Love and Marriage

The older I get the more (old) songs invade my head at night and will not leave. And it drives me batty, throughout the night, that I can’t remember all the lyrics—nor who sang it.

This one, “Love and Marriage,” I was sure was by Dean Martin—or Perry Como.

Nope.

When I got around to checking Google this afternoon, I saw, to my surprise, it had been Frank Sinatra—and more than once.

The first time was for a 1955 TV production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town; the second, a release of a 45 rpm single in 1956. And the latter became a huge hit (Dinah Shore had good luck with it, too). Nelson Riddle arranged the Sinatra versions.

Here are the lyrics—and here is a link to Sinatra singing it.

“Love And Marriage"

Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage.
This I tell ya, brother, you can't have one without the other.

Love and marriage, love and marriage,
It's an institute you can't disparage.
Ask the local gentry and they will say it's elementary.

Try, try, try to separate them, it's an illusion.
Try, try, try and you only come to this conclusion:

Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage.
Dad was told by mother you can't have one
You can't have none.
You can't have one without the other.

[Musical interlude]

Try, try, try to separate them, it's an illusion.
Try, try, try and you only come to this conclusion:

Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage.
Dad was told by mother you can't have one
(You can't have none.)
You can't have one without the other.

 

1956. That was the year I finished sixth grade (in Oklahoma) and began 7th (Hiram, Ohio). I attended my first school dances in seventh grade (though I’d taken a dancing class—at Mom’s insistence—back in the Sooner State).

Although I’d liked a number of girls back in sixth grade (and earlier), the feeling was usually not reciprocal, and it wasn’t until Hiram that I broke some hearts, had my own broken (deservedly so, I must confess).

And I remember this song at our school dances, remember dancing on the gym floor, remember thinking that love and marriage were a lifetime away.

Turned out to be not that long: late 1969.

By then popular music had changed drastically, and in the sixties Sinatra’s song sounded like something from an entire other era.

And it was.

Grandparents

 

The first seventh graders I taught in 1966—and many from later years—are now grandparents. I see their pics on Facebook, and I roll into a world of disbelief. Those seventh graders I taught are now on Medicare—on Social Security—and many, as I said, are grandparents.

I won’t say “That’s not possible!” because it clearly is.

Some of those former students don’t resemble at all the kids I knew; others are dead ringers—except they’re, you know, older. I’d know them in a heartbeat if I saw them on the street.

I’ve felt the same phenomenon at my high school reunions (Class of 1962). Some of the people I’d recognize instantly, even though I haven’t seen many of them in sixty years.

Others I don’t recognize even when I look at the name tag: They don’t resemble at all the teenager I knew back in the early 60s.

(I, of course, haven’t aged at all.)

I had wonderful grandparents—though I knew only three of them. My father’s dad died before I was born.

For most of my early years we lived a couple of blocks away from my maternal grandparents in Enid, Oklahoma. He taught religion there at Phillips University (now defunct), the school where my dad and mom met. Dad eventually taught there, too, while my mother dealt with Her Three Sons—as different, one from the other, as animals on the Galapagos.

But they were so kind, supporting each of us. Grandpa went to my baseball games, encouraged my older brother’s interest in opera, helped my younger brother figure out who he was. And I still remember Grandma, holding me in her lap in the rocking chair that now sits in our living room, reading to me from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.

My dad’s mother I saw only a few times (she lived in Oregon, not far from Dad’s birthplace, a farm near Milton-Freewater). But I really liked her, too. Funny and a wonderful storyteller.

Now I’m a grandfather (two boys: 12 and 16), and they, too, are quite different from each other. One loves books and writing and drawing; the other is great at math and loves golf and computer games.

I’m glad they’re old enough now that they will remember me and their wonderful Grandmother Dyer (whom they call “Gommy”; I’m “Silly Papa”).

But back to where all this began—with my former students. When I see their posts pop up on Facebook, I can’t help it: I remember the 12-13-year-old version of them.

Until I see a picture. Until I see their grandchildren.

Then I remember how older people used to tell me when I was a kid how fast time passes.

I didn’t think so—not at all. Not sitting in study hall on a hot May afternoon thinking the school day would never be over. Thinking that school itself would never be over. That I would forever be stuck there, frozen in time, forgotten by the future.

