TREASURE-HUNTING IN NORTHSIDE

Dear George,

 

In my book, the Northside community yard sale is the event of the year in Cincinnati for us bargain hunters.  Northside is just across the viaduct from Clifton, but it’s a more traditionally blue collar neighborhood.  Over the years it’s become a location of choice for the arts community, gay and lesbian couples, young UC faculty members, and generally folks with hippy-like dispositions.  Given people’s aesthetic sophistication and alternative life styles, Northside is a yard sale paradise.  The community sale occurs once a year in late summer, and over a hundred homes participate, spearheaded by a big church rummage sale.  The merchandise is esoteric, e.g., art books, crystal goblets, tarot cards, sea shells, Grateful Dead placards, 8-track tapes, scented candles, ostrich feathers, mountaineering equipment, you name it.  The people are mellow, the prices are low, and you’re expected to bargain.  Last year I bought six bottles of Yellowtail wine for six dollars.

 

I went along with my friend Phyllis on a recent Saturday morning. Our spouses are more highbrow in their tastes and thus disinterested in the Northside sale.  As an opera devotee and world traveller, Phyllis has a highbrow side too, but, in her second self, she is a flea market/thrift shop junkie, and she wouldn’t miss Northside.  It’s a walking adventure, much of it contained within a five block by five block radius.  Phyllis likes to go to everything, so we spent four hours scouring the neighborhood.  It’s a very pleasant outing for a sunny Saturday morning.  People are in a good mood and like to chit chat, there’s tons of stuff to look over, and there is that exhilarating feeling of being on a treasure hunt where you never know what fascinating thing you’ll find next, usually being sold for about 10 percent of its original price.  The event also has a carnival atmosphere to it.  Hundreds and hundreds of people, mostly middle-aged, mostly white, mostly middle-class-looking, are out on the sidewalks, searching for whatever bargains strike their eye.  These are people who have housefuls of stuff already and don’t have room for much more.  Nor do they want to spend any money.  But they do like to devote their leisure time to the all-American quest of accumulating more material goodies.  Rather than go to the mall, a more serious venture, they wander around to see what objects can be found from somebody else’s attic or basement.  And everybody is ecstatic.  I would claim to be skeptical of all this except that I clearly am one of them.

 

Both Phyllis and I had successful outings.  Phyllis has a particularly effective bargaining style.  She doesn’t asks the price of things, but rather says in a pleasant voice, “Will you take a quarter for this?”  Almost always people say yes.  On this trip, she got jewelry and clothing and books and linens and pez containers and many other things I can’t even recall. Because I spread out my take on the dining room table, I can give you a more detailed list of my acquisitions: 

1 Mickey Mouse keychain                                     $0.50

1 black folding umbrella                                        $0.50

5 12” metal tent stakes                                         $1.00

1 1956 Dinah Shore NBC publicity photo             $1.00

1 dish towel for camping                                      $0.25

1 white hooded Gap coat                                     $3.00

1 8’ x 10’ woven rug for my office                        $7.00

1 camouflage Belterra Casino cap                      $0.50

1 bag of colorful stones & arrowheads                $0.50

2 videos of W. Allen & H. Bogart movies            $1.00

1 Cincinnati magazine (Dec. 2000)                     free

2 French prints                                                    free

1 rubber Superman toy                                       $0.50

1 Dockers broad-brimmed camping hat             $1.00

1 album of horse prints                                       $0.25

4 black and brown leather belts                         $3.00

TOTAL                                                               $20.00

  

  

In these days of over-priced commodities, you probably find it hard to believe that one could get all this for only $20.  Not only that, but I had been wanting to get every single item.  This is the wonder of the yard sale as an American institution.  You could furnish your entire life with the stuff that other people put out in their yard.  After finishing Northside, we drove across the river to the Mainstrasse area in Covington, KY.  Mainstrasse was the starting point that weekend of the World’s Longest Yard Sale, which stretched 500 miles from Covington down Route 127 to Gadsen, Alabama. An important perk of living in Cincinnati is that this world class event has its beginning here.  After browsing the tables of 40 or 50 vendors, we considered driving down Route 127 into rural Kentucky.  However, we’d been so successful in Northside that, aside from checking out Mainstrasse, we actually decided to bypass the longest sale in the world.   

