhurst, Shaker Heights, or Lakewood. Gates Mills is where all the rich Clevelanders live: the movers and shakers, CEOs, captains of industry, jet setters, high society types, and downtown parking lot owners. And now some tycoon had a $2000, instead of $5000, Cadillac waiting just for me. Maybe he was the head of some new foundation that provided used cars to needy Bruce Springsteen fans.

Getting to Gates Mills on the northeastern edge of Cuyahoga County from North Royalton on the southwestern border, where I was living at the time, wasn't all that easy. I borrowed my mother's 1979 Bonneville (I didn't trust my junker to make the trip) and took I-77 to I-something else to I-whatever until I got to Mayfield Heights and just took a regular road into the village. That's what Gates Mills is, a village. The places nearby where other rich folks live, Hunting Valley and Chagrin Falls, are villages, too, whereas Parma and Shaker Heights are considered "municipalities". The rich may want to create, develop, invest in, and control the municipalities, but they just as soon live in villages themselves.

I soon found myself on this long country road. Except unlike other long country roads, there were no corn, wheat, or barley fields. Nor were there any woods. There were just acres and acres of lawn. You know, what you mow. And mowed it was. I've seen more weeds at Disney World. It must have taken a whole fleet of Toros to keep Gates Mills free of dandelions. Every 20 yards or so I'd see a long driveway that seemingly led to nowhere, the houses were that far from the road. I would have mistaken them for side streets if not for the mailboxes in front. Finally, after a turn here and there, I came to the right address. Not that I could stop my car. In fact, I put my foot on the gas, as there was now no place to go but up.

 Not many people know this about Greater Cleveland, including many Greater Clevelanders themselves, but it's located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It's hard to see those foothills when you have machine shops, fast-food joints, tract housing, and shopping plazas in every possible spot. However, thanks to strict zoning laws, Gates Mills was free of all that, and I found myself driving up a small mountain. This little part of Cuyahoga County would have indeed looked like the Appalachians of popular imagination, if only hillbillies drove Toros.

About half-way up the summit I came to a garage, of all things. An older type garage where you had to pull the doors open rather than roll them up. I peered into a window. There was a car inside, but it was too dark to see what kind of condition it was in, or if it was even the car I had come to see. I got back into the Bonneville and continued my ascension.

I eventually came to a very big house. I hesitate to call it a mansion, simply because it had no Doric columns. In movies and TV, mansions always have Doric columns. This house didn't look anything like what the Clampetts or Blake Carrington lived in. It looked sort of looked like the house on Eight is Enough. Just imagine the house on Eight is Enough with 50 extra windows. And I only got to see it from the front. Whoever owned it had money. Now, I can't say for sure if the owner was a millionaire. At the very least, though, that person was a nine-hundred thousand and nine-hundred ninety-nineaire.

A middle-aged man as well-trimmed as his lawn and wearing a green sports shirt and white pants stepped out from behind a topiary and greeted me:

"Hello! Are you here to look at the car?"

"Um, yeah."

"Well, it's in the garage. Can we take your car down?"

So we both hopped in my mother's Bonneville, and drove half-way down the well-manicured Appalachian foothill to the garage to get a good look at the 1977 Cadillac, which, according to the owner, they didn't make like that any more. It was also as good as new, and in mint condition. I always imagined millionaires mainly reading The Wall Street Journal, but this fellow had the Trading Times down pat.

We arrived at our destination. We got out of the car, and the millionaire opened up the garage, turned on a light, and proudly let me examine the mint condition, good as new 1977 Cadillac which they didn't make like that anymore.

It had recently been painted in a god-awful light-blue, the shade you might find in a cell block. But that in itself was no big deal if it was other wise good as new. I took a close look and saw a wrinkle here, a fold there, a bubble somewhere else, along with bumps, lumps, and crumpled bits of metal all over the place. This guy had tried to hide the rust by painting over it!

