Memories: false or faded - Liz, Dick and Carol Channing

There was a time in the United States when you said "Liz and Dick," everyone knew who you meant. Elizabeth Taylor's affair with her Cleopatra co-star Richard Burton was a tabloid feast. This story was followed up by tales about their respective divorces and subsequent marriages. Yes, marriages. There were two. To each other. 

I have no idea what stage of their relationship they were in when my family and I walked into them as they headed into Sardis. I wrote about this in a blog entry Fame is Fleeting. (We were cutting behind a huge group of people waiting for a glimpse of them and were stopped to let the couple and Liz's two sons pass by into the restaurant. Apologies to the hundreds of people waiting hours for a look.) 

My point is I hadn't thought of this encounter for years until Carol Channing died. And after that, it took some complex thinking to get the memory right.

The topic here is memory. False or faded? I can't always tell. When Carol Channing died I wanted to comment on Facebook that I had loved her in Hello Dolly!, but had I really seen her in Hello Dolly! or was I remembering her appearances as Dolly on The Ed Sullivan Show?  I had no idea. I had to research to find the answer.

1) I went to the Broadway database.
2) I found out the timespan when Hello Dolly! ran.
3) I looked at the other plays that were running at the same time and verified that I had not seen any of them.
4) I noticed that Richard Burton's Hamlet was playing during that same time period.
5) I recalled running into the actor with Liz Taylor outside the theater.
6) The only reason I would have been in the New York theater district during Hello Dolly!'s run, would have been to see a show.
7) The only show I even suspected I saw during that time period was Hello Dolly!
8) Ergo, my memory of Carol Channing in Hello Dolly! was correct.

With the price of tickets on Broadway, maybe it would be cheaper to hire an IT professional to implant false memories for me.

Some of my faded memories shock me. They just pop up or I find them when scanning old photos. I recall telling a London cabbie how someday I had to get to the changing of the guard. When scanning, I found a photo of me at the changing of the guard but in winter uniforms not in fancy gear.  Maybe that was what I meant. I am giving myself the benefit of the doubt.

Friends tell me I gave them a tour of Las Vegas but I swear I have not been to Las Vegas since it became "Vegas." I really think that one is not on me.

Given my Carol Channing experience, I am going to use this post to record shows I saw as they pop into my mind. I have a feeling there are a lot of shows that still need to pop up. I remember not seeing shows, e.g. Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera, more clearly than I remember seeing shows.

Here are some I did see:

The Music Man with the original cast. The first Broadway show I ever saw. (I rode in an elevator with Barbara Cook decades later when she was performing at the Waldorf Astoria. I regret I didn't tell her how much I loved her in that show, but I don't talk to celebrities even to offer compliments.)

Hello Dolly! Apparently.

Mame. My favorite Broadway experience ever. Angela Lansbury. Bea Arthur.

Pippin. Ben Vereen and John Rubinstein. Before I loved him in television series Family?  No idea. Apparently, Jill Clayburgh as well.

Benefactors. Sam Waterston, Glenn Close, Mary Beth Hurt, Simon Jones. I had to look up Simon Jones. (Saw Glenn Close many years later around Lincoln Center. Her skin did not appear to wrinkle.)

My One and Only. Tommy Tune and Twiggy. Completely forgotten until a profile of Twiggy appeared on CBS Sunday Morning. (Although it was hard to miss Tommy Tune walking down Fifth Avenue, going past the Met in white pants, pink shirt and a white sweater tied around his shoulders. That memory stayed.)

My Fat Friend. Lynn Redgrave, George Rose, John Lithgow. (I never remembered actors in plays I saw.  Decided to follow John Lithgow's career. He did me proud!)

Hamlet. Ralph Fiennes, Damian Lewis. (Sat across from Anthony LaPaglia who fell asleep. He was in rehearsals for another play at the time, so I am sure his demeanor was no comment on the performances. If I had realized I would in the future develop a crush on Damian Lewis, I might have paid more attention.)

Hamlet. Richard Burton. Special broadcast for schools. Kind of cheating. Not in person but I'd seen him elsewhere with Liz Taylor.

Waiting for Godot. Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Billy Crudup.  For the first time ever in a theater, I could hear every word - at least those Stewart and McKellen said. Every single word. Couldn't understand Crudup at all. Watched Crudup later in The Morning Show. He is such a subtle actor. He would never have to move anything other than his eyes. Fantastic.

Rent. In Chicago. Made an exception to "no musical" rule.

Cats. DC. The play was far from new. Betty Buckley was long gone from the cast, but I did see her on the way into Elaine's one night. She was on her way into Elaine's. I was eating next door.

42nd Street. Think I missed Jerry Orbach but used to see him around my neighborhood a lot when he was filming Law & Order. As I recall, Jason Alexander was in it.

Timon of Athens.  Part of subscription to Tony Randall's theater. No idea what else I saw or who was in them.

Aspects of Love. Stayed until the end but walked out vowing I would never see another Broadway musical. 

Les Miserables. I would make an exception and see this musical over and over again.

Camelot.  Philadelphia's Playhouse in the Park. Rock Hudson.

Half a Sixpence - Tommy Steele

London's West End. No idea what I saw. Remember Patrick McNee and Jenny Agutter. Maybe in the same play. It was bad although it wasn't the actors' fault. I should have gone to see The Mousetrap at some point. I‘ve had enough opportunities.

Art. Albert Finney. Tom Courtenay. Ken Stott. Had to look up Ken Stott.

Bob Hoskins. This is a mystery. I thought I identified the play, but I contacted the playwright and he said it had never been done in London. I know I did not imagine this but I cannot find any mention of Bob Hoskins in a play with two characters. The entire play takes place in Freud's office or someone else's. I really liked the rug. That's how I know I could not have made this up.

The Best of Friends - John Gielgud. Since I recall seeing John Gielgud the last night he was on stage in London, I must have seen this play.

A Chorus Line   On Broadway. No idea what cast.

Mary, Mary.  Pretty sure I saw it on a high school trip, Was Barry Nelson in it or do I think that because I passed him at the 1964 World's Fair? He was eating an ice cream cone or possibly a Belgian waffle. At the World's Fair, not on stage.

Three Sisters.  In London. Lots of Redgraves. Vanessa, Lynn and Gemma.

Sleuth. No idea who was in it. Now I can only remember the movie.

Dreamgirls. No idea who was in it but I would bet Vondie Curtis-Hall because he was always on my radar. That might be how he got there. I recall noticing him next to me in a New York restaurant at Denzel Washington's table.

Song and Dance. Remembered Bernadette Peters singing Unexpected Song but nothing else.

Equus. No idea who was in it.

Something about Elvis in London.

I hope to update this page as memories pop up. Three Sisters was a recent addition.

Adding October 2022:

Man of La Mancha. Raul Julia (Anthony Quinn in audience)

Dracula. Frank Langella?  Raul Julia? Both?

 

A Man for All Seasons Paul Scofield

Remembering the Lists of My Life: Beautiful Sights

Decades ago I made a list of the ten most beautiful sights I had ever seen. They were so impressive that even though the list got lost, I was, over a few days, able to reconstruct it. I posted them on Facebook one-a-day for ten days starting on 9/2/2021 but in no particular order.

Below is the list starting with my first post on 9/2/2021.

1:

I once made a list of the ten most beautiful sights I had ever seen. We didn’t have cameras in our phones so I had to take a mental snapshot of moments when the locale, the weather and the lighting came together to create an unforgettable image. No exotic location was required. The first I remember was out my kitchen window when I lived in Connecticut. The sky was clear, the leaves were off the trees and there was a light coating of snow on the ground. The full moon made the white birch tree with a double trunk glow. I don’t think a camera could have done the scene justice.

2:

Item two on my list of the ten most beautiful sights I have ever seen. (In no particular order.) In my mind, I think the train stopped but, in fact, I think I just snapped a mental picture. On a train from Oslo to Bergen, Norway. I guess above the tree line. Wide, gradual and snow-covered hill climbing to a gray sky. Not a mark on the snow. Near the hilltop a gray fence also climbing at an angle an artist might choose. Monotone except for the dot of red. A skier standing by the fence. A minute later and the smooth surface of the untouched snow would be gone. But, I got my mental snapshot. Better, I suspect, than an actual photo.

3:

Item three on my list of the ten most beautiful sights I have ever seen. (In no particular order.) This one is easy to visualize and probably should be a video (not photo) memory. Lightning bolts in the desert outside Tucson on a dark night. Why I was driving on a back road outside of Tucson late at night, I have no idea.