 

Love,

Dave

 

 

 

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Dear George,

 

I wrote the other day about my trip to San Francisco in the summer of 1958, but, after I posted it, I realized I’d left out a few details.  I’d driven to California in my 1951 Buick with the intention of selling it there  I’d heard that there was such a shortage of cars on the West Coast that you could sell a used car for double the price that it would bring in the Midwest.  Because I’d had some transmission problems and was worried about my car surviving much longer, I decided to dispose of it.  I took it to a big used car dealer when I got to San Francisco, but the guy showed no interest.  He said, while there was in fact a shortage of good used cars in California, nobody would want to buy my car.  Dejected, I parked it next to a city park in my neighborhood and moved it every few days to avoid getting a ticket.

 

As I mentioned previously, Bill H., a fellow Antiochian, asked in early August if I’d like to drive back to Yellow Springs from San Francisco, and I said I would.  We agreed to share the driving and do the trip nonstop.  We left on a Saturday morning.  However, as soon as Bill began his stint at the wheel, it became clear our plan wouldn’t work out.  He had had some lessons as a high school student and possessed a driver’s license, but, as a city person, he’d never really driven a car on his own.  He wobbled over the center line, got unduly nervous when a car passed him, and was generally overwhelmed by the demands of highway driving.  After a harrowing mile or two he said he didn’t feel comfortable driving, and I said I wasn’t comfortable either.  Actually I was terrified.  We decided that I would do the driving, and he would stay awake, read the map, and keep me company.

 

We travelled through California and into Nevada, then started climbing the Rockies.  I was worried about the Buick making it, but it chugged its way up for miles and miles.  As we descended on the Colorado side of the mountains, a gas station guy told me that my brakes were getting hot and that I should wait till they cool down, then avoid braking as much as possible.  I followed his advice, and we coasted down the ten thousand foot descent to the flat lands below.  Night fell, and I drove and drove and drove.  We went from Colorado to Nebraska.  I took NoDoz and drank a lot of coffee, and Bill helped to keep me awake by telling stories.  After about thirty-hours of driving with only two or three brief rest room stops, we reached the outskirts of Kansas City.  I was functioning pretty much like a zombie by that point.  I ran a red light in the suburbs and almost immediately heard a siren behind me.  The police officer checked my driver’s license, noting that I was from Michigan, and asked if I’d seen the red light.  I said I did see it, but I’d chosen not to stop.  He looked at me perplexed and asked why that was.  I said that a guy in the mountains had told me my brakes were hot and that I should us them as little as possible.  I was worried that my brakes might fail if I hit them too hard.  The policeman was startled.  “The mountains?  What mountains?” he asked.  “The Rockies,” I said.  The policeman was taken aback and shook his head.  “The Rockies?”  He explained to me the Rockies were over a thousand miles away.  I suddenly realized that I’d been in a heightened state of vigilance for the last fifteen hours, my right foot poised to avoid using my presumably hot brakes the whole time.  The policeman was polite but firm.  He said I should leave the state of Missouri as soon as possible.   I should go straight back to Michigan.  Then he let us go on our way. 

 

We did get back to Yellow Springs without further incident.  We’d taken one three-hour nap in the car, but, basically, I’d driven forty-plus hours in a row.  While the car did make it to the coast and back, I still didn’t feel good about how it was running.  Later in the school year my friend Newt was talking about his desire to have a car, and I told him he could have mine.  He didn’t feel it was fair to take it for nothing, so he gave me thirty dollars.  It wasn’t much, but I felt relieved.  Then a couple months later, Newt also decided the car wasn’t doing that well, and, since he’d gotten his thirty dollars out of it, he gave it away to Art F.  That was the last I heard of it until I went home over spring break.  On my first day home my dad suggested we take a walk on the road, always a bad sign that I was going to hear about some serious life error that I’d made.  My dad was really angry this time.  It turned out that my car had been found abandoned on the New York Thruway.  Because the car was in my dad’s name, he had received a bill for over a thousand dollars in fines and associated costs.  I tried to explain that I didn’t own the car any more, that I’d sold it to Newt who had then given it to Art.  My dad asked if I’d had the title for the car transferred to Newt in Ohio, and I said we didn’t bother doing that.  This only made him still angrier, since he had been legally liable for any potential accidents my friends might have gotten into.  My dad insisted I contact Art right away and get him to pay back the thousand dollars.  I knew that Art didn’t have any money, so that this was an unlikely possibility, but I said I would try.  And that was the end of my first distressing experience as a car owner.

 

Love,

Dave

 

My Brief but Exciting Career as a Writer

Dear George,

In the summer before our last year at Antioch, Katja was finishing her year abroad in Vienna, and I decided to go to San Francisco to explore my dream of becoming a fiction writer. I had majored in creative writing for a while, but was dissuaded by a disgruntled English prof who claimed there were few if any rewards available to the literati in American society. I had taken his advice to heart, but a lingering part of my true self still clung to the idea of a writing career. I saw this as my last chance to test that life option.

