Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Steubenville
The article in a recent New York Times concerning an alleged rape of a high-school girl by two star football players on the Steubenville, Ohio high-school football team resurrected memories of my time living in Steubenville.
During World War ll my parents and I lived in Steubenville when I attended junior high-school and half of my freshman year in high-school. Steubenville and Weirton West Virginia across the Ohio River were a center for steel mills spewing out war materials for the military. My father was an electrician for the Pennsylvania Railroad helping to keep the trains running smoothly, also valuable to the war effort.
The local newspaper, the Herald Star, was my first employer. I had a paper route of more than a hundred customers. This was before TV and everyone took the paper. My route was contained in a few city blocks. A group of us who had routes would wait each afternoon at the neighborhood grocery store for our bundled papers. Often to pass the time, we would play touch football in the street, dodging the busses as they went by. After the paper truck dropped our papers off, we would untie them and put our papers in a bag with a shoulder strap and walk our route folding as we went and throwing the papers onto the waiting porches. There was an art to this. A missed porch meant regaining the paper and making sure it reached its chosen target. Saturday morning was collection day, and we went door to door to each customer for payment, taking the collection down the hill to the paper office to pay for the papers we had received, keeping a small portion for our daily efforts.
But about the NY Times article. It’s point was that two local star athletes were likely to go unpunished for their heinous acts against a drunk and almost comatose young girl because the high-school football team was the main prideful organization in a now declining rust-belt community. This team had won state championships in a competitive group of high-schools up an down the Ohio River. Schools such as Martins Ferry, Akron, and Massilon, the home of Paul Brown who started a career in that high-school that ended as the coach of one of the greatest professional football teams, which is still named for him. The local pride in the Steubenville team was more important than the wellbeing of that young woman to some, including the school officials and the coach.
What happened to me is minor compared to the experience of that poor girl, but it is indicative of the same attitude, and I have never forgotten it.
The high-school, when I attended it, was large and intimidating to me. The event I remember took place in the gym. It was the first gym class of my freshman year. The gym was dark. After the instructor took attendance he disappeared. I later realized that he was giving the upper-class men a chance to haze the new freshmen. I did my best to be as unobtrusive as possible. I saw some of my fellow freshmen being worked over pretty well. After a bit there was a very large person standing in front of me and I was certainly apprehensive. He looked at me for a few seconds, took his right foot and swiped my feet from under me. I crashed to the floor and lay there hoping nothing else was going to happen to me.
I found out later that the large person was Don Joyce, the star quarterback of the football team. When attending a game, I noticed that he was also was the punter. It was a cold winter game, and he was punting with a bare foot. He went on to be a lineman for the Minnesota Vikings.
I later moved to a smaller city near Pittsburgh and played on an inept football team. But even there several hundred fans would turn out on Saturday afternoon to see our attempts at the game. As in Steubenville football mania existed because nothing else much happened in the town. This kind of hero worship corrupts sports and results in the events written about Steubenville and Penn State and many other schools around the country and I am afraid it cannot be reversed.
Monday, July 16, 2012
My Life in Art: The Army
The summer after college graduation I applied to Yale Drama School to study set design. And was accepted.
That summer I was invited to do sets at a summer theater on Long Island, the Gateway Theater. It was a theater in a barn and a theater-in-the-round. Not too many sets needed for that type of staging. I did do some props when needed and also played a few bit parts. I was a clown in the “Little Prince”, and played a dual role in the “Mad Woman of Chaillot.” I was a rag picker and a baron, roles that required costume changes between the acts. As a baron I needed to be serious while Robert Duvall, a fledging actor playing the part of a poor man, offered me all his money. He was hilarious. I don’t understand why he has never played a humorous role during his illustrious career.
When I got home at the end of the summer I received a notice that I had been drafted. The Korean War still needed recruits. Of course Yale had to be put off. I don’t imagine they ever missed me.
I passed the physical and was put on a train to Fort Belvedere in Maryland, and then another to Fort Knox Kentucky, the home of the Third Armored Division, General Patton’s group. But it was my misfortune to be placed in infantry basic training. I was placed in an eight week training program. They asked if anyone wanted to attend Officer’s Candidate School and if course I applied. Thus, after three weeks of training I was transferred to a sixteen week training program. This meant, of course, that it would take nineteen weeks to complete basic training. That included two weeks on the rifle range with our M1A1’s, bivouacking in January, many hikes with our equipment on our backs, and other treats.
At the end of basic, I was assigned to an eight week leadership school, in a holding pattern, until a decision was made on whether I was officer material. It turned out, I wasn’t. But somehow the fact that I had had art training was known to those who ran the school and there was an opening in the Training Aids Unit. Thus, after completing the program, I was kept there, as permanent party, instead of being sent off to the front lines in Korea.
For this I must thank Sgt. Jerry Allison, who was in charge of the unit. He would have a great influence on me. He had studied with Frank Riley at the Art Students League and was an accomplished illustrator. Seeing his work, I began to think I would rather do that than make a career of the theater. I had taken a leave in New York City to see my friend Jon Jostyn and had visited a Mrs. Kelley, who produced shows at the Roxie and convinced me that to become a set designer was not an easy road. My goal was changing.
I was to remain in training aids for the next year doing training aids charts, names on helmet liners, fancy desk plates for officers, and signs that said “Keep off the Grass”
That summer I was invited to do sets at a summer theater on Long Island, the Gateway Theater. It was a theater in a barn and a theater-in-the-round. Not too many sets needed for that type of staging. I did do some props when needed and also played a few bit parts. I was a clown in the “Little Prince”, and played a dual role in the “Mad Woman of Chaillot.” I was a rag picker and a baron, roles that required costume changes between the acts. As a baron I needed to be serious while Robert Duvall, a fledging actor playing the part of a poor man, offered me all his money. He was hilarious. I don’t understand why he has never played a humorous role during his illustrious career.
When I got home at the end of the summer I received a notice that I had been drafted. The Korean War still needed recruits. Of course Yale had to be put off. I don’t imagine they ever missed me.