4:

A lot of people say they’ve experienced number 4 on my list of the ten most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, but I was close to fifty when I stepped into a clear, moonless night on St Agnes, one of the Isles of Scilly, and was stopped dead in my tracks by the sight of the night sky. I’d watched the sky from islands along the US’s East Coast and deserts in the West, but I never had a glimmer of what I saw that night. I stopped dead, grabbed my friend’s arm and exclaimed (I don’t usually exclaim) “Oh My God!” I hope to see this sight again if I can visit the islands 28 miles off the SW tip of England in the right part of the lunar cycle and catch a clear night. I don’t remember anything else in my life stopping me dead in my tracks.

5:

I am still working through my list of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen. Day 5, sight 5. I posted about this one before on tax day. Leona Helmsley was ordered to start her prison term for tax evasion on April 15, 1992. Her husband, Harry, owner of the Empire State Building, protested by keeping the lights on the building dark. Lit only by the light of an almost-full moon, the building looked gorgeous - especially to anyone walking east on 33rd Street to get their taxes to the main post office before midnight. That’s what I heard!

6:

Number 6 on my list of ten most beautiful sights (in no particular order). This one is different because I’ve seen it more than once - mostly when driving southwest on interstates between Boston and Philadelphia. The pitch-black silhouettes of leafless trees against a bright pink sky at sunset. When I was into needlework, I saw a lot of patterns honoring this phenomenon but none of them did the sight justice.

7:

Day 7. Sight 7. PA 23 runs through Valley Forge Park. Going east you go through the woody, hilly part. Then, the road runs along a ridge with hills sloping off to the right. I never realized that I was looking at a series of valleys until early one morning when a heavy mist wove its way through them. It was like looking down at the clouds. I’ve driven that road more times than I can count but I never saw anything like that sight again.

8:

Beautiful sight number 8. I have no idea why I was in London in April, but a street of white Victorian townhouses in Kensington that I had walked down many times in winter was transformed by trees covered with white flowers. Most of the petals were still on the branches but enough had fallen that they laid a white carpet down the sidewalk. Then, a gentle breeze created a shower of white petals. The pink and purple blooms on other blocks were gorgeous but the white wonderland was magical.

9:

Sight 9. A great view of the New York skyline provided the only compensation for hundreds of hours on the New Jersey Turnpike. No view was better than one I caught on a day sometime between 1973 and 2001 when I was driving south at sunset and the twin towers of the World Trade center, painted an orangish-gold by the setting sun, shone against the blue sky. Valerie Silver Ellis, a former colleague I quote often, usually when talking about advice I should have followed, was 46 years old when she went to work on the 104th floor of the North Tower on a Tuesday morning like any other twenty years ago today. The memory of the beautiful vision from the turnpike is bittersweet.

10:

Beautiful Sight 10 of 10. The novel, The Ice Storm, was set on a road I lived on in Connecticut but I don’t recall ever experiencing an ice storm there. The one I recall was near my parents’ last home in Pennsylvania. The road at the end of our street curved past a big stone house sitting back on a wide lawn crossed by a stream split into two sections by a waterfall. And, trees. Lots and lots of trees. When the ice storm hit, the lawn turned silver, the waterfall froze and the trees were coated with ice that sparkled in the sunlight. From what I can see on a drive-by, everything is now gone.

In thinking over the decades since I made the list, I could only think of one sight I would add to the list.  I always thought that those photos of huge moons hanging over a scene such as the New York skyline were fake, products of Photoshop. However, one night on a New Jersey Transit train leaving New York, I looked out the window and realized they were real. An unbelievably big moon had just climbed into view over New York. The sight was not fake.

I've had a long dry spell without seeing unforgettable sights. I am not sure the problem is a change in my travel or in my vision. I need to get out and about and hope that I am lucky to encounter more unforgettable moments and wise enough to see them when I do.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

Fifty by my fifties - states that is

I always knew that I would get to all fifty states. I might not have been born to travel but I was definitely raised to.

I come from a family that celebrated the first hotel room I ever stayed in as the first step in one of the great accomplishments of my life. (For the record it was Room 1410 at the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey.) I did not record all subsequent room numbers or even hotels. But this story is not about hotels. This is about states.

For many years of my life, I had only been to mid-Atlantic states. I lived in Pennsylvania, went to the New Jersey Shore for the summer, and took day trips to New York. The first time I flew, my mother took me to Washington DC--not a state. I really got off to a slow start. Delaware to visit my parents' friends in Wilmington and to take a ride when they opened the Cape May Lewes Ferry. I was heading off to college and had been to a measly four states and one capital district.

I didn't start racking up my state count until, at the age of 21, I got my own car. I added Connecticut visiting friends but I was still only driving through New Jersey and New York to get there. (5) Several drives to visit my brother who lived in Marco Island Florida netted me Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Things were picking up, but only along I-95. (11) Then, I drove to Arizona, adding eight more. Ohio. Indiana. Illinois. Iowa. Nebraska. Colorado. New Mexico. Arizona. (19) And, I took side trips to California and Nevada. (21) Inexplicably, I returned to Pennsylvania via the same route along Route 80 losing the opportunity to add all the I70 states. I don't know what I was thinking.

When my brother moved to New England I netted Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire. (25) I was halfway there. Maine remained elusive for many more years although I was often within an hour of its border. I'd like to know why I took my eye off the ball.

Sometime during that time I flew to Hawaii on vacation and started acquiring the second half of the states. (26)

A cross-country drive with a friend in 1975 filled in some gaps. Oddly, Utah and Missouri. How we missed Kansas, I don't know. But we did, leaving me with (28) and some hard-to-fill gaps in my state count.

Heavy-duty acquisitions started in 1980 with a job as a traveling trainer. My territory was the southern US. Suddenly, I was adding states to my list every week. Texas. Oklahoma. Louisiana. Alabama. Mississippi. Tennessee. Kentucky (and not just because the Cincinnati airport is in Kentucky). I did not get to go to West Virginia but a couple of day trips from my home in Washington DC resolved that issue. (36) But others remained.

The challenging thing about Michigan is that it is not on the way to other states. Michigan became my 37th state with a plane trip to Kalamazoo for a conference. I've been back to Detroit but, despite driving by it many times, I have never actually driven into Michigan.

Conferences were a boon to raising my total. Even a meeting in Winnepeg Manitoba helped. Three of us state-seekers rented a car and drove south to have dinner in Minnesota and after-dinner drinks in North Dakota. After a previous conference in Chicago, a couple of us figured we were so close to South Dakota why not take a short flight and hop on over? We rented a car and took a drive that got me not only South Dakota, but Wyoming and Montana. (42)

During this time Eastern Airlines introduced an unlimited travel fare. You could fly anywhere for three weeks but you couldn't go home. This led to conversations in the hotel van at the Atlanta airport (the Eastern hub) that sounded like this. I had a meeting in Denver on Friday and I have to be in Albuquerque on Monday, so I thought I'd go to Bermuda for the weekend.

I used that pass to pick up Washington State (43) but mainly I used it to visit friends. Again, with 7 states still in play, what was I thinking?

You would think I would get Washington and Oregon at the same time, but no. I met a friend in Oregon on a separate trip. Not sure how I got there but most likely courtesy of Eastern Airlines. (44)

Desperate to get Kansas, I once drove from Denver about fifty miles into the state, went through a drive-thru restaurant and drove back. Later I questioned if this was a legitimate score. My feet hadn't touched the ground. At a conference a few years later in Kansas City, Missouri, I located another state-seeker and we drove into Kansas City, Kansas for dinner and a thorough tour of the city. (45)

I cannot recall the first time I got Wisconsin. I spent a year in Chicago, so I can't imagine I didn't go to a state that was within commuting distance. I simply can't recall but I definitely remember going to the MLB All-Star Game there in 2002. However, I am sure it was not my first visit. It's coming to me. I had visited friends there before. Perhaps back in the Eastern Airlines days. All is a bit hazy but I know I stayed overnight. (46)

I know Arkansas was my forty-seventh state (47) because I recall sending a postcard that said simply 47. I could have gotten the state much sooner if I had realized all I had to do was drive across the river from Memphis, but I didn't. So, I used a Frequent Flyer. I had originally planned to use the award to go to Maui, but a reorganization came up at work and I asked my boss if he thought I should cancel. He did. So, I changed my flight to Little Rock. I spent a Sunday there. Tip: if you are going to spend one day in Little Rock, Sunday is probably not the best day. I drove around the state but not much was going on. Reference sign in a restaurant window: Saturday Brunch. (The frightening part of this trip was on the flight when the pilot announced that there was fog in Little Rock and that we would be landing in Shreveport. LOUSIANA. I had Louisiana. Luckily the fog lifted.)

I had been so close to Maine, so often but never really understood how close. Good grief, I even lived close. So, one day a group of us took a drive from my brother's house to southern Maine.  Maine never should have been so close to the end. (48)

Years went by and Alaska and Idaho eluded me. Finally, I decided I had to take extreme measures to get them--which I did on a trip to a conference in Seattle.