I'd seen enough. I was too polite to tell him this made my own rust bucket back in North Royalton look like it had just come right off the assembly line, without even a fresh coat of cell block paint. So I drove him back to his huge, humble abode, and told him I'd think about it. I did in fact think about it, but probably not in the way he would have preferred.

Painting over the rust. Sheesh!

I had been looking for a new set of wheels for a while, so it's not like I hadn't come across this kind of thing before. If it had been some guy with unruly sideburns and an unkempt mustache wearing a checkered sports coat and striped pants at a used car lot across the street from an adult book store in a run down neighborhood who had tried to pull a stunt like that, I would have understood.

But a millionaire in Gates Mills?

He must have made all his money in junk bonds.

Typecasting?

 

Actor Bela Lugosi as Jesus Christ in a 1909 Passion play.

 

In 1931, Lugosi would play yet another character who rose from the grave. 

In Memoriam: Patty Andrews 1918-2013

Singer. Sang lead in 1940s girl group, The Andrews Sisters. "  "Bei Mir Bistu Shein". "Shortenin' Bread" "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me)" "Pistol Packin' Mama" (with Bing Crosby.) "Shoo Shoo Baby". "Straighten Up and Fly Right." "Don't Fence Me In (with Bing Crosby.) "Rum and Coca-Cola". "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive (with--you guessed it--Bing Crosby.) "Near You." "I Can Dream, Can't I?" "Daddy"

 "There were just three girls in the family. LaVerne had a very low voice. Maxene's was kind of high, and I was between. It was like God had given us voices to fit our parts."

--1971 interview.

“When our fans used to see one of us, they’d always ask, ‘Where are your sisters?’ Every time we got an award, it was just one award for the three of us...We’re not glued together.” 

--1974 New York Times interview. By this time, Patty was a solo act. Unfortunately for her, she wasn't remotely as popular a single as she had been when part of a trio.

And so...

That's Maxine on the left, LaVerne on the right. Sorry, Patty, but whose individuality hasn't taken a beating every now and then?

 

 

 Especially when playing backup.

Now, let's look at the product these three ladies were trying to sell:

"I was listening to Benny Goodman and to all the bands...I was into the feel, so that would go into my own musical ability. I was into swing. I loved the brass section."

--Patty Andrews

"Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy"

"Bei Mir Bistu Shein"

"Shoo Shoo Baby"

"Straighten Up and Fly Right"

"Rum and Coca-Cola" Get a designated driver before listening to this song.

Two with Bing:

"Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive"

 

"Pistol-Packing Mama" Not endorsed by the NRA.

Back to just the girls:

"Daddy"

"Chattanooga Choo Choo"

 

"Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" With Shemp Howard!

The Andrews Sisters were once considered hip. Or, rather, hep. This is, after all, the Swing Era we're talking about.

Swing was a form of music that originated in the African-American community in the early part of the 20th century. White artists took the music into the mainstream, where it was at first met with suspicion and disapproval by adults but with much enthusiasm by their teenaged sons and daughters. New clothing styles, dance moves, and slang formed around this music and it soon became part of a larger youth culture. This new culture so terrified some people--especially with a war going on--that it led to civil unrest.

 

 

 

 

 

Sound familiar?

For all the noise it caused, the Swing Era quietly ended not too long after the much noisier World War II came to a close. The Andrews Sisters, meanwhile, had their own internal wars going on:

"We had been together nearly all our lives...Then in one year our dream world ended. Our mother died and then our father. All three of us were upset, and we were at each other's throats all the time."

--Patty Andrews, in 1971.

The girls split up in 1951, sued each other, and Maxine attempted suicide. Not much accentuating the positive there.

Eventually the sisters resolved their differences, and reunited in 1956, deciding to try their hand at rock and roll. That's not as absurd as it sounds. Go listen to "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" again. You got rhythm and you got blues. Does it really sound all that different from what Little Richard or Chuck Berry were doing a decade and a half later? I haven't listened  to any of the Andrews rock and roll songs--indeed, I can't find them online--but after hearing their '40s stuff, I can't see why they they couldn't just fit right in.