Four Antioch students were bound for San Francisco that summer – Eleanor Holmes, Eddie Lemansky, Betsy Riggs, and myself. I was the only one with a car, so we contracted to travel together, sharing the gas expenses. Eddie and I did the driving. Betsy didn’t have a license, and Eleanor wasn’t comfortable with it. We decided to drive nonstop from Ohio to the coast, and, in fact, we only took one or two short naps along the way. The westward trip is a blur in my mind. We drove through Nebraska at night, and the highway was filled with long-legged hares, a goodly number of which we ran over. The car broke down in Ogallalah, and a kind mechanic did the repairs and charged me a dollar twenty-five. We stopped to look in the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City and took a swim in the Great Salt Lake. We drove over the Rockies. Then, before you knew it, we were in San Francisco.

Eddie and I dropped the women off at their destinations, and we went downtown to the Tenderloin District, San Francisco’s skid row. We asked a homeless lady living in her car where the cheapest hotel was, and she directed us to a cheesy looking three-story SRO on O’Farrell St. The nightly fee was two dollars. Eddie got a room that was lined on all four walls with bright red velvet curtains and smelled strongly of perfume and room deodorizer. The room clerk told us that its prior occupant had entertained his friends there. My room was less gaudy, but wouldn’t have earned a single star from AAA.

I’d brought just fifty dollars with me as my stake for the summer, so I scanned the classifieds in the Examiner for job possibilities. What caught my eye were positions that offered free room and board, but no pay, in exchange for kitchen work. This seemed to offer maximum flexibility for an aspiring writer, and the element of no pay actually appealed to my self-picture as a starving artist. I arbitrarily picked one of the ads for a place called The Mansion, located near to California and Fillmore, and walked over to check it out. The manager’s name was Lindy. He said it was a pearl-diving job, and, when I looked puzzled, he explained that that was the insider’s name for washing dishes. After a brief interview, Lindy offered me the job.

Lindy was an out of the closet middle-aged, balding gay man, tall and skinny, flamboyant in style, and very funny. He looked and talked like Larry David. After the first evening meal he was less than impressed with my dishwashing ability and showed me how to speed it up. Lindy’s opinion, which he offered on numerous occasions, was that college students were just fine on theory and lofty abstractions, but they were wholly lacking in real-life skills or practical knowledge. I didn’t quarrel with him, and I worked hard to improve.

The mansion was a fancy place – in fact, it had been a real mansion, dating back to the late 1800’s, which had been converted into a high-level boarding house for professionals in their 30s and 40s. People took their breakfast and supper at the Mansion, so my work duties centered around these two meals. After a few weeks Lindy tried me out as a waiter, but I did miserably at it, failing to remember people’s orders by the time I reached the kitchen, and I was quickly demoted back to my lower level pearl-diving job.

My room was in the basement and had formerly been the mansion’s library, a cavernous space lined with empty oak bookshelves. It was secluded, quiet, and an excellent place for writing. I had brought my Olympia portable typewriter with me, along with a ream of paper, and I spent many hours there churning out material. William Saroyan was my favorite writer at the time, and he had spent part of his early career in San Francisco, frequenting the San Francisco Public Library. Emulating my idol, I did that too, writing longhand drafts of short stories at a table in one of the large reference rooms.

The Mansion’s owner was a staid, mustachioed British man named Gordon who made regular visits to monitor goings on. Lindy was condescending toward Gordon in his absence, but cowtowed to him when he was there. Gordon became incensed when he learned that a single man and woman had removed the lock on the door that separated their adjacent rooms so that they could more readily share a common bed. Gordon went up, entered the man’s room while he was sleeping, and proceeded to nail the door shut in an effort to restore morality.

Late in the summer Lindy smuggled a pregnant woman named Jeannie into the Mansion and gave her a room on the top floor. Lindy explained that he had nothing to do with Jeannie’s pregnancy, but that she was a close friend who needed help. Because of her mammoth size, I guessed Jeannie to have been in her ninth month. Along with being pregnant, Jeannie also had a fondness for vodka. One night there was a huge thunderstorm, and, as Lindy recounted to me the next day, Gordon came by to make sure everything was o.k. at the Mansion. Jeannie had gone down the hall to take a shower, and, besotten with vodka, she had locked herself out of her room. Because she was naked, she didn’t try to go for help. Instead she climbed out of the bathroom window and began walking along a ledge on the exterior wall of the Mansion’s top floor. She was midway at the very moment that Gordon got out of his car below and looked up at his building as the lightning flashed. There the sight of a huge naked woman scaling the building’s ledge in the midst of the storm was nearly enough to cause his demise. I’m not sure how Lindy got out of it, but he did some kind of fast talking that allowed him to keep his job. Jeannie moved out the next day.