I passed the physical and was put on a train to Fort Belvedere in Maryland, and then another to Fort Knox Kentucky, the home of the Third Armored Division, General Patton’s group. But it was my misfortune to be placed in infantry basic training. I was placed in an eight week training program. They asked if anyone wanted to attend Officer’s Candidate School and if course I applied. Thus, after three weeks of training I was transferred to a sixteen week training program. This meant, of course, that it would take nineteen weeks to complete basic training. That included two weeks on the rifle range with our M1A1’s, bivouacking in January, many hikes with our equipment on our backs, and other treats.
At the end of basic, I was assigned to an eight week leadership school, in a holding pattern, until a decision was made on whether I was officer material. It turned out, I wasn’t. But somehow the fact that I had had art training was known to those who ran the school and there was an opening in the Training Aids Unit. Thus, after completing the program, I was kept there, as permanent party, instead of being sent off to the front lines in Korea.
For this I must thank Sgt. Jerry Allison, who was in charge of the unit. He would have a great influence on me. He had studied with Frank Riley at the Art Students League and was an accomplished illustrator. Seeing his work, I began to think I would rather do that than make a career of the theater. I had taken a leave in New York City to see my friend Jon Jostyn and had visited a Mrs. Kelley, who produced shows at the Roxie and convinced me that to become a set designer was not an easy road. My goal was changing.
I was to remain in training aids for the next year doing training aids charts, names on helmet liners, fancy desk plates for officers, and signs that said “Keep off the Grass”
Saturday, January 21, 2012
My Life in Art, Part2
My mother suggested that I attend a small religious college in southern Illinois. My high school was in a rust-belt suburb of Pittsburgh. The building had been condemned and the curriculum should have been. I had taken four years of Latin because Miss Nessbit was the best teacher in the school and made that dry topic fascinating. There were no art classes. I never took a book home and got good grades. I really hadn’t given college a thought and easily acquiesced to her proposal.
I spent the summer after high school loading baggage into Greyhound busses at the Pittsburgh terminal on the graveyard shift, three to eleven PM. It is called that because one loses touch with the rest of the world. You are out of sync with everything. So I was ready, in September, for a new experience. And I was more than ready to leave Carnegie.
I took the train to Alton, Illinois and disembarked with my meager wardrobe and no idea of what I was headed toward. I was greeted by a small bus nick-named the Blue Goose. A few students and their luggage were loaded on the well-used vehicle and we headed into rural Illinois. As we rumbled the twenty country miles to the campus, I, a city boy, became nervous about what I had committed myself to. Alton was on the Mississippi River across from St. Louis and the college was also on the river situated on three hundred foot bluffs. The view across the river into the farmlands of Missouri was spectacular.
Since my topic is art, I will briefly say that the small campus was inhabited by dedicated professors, and small classes, and an embracing experience enabled me to mature at a gradual rate, and prepared me for life after college. I did find that my meager high school education had not equipped me for the intellectual atmosphere of college, and I bumbled through most classes. I still have dreams about not being prepared for some mysterious class. But I became dedicated to making art.
The art department was a small wooden building that was so fragile that the the floor shook when walked on. The main instructor was a small dapper man named James Green who was a New England trained watercolorist. He was facile with the medium and easily turned out paintings of boats and fanciful scenes the were reminiscent of Maine and Massachusetts. He sold these pleasing paintings to alumni and parents, and was the only professor who drove a Cadillac convertible. He created an atmosphere that let one create in their own way. He had a collection of books and magazines that led me to admire artists like Lionel Feininger, John Marin, Graham Southerland, and John Piper.
Watercolor was my first medium and is still an important part of my work.
My first art class at the college was a basic one, and I tried to paint a man on a raft poling his way on an unnamed body of water. A student assistant was conducting the class that day. When I asked him what I needed to do with the painting, he said calmly, “Burn it.” He wasn’t wrong.
Being a small liberal arts college, I was able to take the usual courses in English, the sciences, history, and even logic. Other activities included taking part in sports and singing in a quartet and the college choir. Since school and the army did not permit me to start a professional career until I was twenty-seven, I have wondered if it would not have been better to have gone to a professional art school directly. But since all of these varied activities are still part of my life, I think it has enriched my life profusely.
If you remember, cartooning was my early goal. Now I was introduced to painting. I can’t remember any direct instruction I received, but found my own way mostly by looking at reproductions of other artists’ work. In my senior year, I entered a juried exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum. It was a large semi-abstract watercolor done on matt board. It was accepted. I think I surprised the art department.
One of the projects I was asked to do that year was a set design for “The Seagull”, the theater production that Spring. When the curtain opened, the set received applause. I thought, “I must become a set designer.”
I graduated with a BA degree prepared for nothing professionally. When young, that doesn’t seem a problem.
I spent the summer after high school loading baggage into Greyhound busses at the Pittsburgh terminal on the graveyard shift, three to eleven PM. It is called that because one loses touch with the rest of the world. You are out of sync with everything. So I was ready, in September, for a new experience. And I was more than ready to leave Carnegie.
I took the train to Alton, Illinois and disembarked with my meager wardrobe and no idea of what I was headed toward. I was greeted by a small bus nick-named the Blue Goose. A few students and their luggage were loaded on the well-used vehicle and we headed into rural Illinois. As we rumbled the twenty country miles to the campus, I, a city boy, became nervous about what I had committed myself to. Alton was on the Mississippi River across from St. Louis and the college was also on the river situated on three hundred foot bluffs. The view across the river into the farmlands of Missouri was spectacular.
Since my topic is art, I will briefly say that the small campus was inhabited by dedicated professors, and small classes, and an embracing experience enabled me to mature at a gradual rate, and prepared me for life after college. I did find that my meager high school education had not equipped me for the intellectual atmosphere of college, and I bumbled through most classes. I still have dreams about not being prepared for some mysterious class. But I became dedicated to making art.