But they didn't.

For reasons social scientists still haven't quite figured out, rock and roll proved to be a greater shock to the system than even  ragtime, jazz, or swing--all controversial in their day--had been. Adults who had grown up listening to at least one of those blues-based, sexualized genres forgot all that--or maybe remembered it all too well--when it came to their own children. Elvis was censored, then drafted, and DJ Alan Freed--who coined the phrase "rock and roll"--was hounded by the law and the people who make the laws, Congress. One way kids rebelled against this assault on their favorite music (which lyrically wasn't even about rebellion at the time) was to build a wall between rock and all that had come before it. These teenagers came to see any music made prior to 1955, as old-fashioned, for squares. Including the Andrews Sisters. Especially the Andrews Sisters.

Nevertheless, the sisters soldiered on, even if they no longer performed in WAC uniforms. Here they are, their last appearance together, on The Dean Martin Show in the mid-'60s. Well into middle-age by this time, their voices have dropped a few registers, and they no longer sing at that jitterbugging quick pace (though they may have slowed down to accommodate the more laid-back Dino.) Still, they seem not to be taking themselves too seriously, always part of their appeal.

LaVerne died of cancer in 1967.

Patty and Maxine performed as a duo for a couple of years, then split up. They briefly reunited in the mid-1970s, then split up again, and sued each other again. They were estranged for the rest of their lives.

The sisters did manage to put aside their differences for one final public appearance. In 1987, the girl act received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame:

  
Patty on the left, Maxine on the right.

 
Maxine died in 1995

No one stays young forever. No one lives forever. But if it's any consolation, one, or three, may be rediscovered by the young:

 

 

 
 

 

 

You don't hang up on the Andrews Sisters.

 


 
 

    

The Fog of Peace

Remember the Gilligan's Island episode where Vito Scotti played a Japanese sailor who didn't know World War II had ended? Well, a few years after Gilligan went off the air, something like that happened in real life, though the poor, deluded fellow was an infantryman, not a sailor, and wasn't discovered on an uncharted island with only seven people, but a United States territory with a then-population of 85,000.

Shoichi Yokoi was a sergeant in the Imperial Japanese Army when the US military recaptured the island of Guam in August of 1944. But they didn't recapture Yokoi. He and about 10 other soldiers went into hiding in the jungle. Seven of those ten moved out of the area, and were either captured or died of starvation. The three others kept in touch with each other, until the two of them died in a flood in 1964 (the same year Tokyo hosted the Olympics), leaving Yokoi all by himself, and, according to one version of the story, still convinced the war was going on. Any leaflets Yokoi found that said otherwise, he dismissed as propaganda. For 28 years, Yokoi lived in his underground cave, surviving on a diet of fruits, nuts, fish, shrimp, frogs, rats, and snails. A tailor before the war, he made in his own clothes out of bark. I'm not sure where he got the needles.

Finally, in January 1972, a couple of local guys checking shrimp traps along a small river not far from the cave were attacked by Yokoi, who must have thought they were enemy spies or something. It was two against one, a middle-aged malnourished one at that, and Yokoi was quickly subdued. He was then forced by gunpoint out of the jungle and to a local police station, where he told his story. Now the desk sergeant had heard everything.