San Francisco was an exciting place to be. I spent a lot of time in North Beach, the bohemian area that had been home turf for Jack Kerouac and the beatnik generation. I went to a poetry reading by Lawrence Ferlinghetti one night at the City Lights Bookshop. The place was jammed, and I got one of the last seats which was hastily added to the stage at the last moment, just behind Ferlinghetti himself. He chatted with me a little bit before the poetry reading began, and I mentioned my writing pursuits. For a moment I felt I’d arrived in the literary world.

I wrote 27 short stories that summer. I sent the intial ones to the New Yorker, from whom I received form letters of rejection by return mail. Having had rich childhood experiences with cowboys and Indians, as well as cops and robbers, I tried sending fictional accounts to Western and Detective magazines, but these too met with prompt rejection. I sent a couple of manuscripts to True Romance, but my plot lines were even less authentic there. By the end of the summer I had enough rejection letters to paper a wall, and I came to the conclusion that my writing career was an abject failure. Though I was personally happy with my products, the literary world had no interest.

I had run into an Antioch acquaintance named Bill H. who had come out to San Francisco after I did, and Bill asked me if I were interested in driving back to Yellow Springs. I said I was, and we set out in early August. We got back to Yellow Springs about 48 hours after our departure time. I had twenty dollars left from my original fifty. All in all, I considered my trip a success. I’d gained some clarity about life directions, I’d had some S.F. adventures, and I had lived on less than five dollars a week. Who could hope for more than that?

Love,

Dave

The McDonald Boys: A Gruesome Menominee Tale

Dear George,

 

For years I’ve done daily e-bay searches on Menominee, looking for antique postcards and other paper ephemera.  By chance, I ran across the grisly image above, a photo of the lynching of the McDonald Boys in Menominee in 1881.  The starting bid was $15, too high for my tastes, but, for the heck of it, I forwarded the e-bay page to my brother Peter who I knew would be curious about this bit of Menominee’s past.  A month later, an envelope containing the e-bay photo arrived in our mailbox.  That Peter!  I framed it and hung it over my desk, and Peter’s gift prompted me to do some research on what turned out to be an interesting, if macabre, story. 

 

The Menominee lynching was one of the most notorious in Michigan history.  It took place on September 27, 1881.  The victims were two lumberjacks from Canada, Frank McDonald and John McDougal.  They were known as the McDonald Boys, though they were actually cousins, and they were described at the time as “very fine fellows, except when they were drunk, when they were always fighting with knives.”  The cousins had come to town after a log drive for the Bay Shore Lumber Co. and gone to a local bordello in Frenchtown where they saw an old enemy at the bar, Billy Kittson, drinking with some prostitutes.  Billy and his two brothers were the sons of an Englishman and a Menominee Indian woman.  Their family had moved to Menominee after their home was destroyed in the Peshtigo fire in 1871, and Billy had recently helped his deputy sheriff brother George send Frank McDonald to prison.  Harsh words between the two men escalated into a fight, and Billy Kittson broke a whisky bottle over Frank’s head.  Billy, drunk, staggered out into the street to tell his brother about his victory, but the McDonald boys followed him, and John stabbed Billy in the back with a large hunting knife.  Billy’s brother, Norman, seeing this, joined the fight and was immediately stabbed in the neck by Frank McDonald.  Billy made his way into the nearest bar, ordered drinks for the house, and then keeled over dead. 

 

The McDonald Boys tried to flee town by train, but the county sheriff arrested them and placed them in the Menominee jail.  Executions had been banned in the state of Michigan, and Max Forvilly, owner of the largest bar in town, was talking up the idea of a lynching.  County officials were nervous about the prisoners’ safety and requested reinforcements from the Grand Army of the Republic chapter.  After a day of drinking and angry talk, many of Forvilly’s customers were ready to take action.  Despite the heavy guard at the jail, the mob stormed the rear of the courthouse, broke into the jail, smashed the cell doors with a large log, pulled the inmates out of their cell, and looped nooses around each of their necks.  The ends of the ropes were tied to the back of a horse and wagon, and the McDonald boys were dragged through the mud of Menominee’s streets.  As the victims passed by, lumberjacks stomped on their bodies, while others rode on them for a distance.