The art department was a small wooden building that was so fragile that the the floor shook when walked on. The main instructor was a small dapper man named James Green who was a New England trained watercolorist. He was facile with the medium and easily turned out paintings of boats and fanciful scenes the were reminiscent of Maine and Massachusetts. He sold these pleasing paintings to alumni and parents, and was the only professor who drove a Cadillac convertible. He created an atmosphere that let one create in their own way. He had a collection of books and magazines that led me to admire artists like Lionel Feininger, John Marin, Graham Southerland, and John Piper.
Watercolor was my first medium and is still an important part of my work.
My first art class at the college was a basic one, and I tried to paint a man on a raft poling his way on an unnamed body of water. A student assistant was conducting the class that day. When I asked him what I needed to do with the painting, he said calmly, “Burn it.” He wasn’t wrong.
Being a small liberal arts college, I was able to take the usual courses in English, the sciences, history, and even logic. Other activities included taking part in sports and singing in a quartet and the college choir. Since school and the army did not permit me to start a professional career until I was twenty-seven, I have wondered if it would not have been better to have gone to a professional art school directly. But since all of these varied activities are still part of my life, I think it has enriched my life profusely.
If you remember, cartooning was my early goal. Now I was introduced to painting. I can’t remember any direct instruction I received, but found my own way mostly by looking at reproductions of other artists’ work. In my senior year, I entered a juried exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum. It was a large semi-abstract watercolor done on matt board. It was accepted. I think I surprised the art department.
One of the projects I was asked to do that year was a set design for “The Seagull”, the theater production that Spring. When the curtain opened, the set received applause. I thought, “I must become a set designer.”
I graduated with a BA degree prepared for nothing professionally. When young, that doesn’t seem a problem.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
MY LIFE IN ART Part i
My Life in Art
Part 1
My mother claimed that I drew pictures on the carpet with my baby shoe. Many years later I have switched to pens and brushes. The recent DeKooning exhibit at MOMA showed his later years consumed by large paintings with simple sweeping brush strokes. Older artists often turn to abstraction or simpler approaches. My later years have taken a different direction. For reasons unbeknown to me each painting seems to get more intricate and my number 2 brush needs to often be replaced. It has not always been that way.
The first drawing lesson I can remember happened in a back pew of the First Presbyterian Church in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania. I was young, pre-school, and the sermon was boring. To keep me occupied my father took a pencil and paper and showed me how to draw the profile of an automobile. I then proceeded to copy it. This was the last interest my father ever showed in my art career that I can remember. My parents never asked at any time what I was doing with my art that I can think of. I was pretty much a self-starter.
My next interest in art came with the inception of the comic book. When Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Submariner first appeared, I was in junior high-school and just the right age to latch on to them. They were a dime apiece, and I had a paper route that supplied me with the income I needed to purchase a few each month. Once again I would copy them with little pencil drawings. By doing this I got to know the different styles of drawing. My favorite was a character named Black Hawk. He led a band of heroes who each had a weird little airplane styled to the personality of the pilot. Of course month by month one of the heroes was killed by our Axis enemies.
At this time we lived in Steubenville Ohio. We seemed to live in communities that fostered singers. Canonsburg was the home of Perry Como, and Steubenville of Dean Martin. I never met either of them but I believe Perry’s father cut my hair, being one of the local barbers. If I had had the insight to save those early comic books I would be a multi-millionaire today.
The first serious interest in art came when I was in high-school, if you can consider cartooning a serious art. I read all the weekly magazines; Colliers, The Saturday Evening Post, and Life. They were filled with wonderful story illustrations and cartoons. I became a student of the different cartoonists and decided I would like to be one of them. I began to submit ideas by mail to these unknown cartoon editors and acquired a large pile of rejection slips. Of course my style of drawing was primitive since I had no training. It is interesting to me that the present cartoon editor of the New Yorker seems to have reincarnated my style of the time. This, I fear, is a comment on the quality of drawing of the cartoons in that magazine now.
Which brings me to my discovery of that publication. I heard somehow that there was a magazine that had the best cartoons called the New Yorker and I became the only student in my ghetto high-school who read The New Yorker from cover to cover each week. And the cartoons were glorious. Peter Arno, Charles Addams, Mary Petty, Whitney Darrow Jr., and many many others inspired me. The ideas were sophisticated and the drawings were exquisite. I still remember Mr. Darrow’s cartoon of a nanny reading to her young wards, “Coked to the gills, Rodney lunged toward the supine figure on the red plush couch.”
I also submitted to the New Yorker my ideas with the same results. I never sold one, but became more educated by that magazine than by my feeble high-school curriculum.
I just became aware that Woody Allen was supporting his family by selling jokes when a sophomore in high-school. I’m afraid I didn’t have that same success, but art was now part of me and I had begun.
Part 1
My mother claimed that I drew pictures on the carpet with my baby shoe. Many years later I have switched to pens and brushes. The recent DeKooning exhibit at MOMA showed his later years consumed by large paintings with simple sweeping brush strokes. Older artists often turn to abstraction or simpler approaches. My later years have taken a different direction. For reasons unbeknown to me each painting seems to get more intricate and my number 2 brush needs to often be replaced. It has not always been that way.
The first drawing lesson I can remember happened in a back pew of the First Presbyterian Church in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania. I was young, pre-school, and the sermon was boring. To keep me occupied my father took a pencil and paper and showed me how to draw the profile of an automobile. I then proceeded to copy it. This was the last interest my father ever showed in my art career that I can remember. My parents never asked at any time what I was doing with my art that I can think of. I was pretty much a self-starter.
My next interest in art came with the inception of the comic book. When Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Submariner first appeared, I was in junior high-school and just the right age to latch on to them. They were a dime apiece, and I had a paper route that supplied me with the income I needed to purchase a few each month. Once again I would copy them with little pencil drawings. By doing this I got to know the different styles of drawing. My favorite was a character named Black Hawk. He led a band of heroes who each had a weird little airplane styled to the personality of the pilot. Of course month by month one of the heroes was killed by our Axis enemies.
At this time we lived in Steubenville Ohio. We seemed to live in communities that fostered singers. Canonsburg was the home of Perry Como, and Steubenville of Dean Martin. I never met either of them but I believe Perry’s father cut my hair, being one of the local barbers. If I had had the insight to save those early comic books I would be a multi-millionaire today.