I thought there was great symmetry that Alaska, our forty-ninth state, was my forty-ninth state. (49) I had to fly to Seattle for a conference and somehow figured out how to add a stop in Anchorage for the same price. I stayed overnight and was awake most of it because of the daylight in June. I saw a lot of the state flying in and out. I didn't feel cheated.

My brother was on a ski trip during the time I was holding at forty-eight and called me repeatedly. He kept driving back and forth to resorts in Montana and Washington through Idaho. I can't seem to get out of Idaho. He knew it was one of my two remaining states.  It did not appear that I was going to go on a ski trip to Idaho, so on my trip to Seattle, I took a side trip to Boise. Whew! Finally, 50.

I've been back to most states multiple times. I have no "gets" that I feel are in any way iffy. I said I'd get to all fifty states and I did. If the District of Columbia becomes a state, I am covered. I even lived there. If Puerto Rico gets statehood that is a different matter. I should probably go now. Just in case. 

© 2021 Jane Kelly

Why I won't get to sit next to Conan O'Brien at dinner

UPDATE TO UPDATE:  The gist of my original post was that I was never going to sit next to Conan O’Brien at dinner. Wrong again! Okay, it was lunch, not dinner. And, I wasn’t actually beside him. I had my back to him. And, technically, he didn’t actually know I was there, but he knew someone was behind him checking in. But still, I found it weird to run into him in this context but not as weird as an old Conan video that popped up on my phone (I saw after lunch). Maybe because my phone heard me say “There’s Conan O’Brien.” I am used to that. Or was it because my phone knew his phone was within a six-foot radius (social distancing)? Either way. No coincidence.

UPDATE: I posted about this encounter and was surprised to find that several people felt Conan behaved like an entitled celebrity. I did not see it that way at all. I simply felt he was wandering into a public area and I was the person who alerted him. I found it funny. I felt as if my post had slimed him. I took the post down.

Conan O'Brien did his last show on TBS last week and the milestone went unnoticed on my Facebook feed. I think that is because many people of my generation do not like or get his humor. Some actively dislike him. I'll admit some of his bits make me uncomfortable (as intended I am sure) but some make me laugh out loud. 

I recall reading back in the nineties when he got the job at the Late Show that someone, perhaps Lorne Michaels, explained the choice by saying he was the guy you'd want to sit next to at dinner. 

When I heard he would be interviewed at the Kennedy Library, I signed up. I was a little disappointed to be sent to the overflow room. (My fault I lingered over dinner.) He was smart, modest and hilarious. Someone you'd want to sit next to at dinner. 

Before leaving the library, I wandered down the hallway towards the (closed) snack bar where the view of Boston Harbor is the best. At the same time, Conan wandered out of the elevator hallway. I assume to enjoy the view. Then, he spotted me. I like to think he realized he was wandering into a public area, and it was what I represented and not the sight of me that made him recoil. No matter. I don't think I'll get to sit next to him at dinner.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

Juicy Fruits - what does the green mean?

They were so innocuous-looking. A young man, Caucasian, in his twenties. A middle-aged woman, African-American, in her forties. One seated to the left of me. One seated to my right. They never acknowledged each other.  Or did they?

I was spending the day in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport. I suspect I missed a connection from Charleston, West Virginia to Philadelphia. I wouldn't plan to spend six hours in the Charlotte airport.  But since I had a layover, I filled the time as I normally would. Eating.

I found a restaurant in the concourse and was seated in a row of tables for two. I sat with my back to the wall facing into the restaurant. When I arrived,  there was a young man seated at the table to my left. I am not sure how much time passed before a woman was seated at the table to my right. They in no way acknowledged each other's presence.

I noticed the man do it first. He took out a box of Juicy Fruits and pulled out a green one. He laid it on the table in front of him.

A few minutes passed, not sure how many, before the woman on my right got out her box of Juicy Fruits. She also pulled out a green one and laid it on the table in front of her. 

First, let me say, that to my knowledge, I had not been in close proximity to any box of Juicy Fruits in years, but when I had been, they had never been positioned as an appetizer. I mean, really. Who eats Juicy Fruits before a meal? Let alone, one Juicy Fruit. Let alone, one green Juicy Fruit.  Even if green, a Juicy Fruit can not be considered a salad.

The three of us ate our meals with zero interaction as far as I could tell. I do not recall if any other Juicy Fruits came into play. I didn't want to know too much (and this was before I watched The Americans). I left first and began a complete tour of the terminal looking for a Juicy Fruit promotion. Someone had to be giving away free boxes of Juicy Fruits. If they were, I couldn't find them.

I told myself I was being silly. They were probably playing an elaborate game. This was not a real brush with espionage. Or was it?  I  posted about this odd little incident on Facebook but no agents--from the good guys or the bad guys--showed up at my door. Still, I find this a little suspicious. Especially after I watched The Americans.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

Mingling with spies in DC

During the late Cold War years when I lived there, the thing about residing and working in the District of Columbia was, even if you couldn't watch The Americans for another twenty-five years, you knew that spycraft was going on all around you. You knew because some of that spycraft was obvious and clumsy. I probably would have - and should have - been frightened by the spies I didn't see. (Ref: The Americans) But, I wasn't. Spies were a fact of life. A humorous fact of life.

Everyone knew there was a man sitting in a top-floor window across from the Soviet Embassy. I don't think I am misremembering when I say that he was visible. The way I recall it, he would sit on the window ledge of an open window with a long-lens camera in his hand. I don't think that is accurate except as a visual metaphor - although that technique would certainly have kept spies from going in and out of the embassy’s front door.

What do I mean by clumsy spycraft? My favorite incident involved a laundry truck. One Sunday night I was taking relatives on a tour of DC at an hour when the streets were not usually crowded with laundry trucks. Nonetheless, we seemed to be encountering the same one repeatedly circling Georgetown but never stopping to deliver laundry. At one point, we were behind the van and as it made a left turn at a speed that allowed the curtains on the back windows to swing open. We could see inside easily. What we saw in the well-lit area was not rows of hanging cleaning or stacks of boxed shirts, but a wall of electronic equipment and a team of men monitoring it. Okay, it might have been an American spy vehicle. I hope it wasn't. I would not want my safety to rely on a bureaucracy sophisticated enough to design state-of-art electronics, but too dumb to install a rod at the bottom of the window in order to keep the curtains from falling open.

Of course, it was possible for one's imagination to run amok. After the Russians killed one of their enemies on the streets of London with a poisoned umbrella tip, waiting on the corner for the light to change became a harrowing experience although I knew of no enemy - foreign or domestic - that wanted me dead. 

I may have overreacted once on a Sunday stroll through the Kalorama neighborhood, home to many bigwigs and diplomats. As I walked down the street a mailman in uniform came down the path from an impressive house - as I recall the only kind in the area - after making a delivery. He gave me a hello along with a big smile. I returned the greeting and passed as he hopped into his truck. I had not even walked another block before it occurred to me that there was no Sunday mail service. I picked up the pace and headed for home along an illogical route all the while keeping an eye out for the mail truck and its assassin driver. He knew I had seen him. He had no choice. He had to kill me.

When I went to work on Monday, I found out that perhaps I had over-reacted. The Post Office had started Sunday delivery of Express Mail.

Okay, I saw spies where there were none, but I bet I didn't spot spies where they were. I wish I had seen The Americans before I moved to DC. I would have seen spies everywhere.

NOTE TO SELF: You had other brushes with espionage in Monte Carlo, Charlotte and London. They are written up separately.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

And then everything looks so normal . . . after the RFK assassination

The other day I was reading an article that mentioned in passing that Andy Williams had been staying in the Kennedy suite at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in the ballroom below. It occurred to me that I had, at very different times, encountered several people who had been present at that event. I was not. I was starting my summer job that week. I was not at the site until close to twenty years after the assassination. 

I am sure it was sometime in the 1980s that, sitting at a conference dinner in the ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, I became amazed that, although it was just a ballroom like dozens of others where I sat through after-dinner speeches, it had been the scene of a major event in the history of America in the 1960s. If there was a historical marker, I didn't see it. 

I was simply sitting at another business event when I looked up and wondered if the lighting fixtures - not fancy enough to call chandeliers - were covered with the same dust on June 5, 1968 when Sirhan Sirhan waited to shoot the winner of the Democratic California primary in the pantry for the kitchen behind the ballroom where I assume our meals had been prepared. When Robert Kennedy said his last public words, "On to Chicago and let's win there," on the same stage where conference speakers discussed the world's information needs. When Americans had a few moments left before they would need to clarify which Kennedy assassination they meant. 