 

When they reached the Chicago & Northwestern R.R. tracks, the mob strung the bodies up on one of the railroad crossing signs and then threw rocks and garbage at them.  When they tired of this, the crowd hauled the bodies back to the bordello where the original fight had taken place.  It’s claimed that the prostitutes were forced to lie with the muddy, bloodied bodies.  The bodies were then hung from a jackpine and left for the prostitutes to contemplate.  After the mob dispersed, the McDonalds were taken to the Riverside Cemetery where they were buried side by side in the potter’s field, their graves remaining there to the present day.

 

Max Forvilly was arrested and tried for his role in the lynching, but he was found not guilty by a jury.  However, he lost his hotel and everything he had, went mad, and died on a little farm on Peshtigo Sugar Bush. Legend has it that the ringleaders of the lynching  “died with their boots on,” many of them in fact meeting violent and bizarre deaths.  The McDonald Boys themselves lived on in perpetuity via a ballad which commemorated their story.  Here are the last two stanzas:

 

May God forgive those Kitchen boys

For all their crimes through life;

‘N’ sheriff Rupright’s days be bright,

He protected us that night.

For he was brave and manly,

His heart was stout and proud.

But he was forced to yield (that night)

Before so fierce a crowd.

 

Now the jail is broke and the mob is in,

And there’s one more word to say.

Send a letter to our dear mother

Who’s home in Canaday.

It will make her feel heartbroken

And fill her heart with pain.

For to think she never more shall see

Her darling boys again.

 

Love,

Dave

 

 

Sources:

Barnett, LeRoy.  Lynch law in Michigan.   Historical Society of Michigan Chronicle, 2005, 28 (1), 10-13.

Dorson, Richard Mercer.  Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers.  Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 19XX.

Karamanski, Theodore J.  Deep Woods Frontier.  Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 19XX.

Walton, Ivan.  Ballad of the MacDonald Boys.  The Journal of American Folklore, 1963, 76 (302), 342-344.

Gmail Comments:

-Vicki L (9-4): Wow David....This helps to more clearly understand the environment in which I never managed to grow up. Good old Peter! Love, V

-Donna D (9-4): ok i havent read this word for word yet but my first impression is.....how awful....not sure i want to read the whole thing tonite...maybe i'll read it tomorrow.

NUMBER FORTY-NINE

Dear George,

Today is Katja's and my 49^th wedding anniversary. What happened? Where did all that time go? It seems just a while ago that we were getting things together for our small wedding at the Quaker Chapel on Antioch’s campus. The minister’s name was Howard Johnson. Our families drove in from Philadelphia and Menominee, respectively. Ami (age 18) was the maid of honor, and Steven (19) was the best man. Katja’s parents were uneasy about the whole thing, and my dad took Katja aside and told her very sternly that members of our family never divorce. It made us both very nervous, which may be one of the reasons why we’re celebrating our 49^th. Katja looked radiant in her white wedding gown. Her favorite French teacher, Herman Schnurer, was there, as was Erling Eng, my favorite Psychology professor. We honeymooned for one night at a downtown hotel in Dayton, left for Ann Arbor the next week. Six years later I took a job in Psychology and Sociology at the University of Cincinnati, and J was born three years after that in 1969. I got tenure in 1973, and we bought our first and only house. For years we were a tennis family as J competed on the regional junior circuit. Just as he was going off to Columbia in 1987, Katja, who had taught French at UC for many years, got her MSW and took a job at her social work agency. J and K went off to med school in New Orleans and got married at the Elvis Presley chapel in Las Vegas. We got the sheepdogs in 2002. Baby V was born in September 2008. I retired in January, Katja’s still working away, and now I am writing this blog.

All this was on my mind when I went off to the fitness center this morning. As I was working on one of the upper body strength machines, I noticed an older couple, probably somewhere in their mid-eighties, at the nearby leg curl machine. The man was tall, balding, and very thin, and the woman was petite, silver-haired, and stooped over. They both looked very fragile. They were talking about the machine, pointing to its different parts, and looking at it from this vantage point and that. I thought they probably were new members and didn’t know how to adjust the settings. When I finished what I was doing, I asked them if I could help in any way. The man smiled and said, “No, we’re fine.” The woman added, “We’re just trying to figure out if he can get out of it once he gets in.” I said that I’d be glad to help if they needed any assistance and went on to another machine. I did keep my eye on them though. They took a long time, and finally the man did slowly and painfully work his way onto the seat. His wife helped lift his legs up on the bar he would be pressing. I did two or three other exercises while the elderly man was doing the leg curl, and his wife, by that time, had completed an adjacent machine. When they were done they slowly made their way across the room to the physical therapy unit. The man had a walker and moved at a snail’s pace. The woman held his arm and helped to steady him. They seemed like such a devoted couple; it was very touching. I guessed that they might be celebrating their 60^th or 65^th anniversary this year. I don’t know just how Katja and I have managed to carry it off, but it seemed to me that these strangers had the secret.