The first serious interest in art came when I was in high-school, if you can consider cartooning a serious art. I read all the weekly magazines; Colliers, The Saturday Evening Post, and Life. They were filled with wonderful story illustrations and cartoons. I became a student of the different cartoonists and decided I would like to be one of them. I began to submit ideas by mail to these unknown cartoon editors and acquired a large pile of rejection slips. Of course my style of drawing was primitive since I had no training. It is interesting to me that the present cartoon editor of the New Yorker seems to have reincarnated my style of the time. This, I fear, is a comment on the quality of drawing of the cartoons in that magazine now.
Which brings me to my discovery of that publication. I heard somehow that there was a magazine that had the best cartoons called the New Yorker and I became the only student in my ghetto high-school who read The New Yorker from cover to cover each week. And the cartoons were glorious. Peter Arno, Charles Addams, Mary Petty, Whitney Darrow Jr., and many many others inspired me. The ideas were sophisticated and the drawings were exquisite. I still remember Mr. Darrow’s cartoon of a nanny reading to her young wards, “Coked to the gills, Rodney lunged toward the supine figure on the red plush couch.”
I also submitted to the New Yorker my ideas with the same results. I never sold one, but became more educated by that magazine than by my feeble high-school curriculum.
I just became aware that Woody Allen was supporting his family by selling jokes when a sophomore in high-school. I’m afraid I didn’t have that same success, but art was now part of me and I had begun.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
MY LIFE IN ART
Prologue
Recently the Curator for Contemporary Art at the Princeton University Art Museum was heard to say that whatever appears not to be art was “Art”. Turning this into a syllogism I assumed that whatever, then, appears to be art is not “Art”.
I know this seems to be a great leap forward, but after browsing through the contemporary galleries in Chelsea and the Museum of Modern Art I began to think the concept correct. What is now being accepted as contemporary art has little to do with what I have thought to be art. Specifically, my own work as an artist probably is no longer art.
I don’t do conceptual art, although I think every painting has some sort of concept, however old fashioned. I don’t do installations. I must admit I’m not handy at building things. And I don’t do videos. I do not feel qualified to judge these new versions of art, unless seventy years of attendance at movies, now called film, has any judgmental validity.
You will notice that I haven’t mentioned painting as a category of contemporary art. I do think there are great living painters still working today, but I get the feeling that more and more they are thought of as part of history.
Which brings me to my own personal dilemma. Since I no longer seem to do what is called Art in the contemporary world, what is it I do? If I am no longer an artist, what can I call myself? I have to find another genre or category into which I can fit.
I admit that some consider me elderly. I was fired from my last university teaching job by an art faculty that did not consider the drawing and painting skills I taught valuable enough to be part of a computerized curriculum. So age may be a factor. I do know that my work will increase in value after I have gone to that great art studio in the sky. I have even pondered faking my own demise to watch it happen, but that may be tempting fate. At any rate, I’m probably a part of history now, however minor a part that may be.
One day my wife, the excellent artist, Lucy Graves McVicker, and I were waiting at the train station to go to New York City, when we heard this conversation.
First Gentleman: “Don’t you have a seat in Club 100? (Club 100 was a special chair car on an earlier express train for high-powered executives. You had to wait for a member to die to get elected to the vacant seat. I believe inflation has changed the name to Club 200)
Second Gentleman: “Yes, but I find this later local more convenient for my time schedule at the office”.
First Gentleman: “Then why do you keep your seat in Club 100?”
Second Gentleman: “Well, because, to tell you the truth, I want it mentioned in my obituary in the Times.”
Moral: We’re all looking for our place.
Since none of the skills I have developed during my lifetime are any longer valid in the art world, do I create my own world? Perhaps, as I develop these blogs on my life in art, I will find my place.
Recently the Curator for Contemporary Art at the Princeton University Art Museum was heard to say that whatever appears not to be art was “Art”. Turning this into a syllogism I assumed that whatever, then, appears to be art is not “Art”.
I know this seems to be a great leap forward, but after browsing through the contemporary galleries in Chelsea and the Museum of Modern Art I began to think the concept correct. What is now being accepted as contemporary art has little to do with what I have thought to be art. Specifically, my own work as an artist probably is no longer art.
I don’t do conceptual art, although I think every painting has some sort of concept, however old fashioned. I don’t do installations. I must admit I’m not handy at building things. And I don’t do videos. I do not feel qualified to judge these new versions of art, unless seventy years of attendance at movies, now called film, has any judgmental validity.
You will notice that I haven’t mentioned painting as a category of contemporary art. I do think there are great living painters still working today, but I get the feeling that more and more they are thought of as part of history.
Which brings me to my own personal dilemma. Since I no longer seem to do what is called Art in the contemporary world, what is it I do? If I am no longer an artist, what can I call myself? I have to find another genre or category into which I can fit.
I admit that some consider me elderly. I was fired from my last university teaching job by an art faculty that did not consider the drawing and painting skills I taught valuable enough to be part of a computerized curriculum. So age may be a factor. I do know that my work will increase in value after I have gone to that great art studio in the sky. I have even pondered faking my own demise to watch it happen, but that may be tempting fate. At any rate, I’m probably a part of history now, however minor a part that may be.
One day my wife, the excellent artist, Lucy Graves McVicker, and I were waiting at the train station to go to New York City, when we heard this conversation.
First Gentleman: “Don’t you have a seat in Club 100? (Club 100 was a special chair car on an earlier express train for high-powered executives. You had to wait for a member to die to get elected to the vacant seat. I believe inflation has changed the name to Club 200)
Second Gentleman: “Yes, but I find this later local more convenient for my time schedule at the office”.
First Gentleman: “Then why do you keep your seat in Club 100?”
Second Gentleman: “Well, because, to tell you the truth, I want it mentioned in my obituary in the Times.”
Moral: We’re all looking for our place.