It hasn’t worked out that way.

July—My Month Off

 

When I was a teacher (1966-97, 2001-11), July was my only month off. I usually taught the early week(s) of June—and school re-commenced in late August. And during those times of teaching, I like to say (because it’s true), I worked seven days a week plus evenings. As an English teacher, I always had piles of papers to grade, preparations to do, meetings to go to, etc.

Don’t get me wrong: I loved it.

But that left only July for my family and me.

I read piles of books, did some writing, traveled to visit sites of literary importance. Even when I took a strictly “family trip” to see my parents and two brothers in western Massachusetts, I could see the nearby home where Melville wrote Moby-Dick, Edith Wharton’s home, Hawthorne sites, and on and on.

Once our son, Steve, left home, Joyce and I would take literary trips all around the country—to see places related to my writers I was teaching, writers she was teaching.

But once August 1 arrived, that basically ended. I would then begin to do a little schoolwork, every day—such things as preparing vocab lists, preparing writing assignments, working out lesson plans. So by the time school actually started, I was READY.

I can’t say I was fond of August, but I was always glad (afterward) that I'd done the work. Things generally went so much more smoothly. I could concentrate on my classes, grading papers, etc. And didn't have to worry about any of that other stuff once the first bell rang.

I will confess that it took me awhile to learn this. Early in my career I didn't really have the time. I was in grad school (1968-77), and I am grateful for that: I met Joyce in a Kent State classroom in Satterfield Hall; those advanced degrees helped me out now and then, too.

Though I have to say my middle school students weren't all that impressed. When I finished my Ph.D., I told them they could call me "Dr." or "Mr."—I didn't care (and I didn't). But then they wanted to know what kind of doctor I was.

And I frankly replied I was the useless kind—couldn't treat their dog or cat, couldn't prescribe medicine for human beings.

Some of them looked very puzzled, and I could tell that they very much agreed I was the "useless kind" of doctor.

Nowadays, oddly, I miss those busy days—days when the future seemed endless, when I could tell myself, after a mistake I'd made (and I made many), that "There's always next year."

There wasn't, and there isn't. As my current medical status confirms.

But I don't think I could teach these days, anyway: the many standardized tests, the rigid curriculum—not to mention the face masks all day!

I loved the academic freedom I enjoyed almost my entire career. The things we could read, the plays we could write and perform, the class trips—my wonderful colleagues and I could basically decide what would be good for the kids.

And we did it.

Sure, we all screwed up now and then, but I knew I had always next August to straighten it all out.

Tennis Racquet

 

Hiram College Tennis Team, 1966

A few days ago there was an obituary in the New York Times. It was for former tennis star Shirley Fry, who won the Wimbledon title a long, long time ago. Link to obit. She also won the three other majors in her career.

I didn’t know Shirley Fry—I’m not even sure that I ever saw her play. I think I remember hearing from the older players that she had once come to Hiram with her dad and worked out a bit with the team. Oh, I wish I’d seen that!

But I did know her father, Lester R. Fry, fairly well, for in the late 1950s and 60s (and probably beyond) he used to come to Hiram College in the fall and spring, park his car by the tennis courts (which in those days were behind the old library, now a computer center), and spend his day selling tennis racquets, stringing them, selling other tennis supplies.

And talk. Oh, could he talk! It was fun just to sit and listen to him, even when I had no product or service I needed from him.

I bought a number of racquets from him—usually the wood-framed Jack Kramer (a popular brand in the day).* I broke a few of them, too: I had a temper and when I did something stupid on the court, which was often, I would smack it into the court—or against my leg (I learned this from Phil Barry, an older, far more gifted player than I on our Hiram College team) and had bruises similar to his near my shin on my right leg.

I liked to watch Mr. Fry string the racquets on a machine that looked as old as a Gutenberg printing press. He could talk non-stop while he worked, and that impressed me as well.

Later on, I would sometimes stop down at his shop on E. Exchange St. in Akron—his shop which was basically his glassed-in front porch—to buy a new racquet—or a couple of cans of balls—or get a re-stringing job. He seemed ageless.