Love,

Dave

Gmail Comments:

-Donna D (8-28): very touching, david, very touching.... when you write for your 50th, you'll have more positive and fun things to say!

-Ami G (8-28): What about Winnie? Anyway, happy, happy anniversary and congratulations on a splendid life, so far! Much love. Ami and Bruce

STRUGGLING WITH COUNTRY LINE DANCING

Dear George,

When I joined the fitness center, trainer Ellen set me up with a workout on the strength and cardio machines and suggested I might pick up an exercise class later on. I eliminated the class idea till recently, probably because of some deep tendency to be avoidant of groups of living beings. But when I saw a flyer announcing a country line dancing class, it caught my eye. Katja and I had taken ballroom dancing classes years ago, and we’d had a lot of fun. I told both Katja and our friend Donna about it; they were lukewarm but willing to try it out. Donna had a time conflict on the first Tuesday, but Katja and I went to the 7 p.m. class. Twenty or so people showed up, about three-quarters women and nearly everybody middle-aged or older. We all looked one another over. I thought I would probably do o.k. Jeff, the instructor, has been teaching line dancing for a dozen years in school systems, community centers, etc., though this was his first class at a fitness center. He said that, once we mastered the basics, we might want to go to Rodeo’s at the Metropolis Nightclub. This idea made me anxious, though Katja immediately started thinking about what sort of outfit to buy.

Jeff formed us into lines and started us out with the Electric Slide, apparently the best known line dance. First we just did the steps without music. Jeff modeled each tiny segment. Then we copied him as he repeated it. Finally he put the whole dance to music, first slow, then medium, then fast. Like previous dance classes, I found it both interesting and unnerving to be in the learner role. I’ve spent most of my adult life as a teacher, and I rarely think what it’s like to be in the novice position. Basically you start off knowing nothing, progress slowly and awkwardly through the component parts, and eventually try to put it all together as a complex whole. Getting the individual pieces varies from simple to challenging, and, so far, I’ve never once succeeded in doing an entire integrated routine without error (which, given my perfectionism, I regard as a miserable failure). The learning task is simple enough that one shows gradual progress and can hope for success. However, it’s difficult enough that one is often unsure just what comes next, makes frequent mistakes, and has to anxiously struggle to get back on track. The people in the class vary a lot. A few are obviously experienced line dancers; we view them as stars and keep an eye on them to stay on track. Most are novices though, and some combine that with no natural aptitude. Just about everybody looks silly at one point or another. However, people recognize that we’re all in the same boat and take it with good humor. It does make you appreciate how difficult good teaching is. You have to know where people are at, usually with wide variability and incomplete feedback, and adjust your instruction to accommodate people’s diverse needs. Jeff is encouraging and gives a lot of praise to the class as a whole. Katja has a good sense of rhythm, and she picks things up quickly. The guy with the gray ponytail in front of me, on the other hand, was all over the place, often facing in one direction when everybody was going the other way. He stuck with it for one class, but he never did come back.

After the electric side, Jeff showed us the basics of the booty call. (If you look this phrase up in Wikipedia, it has a meaning very different from a dance step.) He said that he often works with kids and so he has to be restrained with the booty call, but we could shake our booties any way we liked. There were some pretty good booty shakers in the class, but the men weren’t much good at it. Then we went on to the Cupid Shuffle and one or two other dances, the names of which I never really got. Jeff told the class we’d done a good job and that we’d move on to a new set of dances next week.

We’ve had a couple of classes since. Donna’s an excellent dancer, she masters the various steps with ease, and she loves the class. Katja has struggled a bit with stamina after a year of medical problems and enforced inactivity, but she has found it easier each week, and Jeff said she deserves the award as the most improved member of the class. I like doing the physical body work, though I get frustrated by my less than competent performance. I have a couple of country line dancing videotapes at home, and I’ve been trying to do some extra practice. When they force me to go to the country nightclub, I plan to be ready.

Love,

Dave

Gmail Comments:

-Donna D (8-27): david, this is great. you WILL be ready!