Since none of the skills I have developed during my lifetime are any longer valid in the art world, do I create my own world? Perhaps, as I develop these blogs on my life in art, I will find my place.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
RUTH AND CARL
My earliest memory is not a pleasant one. My father, mother and I were living with my mother’s parents. It was a large brick house in Canonsburg, PA. It had a spacious yard and a barn in back to store large equipment my grandfather sold in his hardware store. It also had a chicken coop which was my five year-old hideout. I do not now remember what I had done, but I had displeased my father, and fearing his anger I ran as fast as I could to escape him. After some distance he caught me and tucked me under his arm and stomped back into the house. He carried me up to my parents’ bedroom and taking a leather soled slipper began to spank me.
At this point, hearing my screams, my mother came into the room and told him to stop. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said to him. It was then he uttered those fateful words, “He’s yours.”
It turned out, he meant it. My relationship with my father from then on was distant. I must say, here, that my parents never deprived me of anything I needed and supported all my chosen activities. But my father never joined me in any of those activities. When I was playing high-school football, knowing him to have been a fine athlete, I asked for any tips he might give me to improve my inexperienced game. His answer was that my coaches would help me
At another time I must have expressed interest in the trumpet. He bought me one and handed it to me. He was a musician and had played the trumpet, but offered no instruction. I had no idea what to do with the instrument and put it away, never to play.
Carl McVicker was the second son in a family of eight children, four boys and four girls. My grandfather McVicker, for whom I was named was an immigrant Scot who had become a superintendent in a Western Pennsylvania coal mine. He died when I was quite young. I only remember him sitting in a living room chair with a blanket on his knees. My grandmother (and I don’t remember her first name} was a German immigrant from a family named Fehl.
I know that at least five of the children graduated from college. Sandy, a World l veteran, became an engineer. John was an educational administrator. Edna, a musician, married a bank executive. Esther became a nurse and married an oil engineer. Minnie was a school teacher.
Ann, the youngest, married and lived with her husband who’s profession was unclear, lived, it seemed, in various trailer parks. I long ago lost track of them.
Henry, the black sheep, was a bit of a gigolo,and escaped Canonsburg leaving behind an illegitimate daughter whom the McVicker clan never accepted. Only my parents kept contact and offered help and sympathy to the distraught mother. I later discovered Henry, as an assistant golf pro at a Los Angeles country club, picking up the balls at the driving range. Being the handsome fellow he was, he married a wealthy real-estate agent who loved him dearly and took care of him. But he ultimately left her and married a younger woman by whom he had another daughter.
My father did not go to college. It has been my suspicion that he may have been dyslexic. He had many talents. After his six-year unemployment during the depression, he did many things, among them, selling Electrolux vacuum-cleaners. His last working years were spent as a machinist in Southern California aircraft parts factory. But for many years he was employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad as an electrician. He could do anything with his hands, another skill he never passed on to me.
But his main love was singing. He had taken singing lessons from a fine teacher in Pittsburgh and become the baritone member of the Red Arrow Quartet. The quartet was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Railroad as representatives of the railroad all over the country. Their gimmick was that they were singing railroad workers. They were some of the first to perform on the new communications medium, radio, singing on KDKA, one of the first stations in the USA. These were the most happy days of his life, I believe. But the Depression descended on the country, and the first thing the PRR did was not only discontinue the quartet, but fire them as railroad workers. His singing career then became secondary. He sang as a church soloist and doing what are now called gigs at weddings and funerals and such.
Ruth Washabaugh met Carl in the church choir. I know little of her childhood. She had two sisters, Margaret and Alice. They all went to Geneva College, a Covenanter school. Margaret married a chiropractor and Alice, a dentist. After college Ruth became an elementary school teacher, a profession she maintained all her adult life, finally retiring in her seventies. As in all times of economic downturn both parents must work, and her income carried us through the tough years of the Depression when Carl was unemployed.
Ruth and Carl were married and became a couple dedicated to each other in every way. She to his talent and he to her intellect and stability. I still remember Sunday afternoons in my grandmother’s living room. Aunt Minnie would be at the piano, and a few family members would sit appreciatively while my father would go through his repertoire, all the baritone classics including “The Road to Mandalay.” Ruth adored his musical talent and he bowed to her every wish and and decision. This included being a constant chauffeur. She was never confident driving a car.
Although Carl was honest with all, to the point of tactlessness at times, Ruth would defend him fiercely. As she was the most loyal daughter, she was also the totally loyal wife.
She had strong views on many things. Many of them were political. At one time during the Depression, she was employed in Washington PA, the county seat, as an evaluator to determine who was eligible for welfare (at that time called relief). It was not supposed to be a political appointment, but a Republican administration was voted into office, fired her, and gave her job to a person whom she thought unworthy. That act was never forgiven till her death at 93. We all remember her shaking her finger and commentating about some news report on the TV that displeased her. And this was before Fox News!
In their late years, Carl, though physically able, was more difficult to care for. We would take them weekly to their favorite deli, and he would insist on his hamburger with butter on the roll and coffee “with the meal!” Badgered waitresses were a bit frightened when he would grab their wrist to make sure they got the proper instructions. As he declined mentally, ritual was what he latched onto to remain stable. My mother had reached her limit when one afternoon he suffered a stroke and was taken to the hospital. He fought desperately not to be taken from his home.
In the hospital, he insisted that Ruth not come to visit him. And she didn’t. I would see him daily, and try to comfort him. He had tubes coming out of every body opening and was not happy. They talked on the phone, but never saw each other again. He died after a few days in the hospital.
Ruth lived with us a short time, but we could not give her the complete dedication and chauffeuring services Carl had. She decided to return to her home territory in Western Pennsylvania to a Covenanter retirement home. There were friends from college there, and my beloved cousin, Jeanne, supplied all her extra needs weekly.
I would visit when I could, and we would have discussions of past times. I was an only child, and I knew that, because of the difficult birth, the doctor had advised no more children. Because of that she had had an abortion, and a later miscarriage. She told me she had never enjoyed sex and felt she had missed something.
She also seemed unaware of my distant relationship with Carl. I have felt that their complete dedication to each other left little room for me. Although I was free to pursue my chosen activities, they didn’t take part. Ruth never came to a sports event that I was part of, although I was on varsity teams in both high school and college. And she was surprised when a teacher told her I was master of ceremonies at the annual high school band concert.