The other day, certain that he was no longer alive, I checked the Beacon-Journal archives (online) and discovered he’d died on Aug. 4, 1984–he was 92 years old.** That meant that when he was working on tennis rackets for me and others in the mid-60s, he was in his seventies. No surprise.

What was a surprise in that obit was that he had been a life-long tennis player himself. He had played regularly with his wife into his 80s.

He never once said a thing to me (that I recall) that suggested he was himself a player. He was just our Geppetto of tennis racquets. 

Oh, and I also learned he was born in Suffield Twp. in Portage County. When I was in high school, we played Suffield in basketball. (It’s now Field High School, merged with some other nearby wee high schools.)

I miss those Hiram days, the days when I would see his car by the tennis courts, his stringing machine in action, his stories emerging from him with simple, fluid eloquence.

Shirley Fry

*I am not holding one in the pic—but other teammates are.

** His obit is in the Aug. 7, 1984, edition of the Beacon.

Booksellers—A Superstore That Is No More

 

I did a recent Facebook post about Anne Rice and her book Interview with the Vampire. I mentioned that I had briefly met Rice up at a signing at Booksellers, a wonderful store on Chagrin Blvd. in Beachwood, Ohio—not far from Cleveland. (One of my FB friends, Ben Woodworth, worked up there for a while; he had played Danny, the male lead, in the production of Grease I directed in the 1980s back at Aurora [Ohio] High School.)

For years, Joyce and I went up to Booksellers every Friday evening—after I had graded my vocab quizzes for the week.

There, we browsed, bought, and always found time for an apricot scone at the little coffee shop inside the store.

We also attended many of the frequent author appearances they hosted. One of those authors, in 1995, was  I, who had just published an annotated, illustrated edition of The Call of the Wild. I was sure I was headed for a Nobel Prize.

I wasn’t.

Maybe a dozen people showed up to see my slide show about Wild and Jack London and to get their books signed.

But I was still thrilled: a signing at Booksellers!

Booksellers, I know, had to struggle. Border’s and Barnes & Noble both had stores nearby, and the competition must have been fierce.

I wish I could remember some specific titles I bought there—and there were a lot: Every week we went home with at least one. Sometimes an armload.

They had a wonderful inventory, full of writers I’d heard of and writers I should have heard of and did so principally because of the intense browsing we did. Fiction (my favorite), nonfiction, poetry, drama—all got our respectful attention.

Each week, I could not wait to get there, dreaded having to leave. And all the way home, Joyce and I talked about books, books, books (okay, and maybe scones, scones, scones).

Wandering around that store gave me a glimpse of a form of heaven that would really make me happy—not playing a harp on a cloud for all of eternity.

And maybe I’d get to chat with Shakespeare, with Dickens, with Raymond Chandler, with so many others ...

One can hope ...

Uncertainty

 

For most of my life I’ve been fairly certain about how things would go. I would be healthy, athletic, educated, a good teacher, etc.

It did not cross my mind—for many years—that I would be uncertain about most things—like walking across the room, say.

This morning, for example, we had to be out of the house for a couple of hours because the women who clean our house every two weeks were coming over.

So we drove over to Kent (the back, scenic way), found a place to hang out for an hour, get some coffee, etc. And I was fine—no, I was more than fine. My balance was pretty good; I felt stable.

I started thinking (foolishly) that things were getting better; maybe I was getting better.

Nope.

When we got home (still feeling good), I headed up to bed for a nap (my late-morning custom) while Joyce headed off for an important engagement. I promised her I would stay in bed.

And I was fine.

Until I got up to go you-know-where, and, suddenly, my fierce dizziness returned, and I had to hold on to pieces of furniture, coming and going.

I improved (mildly) when I sat down for lunch for a while, but I knew now that my nemesis had not left me but had just taken a break, perhaps, cruelly, to let me think I am better—then return to remind me that I am not.

Thank goodness Joyce was home to help me settle in to where I am now—on the living room couch to do a little work before heading up for Nap #2.

I remember thinking—as my parents aged (my father well before my mother; he was six years older)—that Mom was, well, denying certainty because she had remained in far better health than my father.

She was proud of that—acted is if weakness and fragility were not part of her future because, you know, she exercised, ate well, stayed active, didn’t smoke or drink (okay, except for some wine now and then).