-Vicki L (8-27): Good for you David! This was the kind of spirit I was looking for with you and Peter that long ago night in the country western Cinncy bar! Ah... but life isn't over yet…By the way, can't you imagine how George would be behaving in a country line dance? Love, Sis

-Gayle C (8-26): U R AMAZING. And Its amazing what U can do when u R retired.). I hope U all R well,). I miss U both._ I am at the beach fort the evening . Its a beautiful night. I will try to send a photo from my phone ;) love U. G

Cincy Loves Baby V

Dear George,

            We just enjoyed the perfect weekend.  J and our 11-month-old granddaughter V flew up from New Orleans on Friday morning for a three-day visit.  Katja and I picked them up at 10 a.m., and we went straight to Katja’s agency where a little bird had told her colleagues there might be a surprise visitor.  Kathy and Adrianne came out to the lobby first, and we were joined shortly by Ginny, Chuck, Pam, Pat, Sue, Jeannie, Todd, Judy S., Judy H., and others I can’t even remember.  V was looking so cute, and everybody ooh’d and aah’d.  She’s so sociable.  She looks from one person to the next, responds to each with a smile, and is entirely comfortable being picked up and held by strangers.  She walked a little bit for her audience, 

 

then scooted down the hallway on her hands and knees. As we left, J thanked everybody for being so adoring.  Donna had been away with a client, but she said that when she came back to work everybody was talking about how friendly and relaxed V is.

            The dogs were curious when we got home.  Mikey loves little children, particularly for the purpose of kissing, and he approached V right away.  V is used to having a big dog at home, her family’s bull terrier Titus, and she seemed entirely comfortable with Mike and Duffy, even when Mike did give her a sloppy kiss on the face.  Duffy is more standoff-ish.  He gave a quick sniff, but then went off to play with his 

rubber chicken.  J doesn’t encourage V to play with Titus at home for protective reasons, and we adopted the same policy, though V did crawl over and pat the dogs on several occasions.  Mike and Duffy were very good with her and seemed to instinctively know how to be gentle with a baby.  Once we were settled in K called from NOLA to see how things were going.  It’s the first time she’s been away from V, and she seemed a little blue.

            V is more mobile each time that we see her.  She can go from a seated to a standing position readily without holding onto anything, and she’s able to walk up to ten feet or so without taking a spill.  She is very active and likes to get hold of just about any object within reach, most of which wind up in her mouth for a quick once over.  We haven’t yet accumulated baby stuff for her visits, though it suddenly occurred to me that I have a big collection of toy figures that I’ve accumulated over the years to decorate the shelves in my home office.  I went up to the attic and got my collection which filled up a large Husman’s potato chip barrel.  V was enthralled.  She stood at the side of the barrel, took the toys out one by one, manipulated

them with her hands, put them in her mouth, then set them on the floor to go on to the next one.  Soon we had a bedroom floor filled with ducks and chickens, Mickey Mouse and Wonder Woman, frogs and cows, and who knows what.

            Donna came over for dinner on Friday evening, and she was captivated.  She held V and they played and played.  Donna would love to be a grandmother, and we invited her to be V’s grand-auntie in the meantime.  Katja made some manicotti, which V enjoyed as much as the adults did, and we had a

wine-tasting in which we put people’s appraisals in our new wine journal that Katja bought last week.  Donna was struck by what a good dad J was, and I told her later that J and K are such loving parents that it’s easy to see why V is such a happy baby.  

            The main event on Saturday was a trip to the zoo.  I thought that V would be too young to do this meaningfully, but Katja was eager to go.  My prediction was all wrong.  The first exhibit we came to was the elephant yard, and V was virtually hypnotized by the sight of these gigantic creatures extending their trunks up to the haybins suspended from high posts.  Her eyes fixed on the big animals, and she pointed to show her dad.  The same thing happened with the giraffes and then the rhino, and it was quickly apparent 

 

that we have a very responsive and perceptive baby in our midst.  V has five words in her vocabulary to date (Mama, Dada, dog, bird, and go), so J was eager to take her into the bird house.  Spotting birds is a tricky business since many are flying about or hidden among the leaves, but V did a lot of accurate pointing.  She liked the gorillas and the monkeys and the peacock wandering free on the zoo grounds.  In fact, she liked everything.  We were at the zoo for at least three hours, and there wasn’t even a moment of irritation from this little baby.

            Katja and I got to spend a lot of time with baby V, carrying and holding and playing and cuddling. From time to time J was off doing other things, and we became momentary caretakers.  Katja was delighted 

with this, and she and V had a lot of happy moments playing together and interacting.  It was really pleasing to see, and I’m sure Katja felt the same way about my enjoying Baby V.  