However, my favorite memories of my childhood were times when something would amuse both Ruth and me and we would fall into uncontrollable laughter. It was those moments of shared understanding that I cling to.
At this point, hearing my screams, my mother came into the room and told him to stop. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said to him. It was then he uttered those fateful words, “He’s yours.”
It turned out, he meant it. My relationship with my father from then on was distant. I must say, here, that my parents never deprived me of anything I needed and supported all my chosen activities. But my father never joined me in any of those activities. When I was playing high-school football, knowing him to have been a fine athlete, I asked for any tips he might give me to improve my inexperienced game. His answer was that my coaches would help me
At another time I must have expressed interest in the trumpet. He bought me one and handed it to me. He was a musician and had played the trumpet, but offered no instruction. I had no idea what to do with the instrument and put it away, never to play.
Carl McVicker was the second son in a family of eight children, four boys and four girls. My grandfather McVicker, for whom I was named was an immigrant Scot who had become a superintendent in a Western Pennsylvania coal mine. He died when I was quite young. I only remember him sitting in a living room chair with a blanket on his knees. My grandmother (and I don’t remember her first name} was a German immigrant from a family named Fehl.
I know that at least five of the children graduated from college. Sandy, a World l veteran, became an engineer. John was an educational administrator. Edna, a musician, married a bank executive. Esther became a nurse and married an oil engineer. Minnie was a school teacher.
Ann, the youngest, married and lived with her husband who’s profession was unclear, lived, it seemed, in various trailer parks. I long ago lost track of them.
Henry, the black sheep, was a bit of a gigolo,and escaped Canonsburg leaving behind an illegitimate daughter whom the McVicker clan never accepted. Only my parents kept contact and offered help and sympathy to the distraught mother. I later discovered Henry, as an assistant golf pro at a Los Angeles country club, picking up the balls at the driving range. Being the handsome fellow he was, he married a wealthy real-estate agent who loved him dearly and took care of him. But he ultimately left her and married a younger woman by whom he had another daughter.
My father did not go to college. It has been my suspicion that he may have been dyslexic. He had many talents. After his six-year unemployment during the depression, he did many things, among them, selling Electrolux vacuum-cleaners. His last working years were spent as a machinist in Southern California aircraft parts factory. But for many years he was employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad as an electrician. He could do anything with his hands, another skill he never passed on to me.
But his main love was singing. He had taken singing lessons from a fine teacher in Pittsburgh and become the baritone member of the Red Arrow Quartet. The quartet was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Railroad as representatives of the railroad all over the country. Their gimmick was that they were singing railroad workers. They were some of the first to perform on the new communications medium, radio, singing on KDKA, one of the first stations in the USA. These were the most happy days of his life, I believe. But the Depression descended on the country, and the first thing the PRR did was not only discontinue the quartet, but fire them as railroad workers. His singing career then became secondary. He sang as a church soloist and doing what are now called gigs at weddings and funerals and such.
Ruth Washabaugh met Carl in the church choir. I know little of her childhood. She had two sisters, Margaret and Alice. They all went to Geneva College, a Covenanter school. Margaret married a chiropractor and Alice, a dentist. After college Ruth became an elementary school teacher, a profession she maintained all her adult life, finally retiring in her seventies. As in all times of economic downturn both parents must work, and her income carried us through the tough years of the Depression when Carl was unemployed.
Ruth and Carl were married and became a couple dedicated to each other in every way. She to his talent and he to her intellect and stability. I still remember Sunday afternoons in my grandmother’s living room. Aunt Minnie would be at the piano, and a few family members would sit appreciatively while my father would go through his repertoire, all the baritone classics including “The Road to Mandalay.” Ruth adored his musical talent and he bowed to her every wish and and decision. This included being a constant chauffeur. She was never confident driving a car.
Although Carl was honest with all, to the point of tactlessness at times, Ruth would defend him fiercely. As she was the most loyal daughter, she was also the totally loyal wife.
She had strong views on many things. Many of them were political. At one time during the Depression, she was employed in Washington PA, the county seat, as an evaluator to determine who was eligible for welfare (at that time called relief). It was not supposed to be a political appointment, but a Republican administration was voted into office, fired her, and gave her job to a person whom she thought unworthy. That act was never forgiven till her death at 93. We all remember her shaking her finger and commentating about some news report on the TV that displeased her. And this was before Fox News!
In their late years, Carl, though physically able, was more difficult to care for. We would take them weekly to their favorite deli, and he would insist on his hamburger with butter on the roll and coffee “with the meal!” Badgered waitresses were a bit frightened when he would grab their wrist to make sure they got the proper instructions. As he declined mentally, ritual was what he latched onto to remain stable. My mother had reached her limit when one afternoon he suffered a stroke and was taken to the hospital. He fought desperately not to be taken from his home.
In the hospital, he insisted that Ruth not come to visit him. And she didn’t. I would see him daily, and try to comfort him. He had tubes coming out of every body opening and was not happy. They talked on the phone, but never saw each other again. He died after a few days in the hospital.
Ruth lived with us a short time, but we could not give her the complete dedication and chauffeuring services Carl had. She decided to return to her home territory in Western Pennsylvania to a Covenanter retirement home. There were friends from college there, and my beloved cousin, Jeanne, supplied all her extra needs weekly.
I would visit when I could, and we would have discussions of past times. I was an only child, and I knew that, because of the difficult birth, the doctor had advised no more children. Because of that she had had an abortion, and a later miscarriage. She told me she had never enjoyed sex and felt she had missed something.
She also seemed unaware of my distant relationship with Carl. I have felt that their complete dedication to each other left little room for me. Although I was free to pursue my chosen activities, they didn’t take part. Ruth never came to a sports event that I was part of, although I was on varsity teams in both high school and college. And she was surprised when a teacher told her I was master of ceremonies at the annual high school band concert.
However, my favorite memories of my childhood were times when something would amuse both Ruth and me and we would fall into uncontrollable laughter. It was those moments of shared understanding that I cling to.