And then she learned otherwise. She ended up in bed, as many of the rest of us do/will, where life slowly abandoned her.

Of course, as I was judging Mom then, I wasn’t thinking that I would ever be in her place. After all, I exercised regularly, ate well, didn’t smoke or drink, etc.

And now ... here I am.

I’m asking myself: Will I make it across the room? Will I be able to survive a shower? Is it time for a nap yet?

It seems I’ve reached the beach where I’ll enjoy my final sunsets and walks before I find I cannot escape the incoming tide.

The Evanescence of Magazines

 

When I was growing up, magazines were a big part of our lives. Each week and/or month a flight of them would arrive, flapping into our house like so many birds. I can’t remember them all, but here are some: TV Guide, Time, Life, The New Yorker, The Saturday Review of Literature—there were others I just can’t remember.

In our high school study hall (which featured the school library at the front of the room) I would check out The Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic, Popular Mechanics, and others

Early in our marriage, Joyce and I were subscribing to quite a few: The New York Review of Books, The Saturday Review of Literature, TV Guide, The New Republic, Newsweek, The National Review, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, People, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s. Again, there were surely others I can’t remember.

We kept most of those subscriptions going for years. Some went out of business; others we just lost interest in. But not all ...

Until a month or so ago.

What happened? I realized I wasn’t really reading them anymore. It’s not that I didn’t have any interest; it’s that I didn’t have the energy—or the keen eyesight—I needed.

And so I cancelled all but one: The New Yorker. It’s always entertained me, and Joyce and I know two writers there—Ian Frazier and Robert Sullivan. And, yeah, I love the cartoons, too.

Of course, the magazine industry has changed dramatically, too. It used to be that huge numbers of American families subscribed to general magazines like Life and Time and Newsweek.

But with the advent of the internet and cable news all those publications began to shrink—or disappear altogether. Who wants to wait for a weekly news magazine when you can flick on the news 24/7/?

Magazines also began to focus and specialize. Look at the magazine rack in your local grocery store. A few general titles remain, but the rest are highly focused. Magazines for golfers, chess players, bakers, bicyclists, etc. Fashion. Style. Etc.

Of course, one thing all this means is that we’ve lost yet another medium that helped to unify us. We saw things we didn’t agree with in magazines—but we often read them anyway, just to see. At least I did.

Now, you can be on media platforms all day and never see or hear a syllable that you disagree with.

Not good.

Anyway, I miss those magazine days, miss the person I was then. Miss seeing in the mail the latest issue of Newsweek. Miss what I would learn from it.

Many today, I fear,  are numbed by news monotony, a condition that, surprisingly (?), can lead to hate. Or worse.

Run, Boy, Run!

 I have a recurring dream now that has become more and more common these latter days. It’s not exactly the same dream, but it features the same activity.

Running. Me running.

I’m not always a boy, mind you. Last night, for example, I was a grown man, and for some reason I was racing back to school (I didn’t recognize it) where, for some reason, I needed to deliver my bank statement from last month.

Makes lots of sense!?!?

This is even weirder: There were two boys running with me (we were trying to beat one another), and when I woke up, I realized: Each was a version of me at a different age.

When I woke up, I had that Rip Van Winkle feeling: I had been energetic! And young! And able to run!

Hell, I can barely walk now. I often use a walker—or a helping hand a of family member.

And I can’t help thinking about my dad—a high-school track champion, a college athlete. Even when I was in high school (at my peak, I fear) I could not catch Dad in outdoor games of touch football, not unless he let me.

Which was annoying.

And then Dad with a walker. A wheelchair. Eventually unable to propel himself at all. Telling me, near the end of his life, that he liked being asleep because in his dreams he was almost always younger.

I get it now.

But I can run in my dreams—run faster than two earlier versions of me—run faster than I probably ever could—run faster than Time itself.

And that is fast.

And unspeakably sad ...

The Alamo—Then and Now: Part 3

 

Although this 2021 book dismantles the stories that I learned to love back in the mid-1950s (especially those about Crockett and Bowie), it does so in the most convincing way possible: with documents and evidence. And, I must add, it does so with some humor and style—not in a vindictive, harsh way (well, most of the time).