I am not being ridiculous. There was a lot of dust. The room is no longer, torn down along with the hotel although the lobby lives on in many TV shows and movies.

I never saw Bobby Kennedy. On the day word went around the school cafeteria that he was coming to speak in Broomall, I was interested in cutting class to go. The only problem was none of us from the other side of Philadelphia had any idea where Broomall was. I wasn't upset. I figured I'd have another chance. Of course, I didn't.

I thought about how many people I had run into who were somehow connected to the RFK assassination. The first I recalled was Roosevelt Grier, NFL legend and Kennedy supporter. I stepped into a hotel elevator in New York - I think it was the New York Hilton - and found him leaning against the back wall. He was smiling. I think Rosey Greer was almost always smiling.  

I never speak to celebrities but Rosey spoke to me. For the entire ride. He said what a great day every day was and he hoped I felt the same. He said he felt blessed.  He gave off a contented vibe. At the time, I don't think I put him together with the assassination. The encounter was so upbeat that I forgot this was the man who was said to have wrestled the murder weapon away from Sirhan Sirhan.

It wasn't until the movie Mank came out in 2020 that I put Frank Mankiewicz together with the Hollywood Mankiewiczes and with the Robert Kennedy assassination. Memories can get a bit muddled as the years go on and mine did. I know that Frank Mankiewicz, at the time a middle-aged, Caucasian, political advisor, was not often confused with Julian Bond, at the time a dashing, young, African-American civil rights activist. It isn't that I can't keep the two individuals straight. I can't quite get a handle on our interactions. A friend and I were charged with escorting both of them to an event at our college, picking them up at the airport, dining with them, getting them to the lecture on time. I clearly remember Julian Bond in the car. I clearly remember Frank Mankiewicz at dinner. The rest all jumbles together. At far as I know, Julian Bond was not in LA at the time of the assassination, but Frank Mankiewicz announced the death of Robert Kennedy on June 6, 1968.

Of course, Ethel Kennedy was there with her husband. I ran into her with Andy Williams whose presence in LA got me thinking about this "theme." The circumstances were the opposite of the assassination and require some context. My brother used to work in Nassau, a frequent docking locale for the Christina, a yacht owned by Aristotle Onassis who married Jacqueline Kennedy only months after Robert Kennedy's assassination. One evening a friend and I were on the dock when a group of bicyclers swarmed off the boat.  Among them were Ethel Kennedy and Andy Williams. (For the record, the others I recall were Williams’ wife Claudine Longet, Christina Onassis, Mountaineer Jim Whittaker and his wife.) Not exactly meaningful contact. Actually no contact at all.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis did not come out to ride bikes that night but I ran into her on other occasions around New York when I lived there. She was present when RFK died.

Even more tenuous connections are two Kennedy children. Robert Kennedy Jr. was in LA with his father. Rory Kennedy was present in the sense that she was expected at the time and born almost six months after his death. I've heard Rory speak. I only ever ran into RFK Jr. in the Stamford train station with his family. The surprising thing about him to me was that he has incredible blue eyes. 

There is nothing significant about these encounters. These coincidences are more like an unpleasant game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. There is nothing magical. If there were, I would have run into George Plimpton and I have no recollection of ever seeing him.  The number of brushes with people who were connected just strikes me as odd.

NOTE TO YOURSELF:  In fact-checking Julian Bond, you discovered you and he share a birthday.

NOTE TO YOURSELF: You were exhausted from your second day at your summer job at Home Life on June 5 and went to bed shortly after dinner. You had no idea that there even was a California primary that day. When you woke up you remembered a dream. Robert and Ethel Kennedy were running an ice cream shop in a building that was shaped like a coffin. A windowless brown box on top of a chrome base. The ice cream store was inside the base. The shop was on a hillside without other buildings around. At the time you figured someone had a television on that you could hear and that put thoughts of the Kennedys in your mind. For proof that you were not psychic, see your story about Christopher Reeve.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

Cocktail hour with the Kellys

When most kids were collecting bottle tops, I was collecting little paper umbrellas from cocktail lounges. Eventually, the collection wore out and was discarded but the sentimental attachment remains. To this day, I am surprisingly at home in a bar.  Especially for someone who barely drinks. 

Just about any drinking establishment will do, but I do have a preference for a place that stocks paper umbrellas or the 21st century equivalent. Cocktail lounges. Lobby bars. Places with comfortable chairs clustered around low tables. They are my favorites. The kind of place where you linger and the visit is not about alcohol as much as relaxation and conversation. Where you feel at home. At least, I do. Possibly because our living room became a cocktail lounge every afternoon.

My parents were fifties parents. Strong believers in cocktails. Every night when my father got home from work, they would appear in the living room with a large silver tray stocked with cocktails and their favorite hors d'ouevres: cheese and crackers. I say they because they prepared the tray together. There was no hint of the little woman waiting patiently with a cocktail for her hubby returning from the business wars. They might have been fifties parents, but my mother was never a fifties housewife.

Originally, the cocktails arrived in a silver cocktail shaker that might well have been a wedding gift in 1937. Then, they received a lovely silver-trimmed pitcher as a gift. Very elegant. A lovely tradition, until they discovered that Skippy Peanut Butter jars had measurement markers on the side. At that point, the pitcher disappeared to be replaced by two Skippy Peanut Butter jars--one for her, one for him--that held perfectly mixed drinks. 

My mother would have to run to the kitchen occasionally to make sure dinner didn't burn but for the most part the next hour was devoted to conversation. I would hang around sometime, but I don't recall ever interrupting. I did, however, snack from the tray as the two friends chatted over Manhattans (I got the cherries), martinis (I never wanted the olives) and Gibsons (I was thrilled when they switched to cocktail onions). To this day, cheese and crackers are comfort food to me. Cocktail hour was far more important to me in my formative years and as a memory than dinner.

My parents really enjoyed each other's company. They shared a friendship of the type that modern research tells us is so important in a couple. They never ran out of conversation.

My father outlived my mother by less than three years. I don't think I ever realized until this moment how painful cocktail hour must have been for him without his best friend. I don't recall his ever having a pre-dinner cocktail after she died.

NOTE: A little irony. On March 7, 2020 I was lingering after an MWA New York meeting with some friends and told them that was my favorite way to spend a Saturday afternoon, sitting around a table, this one in a pubby-like bar, having good conversation. By the next Saturday, no one was hanging out in any bars. Over a year later, I still haven't been able to do that again. I don't miss the drinking. I do miss the conversation. It just isn't the same on Zoom.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

My mother and the man from the bleachers

Within the past few years, I was walking through a store and noticed that little, round, plastic, blow-up pools were on sale for $.99. $.99! I cannot tell you how much I wanted one of those pools as a child, but my parents never relented. I, who was overindulged in more ways than I could list, was never given a simple plastic pool. That sale got me wondering why. 

Parents in the early 1950s were understandably fearful of polio and there was a relationship between swimming pools and transmission, but I don't think plastic pools no more than 48 inches in diameter were the issue.  Also, I think my desire for a plastic pool extended beyond the polio scare. I did not understand. And then it hit me. Baseball. Not an actual baseball. The idea of baseball.

My parents loved baseball. I am pretty sure that baseball had not been routinely broadcast on television for many seasons when I started asking for a blow-up pool. Realizing that made me understand. It wasn't that my parents didn't want me to have a pool. They didn't want to sit outside and watch me in it. Not when there was a Phillies game on. And, if recall from childhood memories of baseball sounds flowing onto the street through the windows of mostly unairconditioned houses, there were a lot of televised games.

Just as an aside, denied a blowup pool, I spent the summer digging a pool in the back yard. I was completely focused on my construction project. Well, that and the tile collection I assembled from the dirt I excavated. My efforts evolved into both a construction and an archaeological project-- all to the accompaniment of roaring crowds and the click of a bat hitting a ball (although not that often when the Phillies were at bat).

My mother loved baseball. Truly loved the game. My interest has always been superficial. However, I have always loved an underdog. (If you were going to be any kind of sports fan in Philadelphia you had to develop a love for underdogs.) So when New York got a new team with an impressive stream of losses, I had to love the New York Mets. And since I was entering my teen-age years, some sort of infatuation had to factor in. I developed an affection for Ed Kranepool. How I don't recall, but I was devoted to him as well as to Troy Donahue, Edd "Kookie" Burns and, inexplicably, Walter Pidgeon.