Friday, April 1, 2011
SPORTS
The apocryphal story is that my father scored a touchdown while unconscious. Although I never saw him participate in any sport, his legend lived. I did not follow in his footsteps, and since we had a hands-off relationship, he gave me no hints as to any ways to improve my feeble athletic skills. Once, when I was trying to play high-school football, I asked for such aid, and he merely told me that my coaches would help.
The first active sport I remember taking part in was running home from school in first and second grade from a bully. I’m not sure whether the villain was male or female.
In later grades I was an vigorous roller-skater. We would strap those cheap metal skates on and try, going as fast as possible, to jump as many side-walk blocks as we could. I often landed on my nose or chin.
Other sports were kick-the-can and touch football. These were played in the street while waiting for the papers to be delivered for our paper routes. Often we were dodging the city buses. I was in junior high-school at this time in a medium sized city, Steubenville, Ohio. This was when I discovered my true love, basketball. But I guess it should really be called mini-basketball. Our court was an alley. Our basket, as such, was the space between a garage door track and the garage itself, and our ball was a tennis or small rubber ball. This bogus game really took hold of me and I continued to play, in one form or another, until I was in my fifties.
My first gym class in the large high-school was surprising. The instructor left the gym in order that the the older boys could beat-up on the freshmen. I doubt if the PTA would approve of this today. One of the older “boys” was Don Joyce, who later on would play tackle for, I believe, the Minnesota Viking. He and others would prowl around seeking those they wished to punish. I stood as inconspicuously as I could in a corner, pretending to be part of the wall. But the dreaded Don came toward me, looked me over, and kicked my feet from under me. I lay there quietly, while others took worse beatings. At that time, the Don was playing quarterback on the Steubenville team. That high-school league included Akron and Massilon, where Paul Brown started his illustrious coaching career. The Don would punt in the coldest winter games with a bare foot.
My father was a peripatetic railroad worker. I went to at least four different grade schools, and now, in the middle of my freshman year, he was transferred to Carnegie, PA. Thus I went from a large urban school, where gym class was the highest sporting achievement I could possibly attain, to a small rust-belt high-school with only five hundred students. But in Western Pennsylvania football was king. As a result, in the first class I attended, a school mate leaned over and asked, “You do football?” Of course I knew I was expected to answer in the affirmative, and I did. Little did the questioner know that my only experience playing football, beyond the previously mentioned touch football was a game or our own devising. Four or five of us would take a football to a vacant lot and throw it in the air. Whoever caught it was fair game, and would run with it until pummeled by the others. Then the ball would be thrown up again, and the process repeated.
Fortunately I arrived in Carnegie too late in my freshman year to participate in any sports activity. The other sport was basketball, my favorite, played only to maintain the football players’ conditioning over the winter. But in late August of my sophomore year I reported for football practice. It consisted of two weeks of two-a-day practices in the most humid hot part of the year before the regular season began.
We were issued equipment; shoulder, rib, and hip pads, cleated shoes, and helmets. My equipment was so antiquated that I had to tape the thigh pads to my legs because the pockets in my practice pants had been destroyed. And my leather helmet (yes , I said leather) was at least twenty years old. The scrub team got the dregs of the equipment.
The first day consisted of calisthenics and drills, for which I was not in condition.
The second day I could barely get out of bed. Everything ached. And the cleats made the condition of my feet unbearable. I did get foot pads to help with that situation.
Our locker room was in the basement of our antiquated high school. It was rumored that it had been condemned for many years. The room was cold and damp. The sweaty uniforms did not dry from day to day. I still remember putting on clammy jock straps each day. I don’t remember how or when our equipment got laundered.
There was a half-mile walk from the school to the football field. Later in the fall, this was pleasurable, but in August it was just another ordeal.
As the days went by, the team began to run plays. The coach knew pretty well who his better and experienced players were. The new people, like myself, were to become defensive fodder for the first team to run plays against. One day there seemed to be a dearth of centers. Not knowing what position I should play, I volunteered. And so I was a center for the rest of my football career, such as it was.
In those days one played on both offensive and defensive teams. As a center I became a line backer on defense. One day the coach decided that he would try our first string tackle at fullback. We were still using the single wing formation, so the ball was centered directly to Carmen Tavoletti, the largest player on our team. Quite suddenly, a large space opened up in front of me as our scrub defensive team got out of the way and I was aware that Carmen was pounding directly toward me. Not knowing what to do I lowered my head and went directly into him. My ancient leather helmet collided with his thigh and caved in, and so did Carmen who came up limping. I was unconscious for a brief moment. But the coach picked me up and held me perpendicular while he praised my courage to the rest of the team. I believe this may have been the highlight of my football career. Incidentally, it ended Carmen’s fullback experience. He returned to his tackle position.
This also made me official third string center. About midway through the season, in a game our first string center hurt his shoulder. And, for no apparent reason, the second string center passed out. I was to go in the game, a situation I was wholly unprepared for. One of the managers put his arm around my waist to encourage me, and asked why I was shaking. At this point we had switched to the T-formation. All I had to do was hand the ball back to the quarterback on the proper count. He started the count: “Hut-two-three-four----------”. When he reached twelve he shouted desperately, “Center the ball, damn it!” I remember none of the rest of the game.
The tragedy of my football career happened in my senior year. I had spent my grade-school years in Canonsburg. We were scheduled to play the Canonsburg team at a time when they were undefeated and we definitely were not undefeated. We were given little chance against them. There were even a couple of childhood friends on their team. It was in Canonsburg, and some of my cousins were in the crowd.
We played beyond our ability and even scored the first touchdown, which was called back, the ref claiming our end had pushed off the defensive player. The game remained scoreless into the fourth quarter and a scoreless tie would have been a moral victory for us. Although I had been kneed in the groin by one of my childhood friends, I had come back in the game and played well, particularly backing up the line on defense. But at one point we needed to punt. As center I had to throw the ball back to the punter, from between my legs, about fifteen yards. I have small hands, and this procedure was always an adventure for me. This time I threw it over the punters head, a Canonsburg player recovered the ball near their goal-line, and they quickly scored the winning touchdown. My heart was broken. I wept.