There was no “If you believe that stuff you have to be stupid”—no superior, elitist language. In fact, it’s often quite light in tone. And factual.

Nor do the authors advocate for tearing down the Alamo, nor for neglecting the story altogether. No, they reiterate again and again the message they deliver in the final sentence: “The rest of us need to forget what we learned about the Alamo, embrace the truth, and celebrate all Texans” (343).

“All Texans” meaning: “Just not the white ones.”

Then follow twenty pages of small-font notes and bibliography.

The book takes us back to the early days of Texas, leads us to the construction of the Alamo, and then the famous battle. And they then devote quite a bit of time to the battles that have raged (in one war or another) ever since—the culture wars, the striving for control of the site, and, in a most interesting segment, the collections of Alamo artifacts, the principal collector of which has been Phil Collins—yes, the former rock star.

Collins has spent a small fortune on items putatively from the Alamo, but some (many?) as the authors point out, are dubious, to say the least—e.g, Bowie’s original knife.

The authors follow the story right up to last year—when the names of Donald Trump and George Floyd appear.

And so much remains unresolved. Protests from all sorts of groups have occurred there—right-wingers with AR-15s, locals, native Americans (who have an old burial ground there), those who just want to know the truth ... you know.

So old Alamo fans (like me) need to know the following—as well as a lot more that fills the book:

• Slavery was at the heart of all. Cotton was booming in Texas, and to pick cotton, you just gotta have, you know ... The Mexicans didn’t agree.
• The battle began in late February—and there were some cold, uncomfortable days—not at all like the Disney Days.
• William Travis, the official leader inside the Alamo, never drew with his sword a line in the sand. (The writer who created that tale—years after the battle—later admitted he’d fabricated it.)
• Travis died in the opening minutes of the battle—shot in the forehead.
• Bowie was too sick to fight and died quickly.
• Crockett, according to the earliest accounts, surrendered and was executed. The American bodies were burned in piles.
• And how about this? “For the longest time, the Alamo was all but forgotten.  But once rediscovered, it would emerge as the great creation myth of Texas, a heroic narrative written and shaped by men—and a few women—who instilled in it the values of their times. Their efforts would prove remarkably enduring” (127).

As a wrote earlier in these posts, I have learned over the years about the true characters of Bowie and Crockett—so no real surprises there. But lots of surprises here about the details of the battle and the cultural battle that has not really diminished, though historians are fairly settled.

Sound familiar?

The Alamo: Then and Now—Part 2

As I mentioned in my previous post, this series ran on TV from 1956-58, the years when I was in junior high school in Hiram, Ohio. I remember liking it then (hey, some Bowie is better than no Bowie, right?).

Scott Forbes played Bowie, and I could not have come up with his name without Google-help. I do remember, seeing this title image above, that a Bowie knife comes whirling through the air and sticks in that door—or whatever it is.

Trusty Wikipedia tells me that the knife was more prominent on the early episodes, but began to diminish when complaints of violence began to swell; in fact, it seems to have been one of the first TV shows to get a lot of criticism for its violence. So, Jim, save The Knife for special occasions, K?

Link to theme song.

Listening to that song right now, by the way, reminded me of something that the audio confirmed: In the early episodes, the singers pronounced Bowie to rhyme with Joey. And that must have inflamed Texans, for as I knew (being an authority on Jim Bowie: Boy with a Hunting Knife), his surname rhymed with Dewey.

As I recall it wasn’t too long before the producers fixed that little problem.

Needless to say, in the TV series Bowie was the consummate Good Guy. Helping others, defending the weak, battling the bad Guys—these were his specialties, these and whipping out a knife at the precisely correct time and hurling it with superb accuracy at ... whatever, whomever.

I’ve learned in subsequent years—and after a lot of subsequent reading—that most of what is in the song (and the show) is just false. Bowie was not one who “fought for the rights of man” (as the theme song says): He was, as I said the other day, a notorious slave-trader and con artist. Hardly the kind of guy you want to impress seventh graders like me. Oh, and he had two enslaved people with him in the Alamo. Santa Anna spared their lives.

But Bowie and the show did impress me back then. (I was still into the heroic version of his life.) And I loved the show itself—especially whenever The Knife emerged, as it frequently did.

Link to an episode.