            Katja made Swedish pancakes on Sunday morning, and then we went to the Tri-County mall area to buy a new camera.  V played on the floor while the adults watched the ATP men’s tennis final on TV, and 

then she and Katja took naps while J and I went for a late lunch to Skyline Chili.  We all took a walk on Ludlow Ave., then packed the car for our trip to the airport.  We’d decided to stop by Buck and Helen’s grave at Spring Grove Cemetery on our way, but the cemetery was just closing as we arrived.  J said his grandparents would have appreciated our good intentions, but I thought they would have been really annoyed that we failed to get their great granddaughter there in time.

            V cried all the way to the airport.  It was entirely out of character, since she hadn’t done any extended crying the whole trip.  Then I thought about some classic research which demonstrated that newborn infants on the maternity ward show decided preferences for orange vs. tomato juice, depending on 

their mothers’ preferences.  I wondered if V were picking up the sad vibes from our family about leaving one another and letting us know about her sadness too.  We exchanged some hugs and affection at the airport terminal, and then J and V were on their way.  Katja and I were pretty quiet on the way home.  I asked Katja if she thought we’d done all o.k. as grandparents, and she thought we probably did.

 

Love,

Dave

 

SLEEPING WITH DOGS

Dear George,

 

I was watching CNN yesterday about the terrible case in Georgia where a pack of roaming dogs killed an elderly woman and her husband.  They had an animal expert on the show who talked about about mentally ill people who take in large numbers of abandoned dogs or cats and let them live in their house.  The guy pointed out, of course, that the people don’t regard themselves as mentally ill, but rather as ardent animal lovers who are caring for abandoned pets who would otherwise suffer and/or die.

 

It’s a fine line.  Katja and I not taken in any stray animals so far, though we have been tempted on occasion.  Our particular pathology, instead, takes the form of showering Mike and Duffy with so many rewards and privileges that the dogs’ needs and wishes often take priority over those of the humanoids.

One good example is our family sleeping ritual.  I’ve drawn a map (below) which shows our typical dog-human sleeping arrangement (though there are various permutations from one night to the next).  As you can see, the dogs take up the lower half of the kingsize bed, lying horizontally rather than vertically in order to cover a maximum amount of space. 

The humans then arrange themselves within the constraints set by the dogs so as to not disturb or inconvenience them.  I normally sleep on an angle with my lower legs and feet extended off the side of the bed (see Human #2).  Katja lies sideways, with her feet necessarily somewhere on top of me.   When the dogs shift, we shift accordingly, though they normally shift to get more space rather than less.

 

There seem to be three principles that govern our collective behavior:

 

(1)  The dogs get in bed and claim their space before the humans.  They are ready to go to sleep soon after their 9 p.m. walk, and Duffy gets in bed first by himself.  Mike is capable of jumping into bed, but he doesn’t like to, so he stands by the side of the bed until I come and hoist him in.

 

(2)  Next, when the humans get into bed, they locate themselves in the spatial niche that is left over by the dogs and do not touch, speak to, or disturb the dogs in any way.  If the humans do this correctly, the dogs do not even notice that they have arrived.  Katja always goes to bed first, which gives her a little more leeway in finding a spot.  David makes do with whatever space is left over, usually about 15-20% of the bed.

 

(3)  Humans are prohibited from competing with the dog for space, pushing the dogs out of the way, or, God forbid, making the dogs get on the floor.  When one of the dogs does get on the floor by his own volition, the human is expected to try to call him back up before laying any claim to the vacated space.

 

Sometimes Duffy will hear a noise in the night and will jump out of bed to check things out at the window.  After a little while, he leaps back in, either on Katja’s or my side of the bed, landing on our stomach, chest, or face.  This is a startling way to be woken up, but we reassure Duffy that we are o.k. and it is not a problem.  Then we move over to make room for him.

 

When the alarm goes off, Duffy likes to climb length-wise on top of Katja, pinning her shoulders down with his front legs, and covering her with slobbery kisses (a practice which we refer to as "Lamour Lamour").  Mikey, less inclined to intimacy, retreats to the base of the bed, where he paws at my foot until I take it out from under the blanket and then licks it incessantly. 

 

We are usually pretty tired when we get up, though we are pleased that the dogs are well-rested.  One reason that we haven’t taken in any more dogs is that there would be no room at all left for the humans.  However, please don’t consider this description to be a complaint.  Our life is idyllic, and we would have it no other way.

 

Love,

Dave