No charges were filed, and a few weeks later Yokoi returned to Japan in a chartered jet. Thousands greeted him at the airport, and he did the rounds of TV talk shows, presumably after someone  explained to him what a TV was in the first place. Some of the younger Japanese viewers with no memory of World War II found him a bit odd, though, especially when he said things like:

''I continued to live for the sake of the Emperor and believing in the Emperor and the Japanese spirit,''

There still was an emperor in Japan in 1972. In fact, the very same fellow who held the job in 1943: Hirohito. However, in Yokoi's long absence, Hirohito had gone from being regarded as a living god that his subjects bowed down to whenever he strode past them on his magnificent white stallion, to a constitutional monarch who often did typical head of state things like visit other countries' national institutions:

Once he got settled in, Yokoi visited his own country's national institution, the Imperial Palace--the grounds of the Palace, anyway--where he said, ''Your Majesties, I have returned home." He didn't actually say this to the majesties themselves, but rhetorically and to reporters following him around. The Emperor couldn't see him as he had other business to attend to that day.

Despite Hirohito's snub, Yokoi Shoichi remained a celebrity for the rest of his days, which lasted until 1997. Like celebrities everywhere, he had his own pet cause, in this case sustainable living, of which he had considerable experience:

''I can't understand why cities must burn garbage. My family [he got married six months after returning to Japan] does not produce garbage. We eat every last bite of food. Parts of food that are not edible are used as fertilizer in my garden.''

Once he got used to the idea of democracy, Yokai ran for office, but his proposal to turn Japan's golf courses into bean fields wasn't a vote-getter.

Amazingly, Shoichi Yokai wasn't the last Imperial soldier to come in from the wilderness. He was followed by two more in a space of only a couple of years.

Hiroo Onada was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines in 1944, which faced  possible invasion by the enemy (the USA.) Though suicidal behavior is one of the may stereotypes we Yanks have of the Japanese--swords to the gut and kamikaze attacks on battleships--Onado was given express orders not to take his own life. He was also ordered to evade capture. So, when the invasion happened as expected, and it didn't look like there was going to be any counter-attack anytime soon, Onado had no other choice but to head to the hills and take up the life of a guerrilla fighter, an occupation he held for 30 years, long after the fighting had stopped. He had three other men with him, everyone else having died or surrendered. As was the case with Shoichi Yokai, Onada refused to believe the flurry of leaflets dropped from above telling him the war was over and urging him to surrender.

Onada's exile from reality was much bloodier than Yokai's. He and his guerrillas killed some thirty Filipinos and had several shootouts with the cops. One of the guerrillas, tired of all the fighting and deciding all the leaflets might be genuine, sneaked off and surrendered. This increased the remaining three's paranoia, which led to more wild gunplay. A second guerrilla was killed in a shootout with the very search party that was looking for him and the others in 1954. Then there were two. And it remained that way until 1972--the same year Yokai was discovered alive--when police came upon the two of them burning a rice field as part of their guerrilla activity. Onada's companion was shot and killed, but he got away.

Finally, in 1974, a Japanese college dropout backpacking his way across the Phillipines came upon Onada. The two talked a bit, and had their picture taken together. I'm not sure who took it. Maybe it was one of those automatic cameras. Anyway, the dropout returned to Japan and informed the authorities Onada was still alive, and that he refused to give up until ordered so by a superior.

The Japanese government located Onada's former commanding officer, now a bookseller, and flew him to Lubang, where he personally relieved him of duty. Now convinced (and a bit disappointed) that the war was indeed over, he turned over his remaining weapons--his sword, dagger, Ariska Type 99 rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition, and several hand grenades--to the authorities. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos pardoned him of all crimes due to mitigating circumstances, such as an inability to recognize peace when he saw it.

Hiroo Onada returned to Japan an even bigger celebrity than Shoichi Yokai, something he had mixed feelings about. After reading about a teenager who had killed his parents, Onada took up juvenile delinquency as his pet cause, establishing educational camps for young people around the country. Now 91, Onanda spends several months of the year in Brazil, and is a celebrity there as well. So all you readers out there who yearn to be famous, that's one way of doing it. Just lose a war and hide out for decades.