So, my mother, always interested in a trip anywhere new, got tickets for a Mets' home game at Shea Stadium. She got three so we could take along Debbie Shettsline, now Wernert, a true baseball fan as well as an admirer of Ed Kranepool. However, Debbie got sick and had to bow out at the last minute leaving my mother with an extra front row, box seat, along the first baseline. I don't know if she could return it, but I don't think she ever thought of doing that. Instead, we lurked near the ticket office until my mother saw a man headed for the box office. I suspect she could see that he was going to buy one ticket for the bleachers. Being a teenaged girl, I might have kept my distance as she sidled up to him and asked if he'd like to use our ticket. Not buy it. Use it.  

I still remember what the guy looked like. Average. Summer clothes appropriate for the ballpark. Nothing fancy about him. The kind of guy who likely stopped by his neighborhood bar on the way home from work. I don't know why but he struck me as single, no kids. Maybe because he was alone at the ballpark on an afternoon when most people were working.  It's easier to say what he did not look like. A doctor. A lawyer. A judge. Since it was a weekday afternoon, he probably did not work on Wall Street.

When we took our seats, this man thought he had died and gone to baseball heaven. He pointed out the bleachers where he thought he'd be sitting. He and my mother made easy conversation and he taught us all about the Mets. He bought us drinks and snacks. The three of us had a wonderful time together.

It was a great afternoon at the ballpark. The weather was gorgeous. The Mets won. Partially because in the first inning Ed Kranepool came up second in the Met lineup and hit a home run. My mother enjoyed making me happy, but she also took great joy in making that man happy. I am sure we knew his name at the time, but I have long since forgotten it. I would suspect that he is no longer on the planet, but I bet until the day he passed on he remembered his day at Shea Stadium with my mother.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

My story about Beirut where I've never been

 As it says in the heading, I created this blog for two reasons:

   1) For myself, to be able to read my stories when I can no longer remember them.

   2) For others, so that instead of making them listen to my boring stories, I can direct them to my blog where they can read my boring stories.

An opportunity arose yesterday to take advantage of the blog for the second purpose when the topic of Beirut came up, but I had not yet recorded my Beirut story. So here it is before I forget it again.

In 1976, I was doing a month-long, solo Eurail trip across Europe before meeting friends in Spain. Notice I did not say backpacking trip. Although I could foist my bag on my back it was leather and contained little of the standard backpacking gear such as a well-worn copy of "Europe on $5 a day." I was spending $5 a day on Coca-Cola and five times that much on English reading material. I sometimes slept on the train, often slept in cheap hotels but took an occasional break at a four-star if not a five-star hotel. Frugality was never my strong suit.

Nonetheless, I was not staying at the Hotel de Paris during my stay in Monte Carlo. It was way out of my budget and my budget was pretty loose. I found what I determined was the only cheap hotel in the city, or the country of Monaco for that matter, since, as far as I could tell, the two were the same. (Technically, they are not.)

My modest hotel did, however, have a dining room and the dining room had a maitre d'. A maitre d' who asked me if I would like to share a table with one of their long-term guests. I have no idea why I said yes aside from the fact that I have trouble saying no now let alone back then. At any rate, the host led me to a table where a young man about my age was sitting. At that point, I suspected the maitre d' was trying to play Cupid. I knew before I sat down that wasn't going to work, but I did sit down.

It wasn't long before I realized that the maitre d' had finance, not romance, on his mind. At the time, there was a bitter, and complex, civil war going on across the Mediterranean in Lebanon. It turned out that my dinner partner was living in this hotel and making radio broadcasts from his room back to Lebanon for the Christian faction. I concluded the maitre d' was working with him and the point of putting us together was to provide the hotel guest with the opportunity to hit me up for a donation. 

A ludicrous plan if you ask me. I was staying in what was one of the cheapest hotels in a very affluent city. There had to be a lot better prospects to hit up all over town. But, I guess he was playing the cards he was dealt. At least, I was an American. I learned on that trip that people held onto some odd stereotypes about Americans.

My dinner partner, let's call him Yusef, told me about his life and his project. He explained his politics, his goals, and his technology. (I wonder if he had to move to the roof to broadcast, but I have no memory of his saying that.) I don't recall his asking me anything, but, let's face it, his story was far more interesting. 

I was waiting for THE question about a donation when a friend of his arrived. Fresh off the plane from Lebanon. The conversation took a sharp turn. Yusef told his friend that he wanted to return to Lebanon. His friend responded that was a bad idea because "they" would kill him the moment he stepped off the plane. "You are a wanted man."

Now, I won't call myself a free spirit, but I don't have a lot of rules for life. However, I do have a few, one of which is never hang out with anyone who is a target for terrorists. This is not a simple guideline. It is a rule. A rule enacted and enforced that evening. I skipped dessert, excused myself and returned to my room and my English reading material.

I'll admit I was happy to be away from the terrorist targets. I was enjoying my evening reading-- although in retrospect I wonder why I was in my room instead of seeing the sights. Then, I heard them. Coming along the hallway. Chatting loudly as they passed and opened the door to the next room. Yusef's room. The room from which he broadcast into a war zone. Their loud conversation continued. It passed easily through the walls. If anyone came looking for them, they would be easy to find.

I thought I was crazy to worry about being collateral damage. I mean, really, who would blow up two enemies--okay, two enemies and a radio transmitter--in their hotel room?  I told myself not to worry. Besides, I was checking out the next day.

For years, I thought I had been neurotic. Then, I saw the movie, Munich. 

Check it out.

HANDY TIP: Try not to book a room next to a target for terrorists of any sort.

NOTE: I was a little surprised that during my trip to Monaco, although my passport clearly stated that my last name was Kelly and I was from Philadelphia, no one asked if I was related to the other Kelly, Grace, who was currently living in the palace under the aka Princess Grace. Perhaps because I wasn't hanging around the palace and only got to go there on a tour. And, maybe they asked where I was staying.

NOTE: This was years before a librarian at a Florida University suggested an answer to a frequently asked question (except in Monte Carlo): are you related to Grace Kelly? His suggestion:  Odd, you noticed the resemblance. FYI - there is none.

NOTE: My mother died before Civil War broke out in Lebanon. After her death, we found an article she had stashed in her dressing table: The Ten Best Hotels in the World. One was on the beachfront in Beirut, the Paris of the Middle East. She would have been horrified to see what was happening to the city.

NOTE: Yusef was on the Christian side of the conflict.

NOTE: You also got close to a target when you ran into Meir Kahane. Check out that story.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

Riding with Bill, Gates that is

Many, many years ago, I went to the annual Microsoft conference which was probably a mismatch since I was a lot more involved with data than technology. I blush now to think about what probably went over my head even though technology was pretty simple back in the 1980s.

This is not about technology. This is about my brief encounter with Bill Gates.

I got on an elevator at the hotel where the convention was held. I did not realize that Bill Gates was in the back of the elevator car. When the elevator made its first stop, he politely made his way to the front. After he'd stepped off and the door closed behind him, a man told this story about a previous elevator ride with Bill Gates. This is his story, not mine.

As on this ride, the elevator was packed and the people who got in later did not realize that Bill was jammed into the back of the car. One of the people in the front began to bad-mouth Bill. A lot. When the elevator made its first stop, Bill made his way out. However, as he passed the man who had been bad-mouthing him, he said "excuse me" and put a light hand on the man's shoulder so he could slide by. Slide by and see the name on his badge which he appeared to memorize.

There is a lesson to be learned here. If you are the last one into an elevator, keep your mouth shut until you've checked out everyone who is riding with you. I don't imagine Bill Gates rides in a lot of crowded elevators with strangers anymore but you never know who does. Alternatively, if you can't keep quiet, at least be smart enough to take off your badge.

NOTE: I went back to the Microsoft campus once for a reason I've long forgotten. I bet the guy wearing his badge in the elevator never did.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

What do Richard Burton, Peter Frampton, Walter Mondale and G. Gordon Liddy have in common?

A few months ago, social media was all abuzz about The Queen's Gambit. I am always into the minutia in films with historical settings from my lifetime. I have come to accept the painful truth that there are historical settings from my own lifetime and try not to let that fact interfere with my enjoyment of the show.

Given my nearly obsessive interest in minutia in the background, I was thrilled to hear Richard Burton's voice (The Robe was on TV in the background). It brought to mind the time I ran into him and his then-love Elizabeth Taylor when they were being constantly stalked by paparazzi and fans.

Waiting for Liz and Dick outside the Broadway theater where he was playing Hamlet had become a sport. Hundreds of people had gathered daily to catch a glimpse of the star just passing by. Usually accompanied by Elizabeth Taylor.

My parents and siblings and I had just seen Hello Dolly when we ran into the couple. We were on our to a restaurant when Liz and Dick (no combo names back then) walked in front of us on their way into Sardis. I felt a little guilty that hundreds of people had waited for a glimpse of the couple and they walked three feet in front of me. A little.

Back then Liz and Dick could not make a move without the press in tow, but now his name and face just appeared in the background of a hit series without recognition.