As I said above, I read a lot about the Alamo story and its principals later in my life, but this new book I just read, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth (2021), tells the story and its long aftermath (clear up till 2020) and adds some alarming detail.

I’ll get into some of it next time, but how about this sentence very near the end?

“To learn the real lessons of the Texas Revolt, we need to learn the truth about Bowie, Travis, and Crockett. Bowie was a murderer, slaver, and con man; Travis was a pompous, racist agitator and syphilitic lech; and Crockett was a self-promoting old fool who was a captive to his own myth” (340).

Ouch!

To be continued.

The Alamo—Then and Now

I have a Bowie knife I bought many years ago (see pic). It lives in my underwear drawer in my dresser, from which it has rarely emerged.

I think I bought it at the Sears store out at Chapel Hill Mall, not far from Kent, Ohio, where we were living in the early years of our marriage.

Why did I buy it? Because Joyce and I, freshly married, were going on a camping trip to Maine the first summer after we were married. It was the summer of 1970.

We headed to Baxter State Park, where we found a good camping spot on a lonely lake, where we heard loons in the evening.

I found no use for the Bowie knife. It went back to Ohio with us in pristine condition. I popped it in my drawer, and there it has lain for a half-century.

But why did I buy a Bowie knife in the first place?

Jim Bowie, of course. I had gotten hooked on the Alamo legends from early boyhood. It started with the book you see below.

And that merits a brief story all by its lonesome. In the early 1950s my mom was teaching English at Emerson Junior High in Enid, Oklahoma. Among her extra-curricular duties was to sponsor the Y-Teens, and one year she attended a conference of Y-Teen sponsors in Dallas, Texas. She took her three sons with her. I must have been about nine or so.

During some time off she took us to a bookstore, where I found this book prominently displayed. I’d never heard of Jim Bowie, and when I said, quite loudly, “Who is Jim Bowie?” the other patrons of that deep-in-the-heart-of-Texas bookstore whirled to look at me in alarm and disbelief—as if I’d asked something like “Does Jesus play for the New York Yankees?”

Mom bought me the book, and I read it, oh, fifty times or more. A true hero story, which, I learned later, was almost entirely fabricated. Bowie was a naughty man—slave-trader, swindler.

A year or so later, here came Walt Disney’s three-part TV series Davy Crockett. I got caught up in the frenzy of Crockett popularity like just about every other kid in that era.

Bowie appears only in the final episode, the Alamo one, in somewhat of a diminished role. He dies heroically, fighting, but in fact he fought not at all. According to the new book I’m reading, Forget the Alamo (2021), a richly researched historical revision of Disney, et al., Bowie was deathly ill (typhoid?) and was essentially executed without a struggle.

I was annoyed about the Disney version—after all, I’d read Jim Bowie: Boy with a Hunting Knife fifty times, and it claims Bowie killed nine Mexicans with his Bowie knife alone!

I was somewhat mollified when The Adventures of Jim Bowie ran on ABC-TV from 1956-58, my junior-high years.

To be continued.

Diagramming Days

The cartoon you see above was in the local paper the other day, and after I shared it on Facebook, it didn’t take long for some of my former students—from back in the mid-1960s—to weigh in with heavy memories (but fond, too!) of my earliest teaching days.

When I began teaching 7th grade “Language Arts” in the fall of 1966, the principal, Ray Clough (cluff—I always called him “Mr. Clough”) handed me a textbook—Language for Daily Use: 7.

I pretty much didn’t know anything about what I was doing, so I just followed the book that first year or so. And many of the chapters had sections devoted to sentence diagramming--in fact, every other chapter dealt with a separate part of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.), and each of those chapters ended with some diagramming. (The other chapters dealt with writing letters or other once-common tasks.)

I had been familiar with diagramming for much of my life. My mother was a junior high English teacher early in her career (Emerson JHS; Enid, Okla.), and I, of course, had endured years of it in my own experiences as a student in the public schools of Enid, and Amarillo (Tex.), and Hiram (Ohio).

I never really got it.

But because my mother spoke flawless English (and corrected us when my brothers and I didn’t—which was often), I didn’t really bother studying things. I usually did well on usage quizzes, just trying to remember how Mom said things.