The latest and most likely final Japanese soldier to be discovered years after WWII ended wasn't even Japanese! Teruo Nakamura (Attun Palalin in his native tongue) was from Taiwanese when that island was still a colony of Japan. Conscripted into the Imperial Army, he was sent to the Indonesia island of Morotai, just in time to see that place overrun by the Allies in 1944. Like Yokai and Onada before him, he fled to the jungle. He mixed with other stragglers for awhile, but in the mid-1950s lit out on his own. He built his own hut, where he lived peacefully until 1974, when someone flying over his modest home spotted it. Nakamura was soon arrested by Indonesian soldiers, though that just may have been to get him out of the hut. Having forgotten what little Japanese he knew, Nakamura asked and received permission to expatriated right back to Taiwan, which in his absence had become mostly Chinese (which he couldn't speak, either.) While his capture/discovery made the generated a lot of media attention, Nakamura was never really a celebrity, certainly not among the Japanese, who didn't want to be reminded of their stint as a colonial power. Nakurama died of lung cancer in 1979 (did he manage to take a lot of cigarettes into the jungle with him?)

We've probably seen the last of Imperial Army holdouts. The world's much more developed now, and the jungles have shrunk. Plus, the mortality rate has risen for all WWII-era combatants, whether they're living in caves or Old Soldiers Homes.

Others who have written about these three have emphasized their courage, perseverance, and resourcefulness. All sterling qualities, true. But such sterling qualities came to the fore in total ignorance of what was going on around them. When Shoichi Yokai returned to Japan, he said,
 
"It is with much embarrassment, but I have returned".

It doesn't necessarily mean what you think. He could have been embarrassed about being caught. In researching this piece, I read several, sometimes contradictory, versions of his story. In one of those, Yokai actually did know of Japan's surrender, but stayed in hiding anyway, assuming that his subjugated homeland now would serve as a steady supplier of slave labor to the United States. Sitting in his cave munching on rats and snails, how was he to know that in ignominious defeat, his average countryman would soon have a much higher standard of living than they ever did before the war, that a building boom would transform bombed-out Tokyo into a modern metropolis of gleaming skyscrapers, that his homeland successfully would host both an Olympics and world's fair (Expo '70), and that Japan would undergo another kind of global expansion, this time not with guns, planes, ships, and tanks, but with names such as Sony, Toyota, Panasonic, and Mitsubishi? Once Yokai found out about all that, well, maybe he did feel a bit embarrassed.

 

 

 

As for Hiroo Onada, in his autobiography he minces no words: "A storm raged inside me. I felt like a

fool...what had I been doing for all these years?"

 

On reflection, maybe Yokai and Onada are being a bit too hard on themselves. Theirs may be an extreme case, but how many of us marry the wrong person, take the wrong job, major in the wrong subject, break the wrong rule, sign on the wrong dotted line, make the wrong purchase, hang around  the wrong people, run away from home when we should have stayed put, stayed put when we should have run away from home, lashed out when we should have held out tongue, held our tongue when we should have lashed out, partied when we should have studied, studied when we should have partied, followed our brain instead of our heart, followed our heart instead of our brain, jumped into bed instead of take a cold shower, took a cold shower instead of jumped into bed, rocked the boat when we should have left well enough alone, left well enough alone when we should have rocked the boat, ate until we got fat, smoked until we got sick, popped pills until we got addicted, drank until we got fat, sick, and addicted; so that at the end of a wasted day, wasted year, wasted life, we ask ourselves:

 

 "What the hell was I thinking?"

Welcome to the jungle.

 
 
  
    
 

 

  

Graphic Grandeur (Drawing Room Edition)

Picture postcard, 1915. Artist unknown.