Fame is fleeting.

I felt the same way about Peter Framptom.  A summer or two after HIS summer, I waited behind him in line to check out of a hotel in a Texas suburb. Houston? Dallas? Not sure. It doesn't matter. He was still touring but without a frenzy. He was alone, at the front desk.  Settling his group's bill?  I wasn't sure but I was sure I was the only one who noticed.

Fame is fleeting.

And, my favorite, Walter Mondale. A man who in the summer and fall of 1984 had been greeted by cheering mobs everywhere. This is an exchange I had in 1985. I only know the year because of the content.

Me: I ran into Walter Mondale at the airport yesterday. Didn't he run for president once?

Friend: Last year.

Fame is fleeting.

And, apparently, so is notoriety. 

I was once in line for the DC/New York shuttle behind G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate infamy. He walked away and left his ID on the counter. I stepped up and realized that I could see his home address and phone number. Fifteen years before that might have been worth a lot. But in the eighties? No one cared. The stigma of what he did might have stuck but as far as being the center of attention? He no longer was.

Notoriety is just as fleeting as fame.

UPDATE: April 2023. Shirley Temple’s name just came up online. When I saw her pulling her own suitcase through Dulles Airport sometime in the 1980s, I didn’t think about her early years when she would have been mobbed by fans. She was active in government service and well-known, but no one seemed to notice her. Probably a relief for her. 

NOTE TO SELF: You had actually seen Elizabeth Taylor at a distance earlier. Apparently, she had been with Richard Burton until he went on stage, left the theater and came back to meet him for dinner before his evening performance.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

Why would you look so much like yourself?

Living in New York, you get used to running into celebrities who do not want to call attention to themselves by looking like their public persona. They dress down to blend in although they must realize they call attention to themselves by wearing baseball caps and sunglasses or, in many cases, simply by being extremely thin. People they pass may not know who they are, but they have a pretty good idea they are somebody. 

I understand trying to camouflage yourself, but I have always been floored by celebrities who go out looking like themselves.

Rod Stewart

I once asked a friend with ties to the music industry who that guy was who was always walking around 57th Street looking like Rod Stewart. "Rod Stewart," was his answer. I could not believe a rock star would go out looking so much like himself. If you want to see what he looked like, check any online photo of Rod Stewart.

Madonna

I once saw a woman standing on the corner of 72nd and Columbus and wondered why anyone would dress up to look so much like the Material-Girl-era Madonna. She had the Marilyn Monroe hairdo, very high heels and a mink coat.  Who would anyone spend $25,000 on a mink not to mention whatever it cost to hire a Rob Lowe lookalike to walk her dog just to look like Madonna? Then it hit me. A fake Madonna with a fake Rob Lowe? I don't think so. That guy is so handsome, I don't know if they could have found a look-alike for him.  (It took decades before Rob Lowe admitted he had ever spent time with Madonna. He didn't mention the dog, but he did confirm they had kind of a date.)

Sophia Loren

When I got off a plane from New York to Los Angeles c.1990, I regarded the woman standing at the desk with a a bit of disdain. Isn't she trying a little too hard to look like someone? She was wearing a short tweed skirt, with a patterned blouse, lace stockings, a leather jacket and very high heels. She was wearing glasses. I suppose they were sunglasses. Overdone, I thought.

I don't recall when I realized she was someone.  Maybe when I arrived at luggage claim and saw her standing alone with the prime area at the end of the chute to herself. No one stood within thirty feet of Sophia Loren.

Hugh Grant

 

This involved no glamour, no special effort. Standing on a corner in New York somewhere in the fifties (streets) and eighties (years). He was dressed like one of his characters. Pink shirt. Sleeves rolled up. Arms akimbo. He wasn't famous yet although it might have been the weekend he would become famous.  He looked exactly like one of his 1980s rom-com characters. Come to think of it, that might have been hard to avoid. He looked very much the same on-stage at the 92nd Street Y decades later.

Robert Palmer

In the 1980s, the singer had a hugely successful video for "Addicted to Love." It was so big that it was often parodied largely because of the expressionless supermodels behind him "playing" guitars. So, it seems to me that if he wanted to go unnoticed in Manhattan, he might have avoided charging across 59th Street dragging a model behind him. (No scandalous accusation here. She seemed willing to go with him. Just not that quickly.)

NOTE: You ran into another Madonna with the Morans. You should write about that.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

Happy Birthday, Mommy

I see postings on Facebook memorializing mothers with notations that their offspring "miss them every day." Those words are posted by those who are lucky enough to have had their mothers' presence in their lives for many days. I knew my mother for 8,180 days. I imagine I have thought of her every day since she died on June 8, 1971, but she was not present in my adult life so I cannot say I miss my mother in the way I sense others miss theirs. I never really knew my mother as an adult. I was barely an adult when she died. I never got to have the type of conversations with my mother that friends in their thirties, forties, fifties, even sixties had with their mothers. I didn't know my mother as well as they knew theirs. 

Twenty-two did not seem that young to lose my mother. How could I complain when I had friends who had lost their mothers as children? I was the caboose baby trailing the other two Kelly kids by eleven and nine years. I never expected to have parents into adulthood. As my then thirty-three-year-old sister said at my mother's funeral, "At least she lived a long, full life." My mother died at fifty-eight.

I did not come from a demonstrative family. It may be an Irish thing. I once told a friend I had a perfect opening line for a book but no book to go with it: "I remember the day my mother hugged me." My friend, last name Flynn, responded, "Your mother hugged you?" (I used the line in a short story but still would like to write a book go with it).  

The last time I saw my mother in the hospital--she would die overnight--I considered saying "I love you," but my family didn't talk that way. A declaration like that probably would have terrified her. When my brother, who had flown up from his home in the Bahamas to see her, walked into her hospital room, she muttered, "Oh, boy. I must be in trouble." My point is that, as a family, we were not prone to emotional displays. My sister-in-law used to grab me and push me into my brother for good-bye hugs. I don't think I ever hugged my sister.

I believe, however, there is, shall we call it, subtext that indicates there was, and continues to be, true affection underlying the reserve.

I have a tendency to hold onto the grab handle above passenger car doors but have no idea why. Make that had no idea why. Sitting with my hand stuck up in the air seemed like a bizarre position. But think back to your youngest years when you were led around by adults with your arm in that exact position. In my case, often I was holding onto my mother's hand.  I wonder if that is why holding that handle feels so comfortable now.

When I think of my youngest years with my mother, I recall that position and being completely engulfed in taffeta. I am sure there were other materials and I am sure there were straight skirts, but I remember burying myself in those taffeta skirts. You could hide from anyone in there. They offered such safety.

Not that I hear it very often, but I like the sound of taffeta to this day. And the smell of Chanel No. 5. And the taste of maraschino cherries plucked from a Manhattan cocktail. And travel. 

My mother married a man, a devout Catholic, that she said, "would not walk to the corner if the Pope was passing by." On the other hand, all you had to say to my mother was "Do you want to go . . ." and she was in the car. Seeing the world was one thing she missed in life. When she died we found an article clipped from Look magazine with pictures of the ten best hotels in the world. She did not get to visit any of them. Perhaps that's why travel is so important to me. Perhaps, I am traveling for her.  

Sometimes, overtly. When I had a layover in Tokyo after a thirty-day trip to Asia, instead of staying at the airport, I took the two-hour ride from Narita to the city, stayed at the Imperial Hotel (she loved luxury hotels), rose early and toured as much of Tokyo as I could before heading back to the airport. Walking through the Imperial Gardens, I said aloud, "Is this enough, Mother. Can I go home now?"

Sometimes, subtly. Like anytime I upgrade to a hotel room with a view in a first-class hotel when I probably could stay down the street in a Motel 6.

My mother's name was Mary. She lost her father at the age of five and was shipped off to boarding school for a few years. She came of age in the Depression and, although I don't know if she wanted to work or go to college, she did neither until the late thirties when she went to work at an insurance company and met her husband. Being a wife and mother became her job. She lived in an era when married life meant staying home and taking care of the house. Even after the kids went to school, or left the house for good, her job was to stay home. My father actually said, "No wife of mine will ever work." I don't blame him for that kind of thinking. It was the custom of his era and he wanted to do what he believed was best for my mother.

I doubt my mother ever read The Feminine Mystique but she recognized the restraints trapping mid-century women. She wanted to make sure I had options she didn't have. She explained that Ida Lupino was a director as well as an actress and that it was quite an accomplishment in that era. She urged my friends and me to move to New York and try comedy writing which was not the normal career path of teacher, nurse or secretary. (We didn't.) She made sure I knew what was going on in the world especially that there was a growing Civil Rights Movement and that people did not pay enough attention to her personal "platform" that this country had mistreated the Native Americans horribly and needed to make amends.