Later in the season, I had a rib broken and played little after that. I was happy to be done with football.
There will be more sports in a future blog.
The first active sport I remember taking part in was running home from school in first and second grade from a bully. I’m not sure whether the villain was male or female.
In later grades I was an vigorous roller-skater. We would strap those cheap metal skates on and try, going as fast as possible, to jump as many side-walk blocks as we could. I often landed on my nose or chin.
Other sports were kick-the-can and touch football. These were played in the street while waiting for the papers to be delivered for our paper routes. Often we were dodging the city buses. I was in junior high-school at this time in a medium sized city, Steubenville, Ohio. This was when I discovered my true love, basketball. But I guess it should really be called mini-basketball. Our court was an alley. Our basket, as such, was the space between a garage door track and the garage itself, and our ball was a tennis or small rubber ball. This bogus game really took hold of me and I continued to play, in one form or another, until I was in my fifties.
My first gym class in the large high-school was surprising. The instructor left the gym in order that the the older boys could beat-up on the freshmen. I doubt if the PTA would approve of this today. One of the older “boys” was Don Joyce, who later on would play tackle for, I believe, the Minnesota Viking. He and others would prowl around seeking those they wished to punish. I stood as inconspicuously as I could in a corner, pretending to be part of the wall. But the dreaded Don came toward me, looked me over, and kicked my feet from under me. I lay there quietly, while others took worse beatings. At that time, the Don was playing quarterback on the Steubenville team. That high-school league included Akron and Massilon, where Paul Brown started his illustrious coaching career. The Don would punt in the coldest winter games with a bare foot.
My father was a peripatetic railroad worker. I went to at least four different grade schools, and now, in the middle of my freshman year, he was transferred to Carnegie, PA. Thus I went from a large urban school, where gym class was the highest sporting achievement I could possibly attain, to a small rust-belt high-school with only five hundred students. But in Western Pennsylvania football was king. As a result, in the first class I attended, a school mate leaned over and asked, “You do football?” Of course I knew I was expected to answer in the affirmative, and I did. Little did the questioner know that my only experience playing football, beyond the previously mentioned touch football was a game or our own devising. Four or five of us would take a football to a vacant lot and throw it in the air. Whoever caught it was fair game, and would run with it until pummeled by the others. Then the ball would be thrown up again, and the process repeated.
Fortunately I arrived in Carnegie too late in my freshman year to participate in any sports activity. The other sport was basketball, my favorite, played only to maintain the football players’ conditioning over the winter. But in late August of my sophomore year I reported for football practice. It consisted of two weeks of two-a-day practices in the most humid hot part of the year before the regular season began.
We were issued equipment; shoulder, rib, and hip pads, cleated shoes, and helmets. My equipment was so antiquated that I had to tape the thigh pads to my legs because the pockets in my practice pants had been destroyed. And my leather helmet (yes , I said leather) was at least twenty years old. The scrub team got the dregs of the equipment.
The first day consisted of calisthenics and drills, for which I was not in condition.
The second day I could barely get out of bed. Everything ached. And the cleats made the condition of my feet unbearable. I did get foot pads to help with that situation.
Our locker room was in the basement of our antiquated high school. It was rumored that it had been condemned for many years. The room was cold and damp. The sweaty uniforms did not dry from day to day. I still remember putting on clammy jock straps each day. I don’t remember how or when our equipment got laundered.
There was a half-mile walk from the school to the football field. Later in the fall, this was pleasurable, but in August it was just another ordeal.
As the days went by, the team began to run plays. The coach knew pretty well who his better and experienced players were. The new people, like myself, were to become defensive fodder for the first team to run plays against. One day there seemed to be a dearth of centers. Not knowing what position I should play, I volunteered. And so I was a center for the rest of my football career, such as it was.
In those days one played on both offensive and defensive teams. As a center I became a line backer on defense. One day the coach decided that he would try our first string tackle at fullback. We were still using the single wing formation, so the ball was centered directly to Carmen Tavoletti, the largest player on our team. Quite suddenly, a large space opened up in front of me as our scrub defensive team got out of the way and I was aware that Carmen was pounding directly toward me. Not knowing what to do I lowered my head and went directly into him. My ancient leather helmet collided with his thigh and caved in, and so did Carmen who came up limping. I was unconscious for a brief moment. But the coach picked me up and held me perpendicular while he praised my courage to the rest of the team. I believe this may have been the highlight of my football career. Incidentally, it ended Carmen’s fullback experience. He returned to his tackle position.
This also made me official third string center. About midway through the season, in a game our first string center hurt his shoulder. And, for no apparent reason, the second string center passed out. I was to go in the game, a situation I was wholly unprepared for. One of the managers put his arm around my waist to encourage me, and asked why I was shaking. At this point we had switched to the T-formation. All I had to do was hand the ball back to the quarterback on the proper count. He started the count: “Hut-two-three-four----------”. When he reached twelve he shouted desperately, “Center the ball, damn it!” I remember none of the rest of the game.
The tragedy of my football career happened in my senior year. I had spent my grade-school years in Canonsburg. We were scheduled to play the Canonsburg team at a time when they were undefeated and we definitely were not undefeated. We were given little chance against them. There were even a couple of childhood friends on their team. It was in Canonsburg, and some of my cousins were in the crowd.
We played beyond our ability and even scored the first touchdown, which was called back, the ref claiming our end had pushed off the defensive player. The game remained scoreless into the fourth quarter and a scoreless tie would have been a moral victory for us. Although I had been kneed in the groin by one of my childhood friends, I had come back in the game and played well, particularly backing up the line on defense. But at one point we needed to punt. As center I had to throw the ball back to the punter, from between my legs, about fifteen yards. I have small hands, and this procedure was always an adventure for me. This time I threw it over the punters head, a Canonsburg player recovered the ball near their goal-line, and they quickly scored the winning touchdown. My heart was broken. I wept.
Later in the season, I had a rib broken and played little after that. I was happy to be done with football.
There will be more sports in a future blog.
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