"ISH KA BIBBLE" in the lower left hand corner, was the name of a popular nonsense song of 1913. Later, the name of a nonsense radio comedian of the 1930s and '40s. According to some research I did, it may be mock-Yiddish for "I should worry." Can't explain much more about anything else written here. I mean, worry like a gimlet? What kind of simile is that? What does a gimlet--which is name of both a tool, pictured here, and a cocktail--have to worry about? This actually put me on an etymological search of the word worry to see if perhaps it was an arcane carpentry term. It's not. Nor does it have anything to do with cocktails, though I can understand someone full of worry wanting to get plastered. According to my research, worry comes from the Old English word wyrgan, which in turn came from the Old German word worgen, meaning "to strangle". I'm no carpenter, but you don't strangle a piece of wood with a gimlet. At one time the word did mean "to lacerate", which in turn means "to cut". You DO cut a hole with a gimlet, so we might be getting somewhere. But why would someone then feel bored? A gimlet is a bore-er, not a bore-ee. And worry and boredom are not two emotions, or mind sets, I associate with each other. You can be so bored you fall to sleep (hence the woman yawning), but worry can keep you awake at night. Actually, I've found worrying about a word's etymology can keep you awake at night.

I get that it's suppose to be a pun, but wouldn't "I'm bored" be sufficient? If you're familiar with comic strips made before 1920, you know they're filled with all kinds of odd things, such as answers before questions, or captions that contradict word balloons. Though the above is a postcard and not a strip, I was tempted to just chalk it up as a "1915 thing." The folks back then got it and we don't. Except the fact that someone felt the need to actually draw a gimlet and a piece of wood tells me there was some doubt everyone would get the joke.

You didn't need the joke written out at all. Though the loopy Lothario and disinterested damsel was already a comic cliche in 1915, the artwork, to my eyes, makes it fresh and amusing. Look at that attractive (even with an oversized head) young woman yawn. She so much in the foreground it's as if she's sharing her tedium with us, letting us in that she's unimpressed with whatever the oblivious, aging would-be suitor is talking about.

And just what is he so eagerly yakking on about? The size of a fish he caught? His spanking brand-new Model T? A gall stone that was removed?

Perhaps he's a carpenter describing how he once worried a gimlet through a piece of wood.

 

Vital Viewing (Cuban Kryptonite Edition)

The first actor to play Superman on television, George Reeves was born on this date in 1914.

In this clip, Reeves meets a fellow 1950s TV icon:

No Room at the Speakeasy, or, I'm Dreaming of a Wet Christmas

Barring a Christmas miracle, I'll be away from the computer on the 23d, 24th, and 25th. In the meantime, enjoy the holiday as it was celebrated in the 1920s (in pop culture, at least):

By John Held Jr, probably the most popular cartoonist of the era.

 

  

Clara Bow, "The It Girl."

Christmas card.

Didn't that company just go belly up?

 A Salacious Santa.

You never know what Santa might have picked up after a trip around the world

 

 

Gloria Swanson is ready for her close-up, Mr DeMille.

Christmas at the Fitzgeralds.

Here's an Italian postcard. They had flappers, too, though they seemed to dress a little warmer.

The automobile had become more commonplace.

Why, even Santa was driving one.

Christmas in LA.

Prohibition did put a damper on things. If you're not familiar with 1920s fashions, I can assure you what that gentleman holding the spray bottle is wearing was way out of style, even back then. But maybe that's the whole point. It's the fogies who want to spoil all the fun.

 

Mary Pickford.

That "wotever it is" looks like a paint roller brush, doesn't it?

OK, I see a keyboard, but where's the screen?

Louise Brooks.  Her signature bob hair style defined the flapper look. Speaking of flappers...

...not everyone had a positive view of them.

OK, I've shown you the side of the 1920s that the purveyors of popular culture wanted you to see. They wanted you see it back then, and they want you see it now. But for most people, it wasn't as glamorous as all that. Here's some pictures of ordinary people celebrating Christmas:

OK, enough with the ordinary people already. One last look at Clara Bow:

All of the above photos were culled from various places around the Internet (unimaginable in the 1920s)

This was fun, and I might do it again next Christmas. To avoid repeating myself, though, I'll have to jump ahead ten years to the 1930s.

Expect a lot of Salvation Army Santas.