She taught me how to behave in public, to move around in the world and to remember that every unfortunate person was somebody's baby.  She did not teach me how to cook, clean or make a bed. If I am going to stink at something, being bad at cooking, cleaning and making my bed does not worry me. Failing to be polite, self-sufficient and kind would worry me greatly.

I am a rule-follower but I didn't get that from her. When I brought home my first B in conduct, she had to console me. She felt it showed I had gumption and I was not going to let "them" push me around. I was in second grade. Maybe because of that, I was free to choose whether to follow the rules or not. Most times, I choose to follow.

My sister told me a story shortly before she died that changed my idea of my relationship with my mother. I always imagined she liked me okay, and I never really wondered if she loved me. I figured that was her job. When I was two and a half, my family had, as usual, decamped from Philadelphia to the Jersey Shore for the summer. My father stayed behind in the city and traveled down for weekends. After becoming ill, being misdiagnosed and treated incorrectly, I developed a neat trick of stopping breathing and turning blue. My sister recounted how my mother, alone at the Shore with her children, ran out of the house carrying my limp body screaming, "Somebody help me. My baby's dying." Spoiler Alert: someone did.

Whenever I think of that story, I realize what I must have meant to her. An outward reserve can hide a real depth of emotion. Even though I didn't think my mother hugged me, I suspect she did. Maybe not with her arms but in so many ways for each of those 8,180 days.

© 2021 Jane Kelly

 

Going downtown with Mommy

If you asked me to conjure a special memory of my mother at home, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with one. Certainly, there are no memories of her in the kitchen like the ones so many daughters cherish. Given time, I am sure I could recall some remembrances from somewhere inside the house, but what leaps to my mind are the times we spent elsewhere. Anywhere else. If local, in downtown Philadelphia.

Some of my earliest memories are sitting beside her on rides through pitch-black subway tunnels on trains that in the darkness seemed to fly through the air. A dead giveaway that they didn't? The blue sparks flying off the tracks and the screeching of the metal wheels. They never scared me because Mommy was in the seat beside me.

Most outings within Philadelphia were shopping trips that included lunch at Wanamakers. Like many local kids my age, I remember going to the tearoom at Wanamaker's Department Store. My mother always asked for Little Nellie's station and I ordered tea sandwiches (no egg - I was allergic), chocolate milk and chocolate-mint ice cream. It would be my choice today if the restaurant were still open. Well, maybe I'd skip the chocolate milk.

Although I remember many shopping trips, I got to, or perhaps had to, shop two days a year. One in the fall for school clothes. One in the spring for summer clothes. Get what you wanted then or you wouldn't be getting it. With two exceptions (unless she happened onto something she thought you should want which happened fairly frequently):  a Christmas dress and an Easter outfit. And for many years, an Easter bonnet.

Easter was really the height of the fashion season in our house. If I had to guess, I would estimate that 40% of all photos in my childhood were taken at Easter. Easter eggs were great but the day was all about new clothes. Dresses, coats, shoes, handbags and hats. Most importantly hats. My mother loved hats. Luckily, she needed one for every Sunday at church.

My sister liked to tell a story about shopping with my mother in the fifties. Think average costs. Houses around $10K. Cars $2K - $4K. This story involved a hat. I remember the hat involved. A brown satin cloche with jewels on one side. She wore it a lot. Good thing.

In those days, women could not have their own credit cards, but my father had provided my mother with "charga-plates" for all the Philadelphia stores. I think this story might have involved Blum's. I always picture my mother and sister stepping out onto Chestnut Street on a cold winter night. My mother clutches her hatbox in her hand.  Let me mention at this point that hats were not returnable.

     Mother to my sister Rosemary: Did you happen to notice how much that cost?

     My sister, being her daughter, had not.

     The answer: $55. One percent of a house, but only if you rounded up. 

Did I mention I got my financial sense from my mother?

Shoes were also big in our world. Even though my father believed that no one should wear cheap shoes, I swear I saw my mother, when asked the price of a pair of shoes, hold up one shoe and give the cost--of one shoe. 

Even I got annoyed with her when it came time to buy shoes to go with my prom dress. Everyone was getting shoes dyed at Beck's or Dial's where they cost $2.98. My dress was cream-colored so, according to my mother, I had to have the perfect tone silk shoes to match. $38 then. Roughly $317 today. Even I found that extravagant--although because she is the one who brought me up I no longer do. In her defense, my feet did not hurt.

Few people knew that before there was a Saks Fifth Avenue in suburban Philadelphia there was a small store tucked in the corner of Center City Gimbel's store. My mother did. One Easter she gave me a shopping experience there that harkened back to the 1940s. I recall standing on a platform in a designer coat while saleswomen--more than one--fetched accessories. I ended up with a wool dress to match the coat, a crepe dress to match the coat lining, shoes, a handbag, gloves and even the right tone pantyhose. Or maybe stockings. It was a long time ago. Shortly thereafter the sixties started. I am glad I had that experience before it was too late. I am sure that kind of shopping experience is still available, but not in my current world.

My mother was all about getting me out--of the house or of our town. She wanted me to have many varied experiences. I think, maybe, so she could have them too. I am grateful she took me along.

Television helped my family eat better

My brother, nine years older, once said to me. "Boy, when we were growing up, it was so all-American, apple pie and Mom." I looked at him as if he were nuts. That was not my experience of childhood or of my mother. A friend, I've long forgotten who, once told me that my mother was "not very motherly." I think she meant it as a compliment. I certainly took it as one.

My mother was a housewife and mother from 1938 to 1971. I don't think she minded the mother thing but she was never into the housewife part. At least as long as I knew her. One of my fondest memories is coming home and finding her sitting in the living room with the woman who came to clean our house -- eating snacks and watching soap operas together. I gave one of my characters a mother like mine - a woman who not only didn't like to perform housecleaning, she didn't want to witness it. 

Recently, I came upon photos of my parents with my brother and sister doing kid activities. Again, not my experience. Ask me about my collection of drink umbrellas. 

The secret of my friendship with my mother is not that she did kiddie activities with me. I did adult activities with her. I was her buddy, her pal for excursions to get her out of the house and away from any related chores.

The lifestyle my mother and I shared was supported by the weekly allowance she received allegedly for the household. From that, she was expected to feed a family of five. Which she did. Every week she would make a list, call a gentleman named Mr. Rossman and read it to him. She would then unlock the back door and, within hours, a carton of groceries would appear like magic on our kitchen counter. The bulk of her allowance went to Mr. Rossman. She stashed the rest away for outings, some just local, but often day trips from our home in Philadelphia to New York. 

She took me on shopping trips and to Broadway shows but, in the early days of television, she soon discovered that TV shows offered free entertainment. She had to cover train fare, taxis, meals and entertainment with what she could save from the food budget. There was nothing you could do about train and taxi rates, and meals with her were never a bargain, so I guess she tried to economize on entertainment. As television grew, she was in. Television audiences paid nothing.

My first free, in-person experience of a TV show was actually in Philadelphia at Action in the Afternoon. Our local CBS affiliate built a small western town behind their studios and every weekday afternoon broadcast a live western. I have no recollection of seeing it on television but I recall a visit to the set with my mother. A cowboy crouched beside me, lowering himself to my level to be nice but I buried my head in my mother's big, wide, 1950s skirt. My mother, however, did not let my reticence deter her. Having exhausted Philadelphia's television resources, we were off to New York.

In the early days, the Today Show might have had a window where you could watch the live broadcast, but no way my mother and I would have been up and in New York in time for that. The show did, however, offer one oddity. They had a camera and a monitor set somewhere in the wall or window of 30 Rock where you could see yourself on television even when the show wasn't on. I vaguely remember my mother taking me there. I don't recall seeing myself but I do remember the black and white screen and people's amazement at seeing themselves on it. My mother would have had to lift me so I could see myself, but I am sure she did. It's the kind of treat she would have wanted me to experience. In those days, seeing yourself on a screen was not commonplace.

The earliest clear, albeit brief, memory I have of traveling with my mother is having lunch or tea at the Palm Court in the New York Plaza. I suspect I was about four because I remember wearing a fancy dress for our trip and feeling too small for my chair. I recall the excitement of seeing the actress, Ann Southern, at a nearby table. Aside from that cowboy from our local station, I don't recall any previous in-person sighting of someone from my TV screen. Ann Southern did not disappoint. She was every inch the star with a mink coat draped over the back of her chair. I think that may have been the same day my mother took me to see The Big Payoff an early television quiz show. I can envision where we sat but I can't figure out how she got me in there. Maybe there was a time when there was no age restriction for TV audiences or maybe she told them if there was an age limitation they should have put it on the ticket. I have an odd feeling it might have been the latter. 