But that didn’t work with diagramming.

And here’s the problem: Because I didn’t really understand why I was saying what I did, I couldn’t diagram worth a damn.

Subject and verb—that was about it, and even that was a bit ... tenuous.

My mother, of course, was an expert. I remember her teaching her Enid students how to diagram “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”—I wonder how many of them found a use for that later on?!?!?

So it wasn't until I began teaching—and had to know it—that I began to see how it all worked.

That didn't help many of my students because I discovered that pretty much the only ones who could diagram accurately were those who already understood the grammar. I mean, if you don't understand the grammar, how can you diagram?

And if you do understand the grammar, why diagram?

These were questions that pressed more fiercely on me as that first year went on, and gradually, a year or so later, I just quit trying.

Instead, more and more, I tried to teach grammar in the context of the kids' writing. In their papers we would look at common errors, and I'd try to explain the problem(s)—in context. Seemed to work better, though, of course, there always those who never really "got it," no matter what I tried to do.

Not all fellow English teachers agreed with me: Some swore by diagramming (rather than at it) and plunged on ahead, despite the odds. Some argued with me that you can not teach writing without it.

I begged to differ.

And, as the years went on, diagramming gradually faded into the past until most teachers I knew weren't doing any of it at all. Direct interactions with student writing seemed a better approach—at least for me.

Then in the 1990s  the tsunami of standardized testing swept into Ohio, and, at least during the few years I was dealing with that, the state did not not include diagramming on the proficiency tests—so fewer and fewer teachers did it. Hey, if it ain't on the test, why bother?

I'm sure there are places here and there—classrooms here and there where teachers continue to pound away it it. Who knows?

Meanwhile, back to the cartoon at the top of this post. I made a discovery about gerunds later in my career (in case you don't remember, they are the -ing forms of verbs that are used as nouns: Walking is fun. I love swimming. Etc.)

I learned that if kids replace the -ing word with sex, then they would get the right answer, virtually all the time.

NOTE: In the examples, replace the entire phrase with sex.

1. He was tired from fishing all morning. [sex all morning? yes!]

2. I was fishing all morning. [I was sex all morning? no!]

3. Walking in the snow can be dangerous. [sex can be dangerous? yes!]

I also learned that golf works as a replacement, too (and many other words) but sex is just, you know, more fun.

Another Night Visitor

 

 

I had another night visitor last night. Cheyenne Bodie, played by Clint Walker in an ABC-TV series that ran from 1955-62. In other words, from the fall of my sixth grade to when I graduated from high school.

My younger brother and I loved Cheyenne, tales about a roaming cowboy/gunfighter who had a very appealing demeanor. He was intimidating in size: 6’6” and, apparently, solid muscle. He didn’t lose fights except when guys piled on him.

For some years the show alternated its slot with some other Westerns, Sugarfoot (my least favorite—I mean the guy didn’t ever wear a gun belt!) and Bronco (starring Ty Hardin as another old-West wanderer) and Maverick, about two professional gamblers (Bret and Bart, played, respectively, by James Garner and Jack Kelly). That show was clever and exciting, and Garner, of course, went off to The Rockford Files, and any obsessives like me who have watched that series over and over again know that Kelly made a few guest appearances—always a Bad Guy, though.

Occasionally, the Maverick bros. appeared in a single episode.

Cheyenne appeared during the week, in the evenings, and school-days were TV no-no’s from my mother’s law book. But Dad was the Supreme Court, and he loved the show, too. So ...

So why was I thinking about it last night? I think it was the theme music that led it into my head. 

“Cheyenne, Cheyenne, where will you be camping tonight? Lonely man, Cheyenne ....” (Link to theme song.)

One particular episode in that show is still cause for laughter between my younger brother and me. In that story Cheyenne is caught in a blizzard, stuck with a mule and a remote cabin. On Christmas Day, as I recall, Cheyenne invites the mule inside and says those classic words: “Merry Christmas, Mule!” 

Are those the only words spoken in the entire episode? They could have been.

Anyway, when brother Dave and I get on the phone at Christmas, it’s not hard to guess what the first of our words are!

But the question remains: Why did that song—that show—drift into my head last night?

Well, Cheyenne was a drifter ...

(Link to all of season 3.)