As I got older, my mother included my friends in these trips. I remember bits and pieces. I recall getting interviewed to try out for Password (my friend, Debbie, got an invitation) but not seeing the show. I have no idea who the celebrity guests were. I guess after the excitement with Ann Southern I had gotten pretty blasé.  I know there had to be other shows, but I have no idea what they were. Maybe watching the Game Show Network would conjure a few memories.

When the proliferation of talk shows hit the airwaves my mother latched onto two. The Merv Griffin Show and the Dick Cavett Show. These shows, especially Cavett, had incredible guests. I wonder who they were. Even when I can pinpoint the week I went to Cavett and look at the guest lists, I just cannot remember. I must have carried the blasé thing too far. 

An aside: I know we saw Sonny and Cher somewhere. Not sure if Cavett or Griffin. They were not yet the megastars they became in the early 1970s. My mother became a huge fan but died before they hit it really, really big.

My mother had her fifteen minutes of fame on the Merv Griffin Show. She wasn't seeking it. We'd gone with a friend of mine and her mother. The show decided to play a prank on an audience member. I hate pranks and the one that day was particularly unfunny. I would say that even if they had not played the trick on my mother. They told her that her seat (on the aisle in the balcony) was reserved but she was welcome to sit on the steps to watch the show. I know. Hilarious, eh? I have tried to locate the clip because it shows not only that she was a good sport but that she was gracious about the whole episode. I would have advised the "comedy" writers to find other work.

NOTE: You had a very sad experience at the Merv Griffin Show. A comedian bombed. Deservedly but still it was sad to see. I remember he turned to Merv and said, "Help me, Merv. I'm dying here." The flop sweat was visible. On the way out I heard his mother explaining, "They just didn't understand him." I never remembered his name, so I don't know if he ever pulled himself together, got new material and succeeded. He had a lot of work to do.

My mother watched television at home too. Needed to avoid that housework! So, she knew when The Mike Douglas Show was moving to Philadelphia. She got tickets for the first day and we ended up in the first row. I had to look up that the show featured Vic Damone, Vivian Vance and John Gavin. I only remember John Gavin because by then I was a teenager and he was very handsome. (I think Sheldon Leonard may have been on too, but my Google search showed Sheldon Lewis. Since he had been dead for several years by that time, I am ruling him out.  That I would remember.)

Years later my sister said that she always knew when my mother was planning a trip to New York because we would be eating hot dogs for a week. That wasn't true. I don't think my mother ever ate a hot dog in her life.  I understood my sister's point but I think she was looking at things from the wrong angle. Yes, my mother's food allowance supported our adventures but expensive Broadway shows would have limited the menu. But not television.  Television helped my family eat better. 

And I won't forget, what I did for work . . .

We've all probably done dumb things for our jobs. Driving through a snowstorm. Flying in bad weather. Traveling to a city ravaged by riots. I've done all three but the last one stands out for me. 

The 1980 Miami race riots started in earnest on Sunday, May 18, 1980, following the acquittal of four Dade County Public Safety Department officers in the death of Arthur McDuffie, a forty-something black insurance salesman and Marine.

At that time, my job was flying around the country training people how to use online systems. (Yes, the date is right. There were online systems pre-Internet.) I was due in a Miami law firm on Monday but flew to Florida on Friday to spend the weekend with a friend. As I recall we spent a few days at a theme park. Possibly Busch Gardens. We drove from her house on the beach in St. Augustine. On the drive back, I heard something about the verdict in Tampa on the car radio but didn't make the connection with my business trip to Miami.

Before cell phones, e-mails or texts, I must have given my friend's number to the airline as a contact number. Somehow I got the message to call Eastern Airlines and ended up listening to a tape that essentially said Eastern Airlines will fly you to Miami but we can't guarantee your safety once you get there. In simpler terms, it said, we'll take you if you want but don't blame us if you get killed.

Never once did it occur to me not to go. I had an appointment on Monday. Obviously, the world would end if I did not arrive on time. At least that was how I saw it.

So, I boarded the plane to Miami. I recall nothing until I reached baggage claim. The area was eerily quiet with people wandering around without the usual hubbub surrounding travelers. People frantically, yet quietly, looking for someone to take them away from the airport. Cab drivers were assembling groups of passengers. I had to ask several drivers before someone assigned me to a cab with four other passengers. All four strangers.

Outside in the passenger pickup area, it was deadly quiet. I climbed into the center of the front seat squeezed between the driver and a man returning home to his riot-torn city. None of the passengers spoke as we rode down empty streets through dark and silent neighborhoods. At some point, we drove onto an expressway and I could see lights and smoke in the distance. The troubled area seemed far away. At that point, I did not know there were two concentrations of unrest. 

One by one, the other passengers got out at their homes or hotels. At the last traveler's stop, the driver told me to come along too. He carried my bag into the hotel and spoke Spanish with the desk clerk. I couldn't help noticing my driver sounded a bit desperate. But, there was nothing he could do. The hotel was booked. 

I have to give that driver credit. He could have dumped me. He could have stuck my suitcase inside the door and run. He could have safely driven away before the desk clerk could break the bad news to me. But, he stayed and loaded me and my bag back into the cab to head through the dark, silent night for my hotel. I didn't actually know where that hotel was located, but I had figured out it was nowhere good.

He took me to my Holiday Inn, I think, in Coconut Grove. I remember very little about it except that the desk clerk assigned me a room on the ground floor with a window that opened up onto an alley. In all my years of business travel, I had never been assigned a room with dubious security. This was not the night to try one out. I tend to be an easy-going guest, but even I asked to move to a second-floor room on the inside courtyard. The guy behind the desk didn't protest at all although I wondered if he would try to pawn the first-floor room off on some poor late arrival. If there would be any later arrivals.

I imagine I watched television that night, which I am pretty sure would have been full of bad news--none of which dissuaded me from keeping my appointment the next day. I must have found a cab to take me to the office tower where I was to work. I arrived, settled in and before long was told that I was being sent home--and this was a first--because of snipers.

Now, I know we were on a fairly high floor with windows on three sides, but I still thought I had a better chance of getting shot by a sniper out on the street. It wasn't my call. Everyone was leaving. At least, I did not have a rental car. This was pre-GPS. That was no day to get lost in Miami.

I had an afternoon to kill in Miami but I couldn't leave the hotel. I suspect I had to eat from the vending machine. That happens on business travel. Maybe there was a restaurant. I have no recollection. There was, however, a pool protected on all sides by the hotel. I sat along the side on a bright sunny day while National Guard helicopters flew overhead. Not very far overhead. I remember the noise. I probably recall the choppers being lower than they were. Maybe because  I could see the guards' faces clearly. Maybe because they had weapons in their arms and their legs were dangling over the side of the copter. That probably wasn't the most relaxing afternoon at the pool, but what was I going to do? Go out for a walk?

I have no recollection if I moved on from Miami the next day. I don't know how I got out of town. Mostly, I remember the silent streets at night and the National Guard helicopters during the day.

Now that I am older, I ask myself why I went to Miami. Was it simply the normal reaction? I think so. Was it smart? I don't think so. Was it typical? Yes. I had to support myself. So whenever needed, I climbed on a plane and flew through a thunderstorm or continued to drive in a snowstorm when I couldn't see the car in front of me. I'd like to think I wouldn't do it again, but I have a feeling I would. And not just because I was on my own and needed the job. I had both a work ethic and an exaggerated view of how important my work was. I think a lot of us did. I used to watch all us road warriors dashing around airports off to meetings and events that seemed so critical. If I hadn't gone to Miami, the world would not have ended. No one would have minded if I'd called and said, "I think I'll wait until the shooting stops." But that thought never occurred to me.

In the year of Covid, so many essential workers are putting themselves in danger to keep the rest of us fed and safe. In the year of Covid, so many people are going to work at the risk of their own health and safety. After the year of Covid, when they look back I believe they will think it was the right thing to do. What I was doing was not sufficiently important to risk life and limb. I wish I had realized that then.

NOTE TO SELF: There was a night flying into Atlanta when the co-worker with you was gripping his seat handle. You had the window seat and were watching lightning striking all around you. You found it exciting. What was wrong with you?

NOTE TO SELF: Once driving to Vermont the snow was so thick on I91 that traffic was moving slower than usual but probably ridiculously fast given the conditions. You stayed in line and were happy to follow the leader until he turned off and you became the leader. It was a hair-raising drive. Your then-boss would have expected you to drive on, but your then-boss was nuts. You should have never gone along.

NOTE TO SELF: You just remembered you climbed into the back of a laundry van in Mexico City. Perhaps this is a good candidate for the list. 

© 2021 Jane Kelly