The Thrower Art Gallery

A lot of people don't know that I am an amateur artist, and over the years I have kept some of what I feel are my best work and have decided to do a virtual gallery of them here for your edification.   These go back almost 30 years, as the oldest picture I have is courtesy of one of my former junior high teachers, Mr. Thomas Engleman, who seeing my creation of it back in 1985 offered me a quarter for it.  In 1997, about 12 years later, he sent the picture back to me telling me that it was, to quote "the best quarter he ever invested."  And, that is the picture I will start with here.

The picture is of a big dance band, as at the time I was really beginning to get into that music and was collecting it on LP records.  So, one of the best ways I could express my enthusiasm was to draw it.   There were originally two of these that Mr. Engleman bought from me, and the other one he sent to Henry Boggen, the disc jockey I listened to on Sunday nights on WBT-AM in Charlotte, NC.   Although Henry has since passed away, I always wondered if he still had that picture.

This next picture above I actually won an award in a local high school art contest back in 1987, and it was entitled "Meeting of Concert Violinist and Jazz Orchestra."  I won an Honorable Mention for the artwork, but was also the only person from my high school to win.  

The above picture was created sometime around 1989-1990, during my first year of college when I felt a strong call to the ministry.  This was one representation of the church I wanted to build, but unfortunately my depth perception was a bit off, as you can see by the crooked spire in the center.  Over the next few years, I would create several of the following pictures of this church along the same theme.  Some are more elaborate than others, as on some I omitted windows purposely. 

The story behind the church pictures was a simple one really.  At the time, I was somewhere between being a Southern Baptist (which I would later formally leave in 1989) and a Pentecostal, but I had a vision for a different type of Pentecostal church - it would be a liturgical church!  I could envision the music, the interior, and even the chiming of the carillon in my imagination, and was even convinced that God wanted me to build this.  In a sense, though, I guess I did, but it was in these drawings instead.

   

This picture also dates from around 1989, and is my attempt to fuse a liturgical church with the classic large Pentecostal church as I perceived them in those days.  

The final design I settled on looked like this, and every drawing thereafter would feature a similar design to this, with the twin bell towers and elaborate winding front staircase.  The domes were inspired by my fascination with Eastern Orthodoxy, which I had started to develop at around the time.

As the 1990's progressed, my designs took on more elaboration, if not in detail then in form.  What follows are some similar pictures.

Lest anyone would be denied a shot of the inside of the said church, I also spent some time on detailing that, as the drawing below shows:

A lot of things inspired the above drawing.  At that time, I loved, for instance, watching Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, which is where the pulpit design and the organ came from.  The Eastern Orthodox dome motif also came into play, as well as a central Eucharistic table.  However, staying true to the church being a "legitimate" Foursquare Gospel congregation (the Pentecostal denomination I was part of then), I also had a large choir loft, prayer rails, and overhead screens, not to mention the huge baptistry in the center with the archway.   I was determined to "do church differently" while remaining faithfully Foursquare, and this was what that vision produced.  

However, I didn't just draw churches, but also loved village scenes.  Two in particular were the small towns of my childhood in West Virginia, and the "Cracker towns" of rural Florida, which also enchanted me.   The drawings below represent those.  The church in some of these drawings is particularly disproportionate, as it was usually the first thing I drew.

A mountain village, representing my roots.  This was a later drawing, as I created this sometime around 1999 or 2000.  

An earlier and smaller village, probably created I would say sometime around 1997. 

I have an interesting story behind the above picture.  I had a dream back in 1995 that I visited a small parish church that looked a lot like this, and I wanted to do as much detail of it as I could remember.  The church was like a small Catholic church, but inside the people were praying over the sick and uttering words of prophecy.  The priest, in particular, had a prophetic calling.  The building in the dream was located on the upper slope of a hill street, and although you could not access the front for some weird reason in the dream, I made provision for a staircase in this drawing as you can see.  

This was my interpretation of a Lebanese coastal village, with the majestic tower of a Maronite parish church in front with a priest praying over the town.   These took some work, as drawing towns from a distance required some strategically-placed angular lines.   But, for some reason, it worked!

My rendition of a Florida Cracker homestead.  I love "Cracker Culture" in Florida, and there is an enchantment about those little towns and villages off the beaten path and away from the congestion of the cities.   It is, to me, a lost attribute of Florida that needs to be recovered.

Another of my older pictures depicting my rendition of a Cracker village on a bayou.  Note the old-time Holiness church on stilts to the left.  Again, church drawings often were the first components I worked on with these types of pictures.

Another mountain village picture.  The huge church-like building in the center dominating the picture is a campmeeting tabernacle.  This was created as I was reminiscing one day about the old campmeetings we used to have back in the day when I was much younger.

This drawing is my representation of an Armenian mountain town in the shadow of Mt. Ararat.  The little bearded man in the foreground is a priest.

By 1998 I had gotten somewhat away from church drawings, although on occasion I did sketch some things.  The one below was a sketch I made on a piece of memo paper at work one day of a closeup of the exterior of that dream church I once envisioned. 

By 2000, I was back to drawing orchestras again, and one thing I love to do is to draw the empty bandstand with representations of where all the instruments would be found.  Like the church, in my early years, I dreamed of being the next Paul Whiteman or Freddy Martin, and often wondered what it would be like fronting a 35-piece orchestra.

Finally, I finish up with one of my most recent landscape drawings:

One of the last pictures of my "dream church" I composed sometime around the year 2000 or so.

I hope this will give you a general idea of my artwork, and although it is not the best way of viewing them (I made snapshots of these for the purpose of this virtual gallery), perhaps it will give you an idea of my artistic style.  I don't claim to be a Picasso or anything like that, and these pictures will probably never hang in the Louvre, but they are a part of me.  And with that, I want to close by including a humorous caricature of one of my former supervisors I made a couple of years ago:

Again, hope you enjoy, and will see you next time.

For Simpler Times And Better Days - More Mayberry Needed and Less Jersey Shore

Lately, with all the fuss going on with the elections, and also living in the urban sprawl for so many years, I have become very contemplative of my own past.  As many of you know, I grew up in a small town in West Virginia, and although at times it could be challenging due to the fact I didn't exactly grow up rich, I still miss a lot of things about those days.  As I get older, I really miss them!  There are many people today - mostly 20 and younger - that have no clue about the simpler pleasures in life because they have been spoiled in recent years with smartphones, Playstations, social interaction reduced to MySpace and Facebook, and it just seems as if a cloud of complacency has descended upon many Gen-Yer's.  For instance, I heard a kid in a thrift store one day, as I was perusing LP records to see if anything was worth adding to my extensive collection, say about them "Mommy, what are those?"  The mother, probably in her late 20's, told the kid, "I don't know - maybe it was some sort of frisbee old people played with back in the 1920's."   Just that mentality alone, as humorous as it sounds, says it all. 

Over the past few years, I have been on my own journey of self-discovery, as I have been writing down events of my life as I recall them as well as working on an extensive family tree.  The wealth of knowledge I have discovered (and the internet helps too, as back in the day we never thought to take a lot of pictures, so at least I can find what I am looking for here too!) has made me somewhat more retrospective of my own life.  Looking back on how I grew up, there are a lot of simple pleasures I miss, and sometimes living in the city doesn't help you much to recover a lot of lost territory either.   So today, that is what I wanted to talk about.

I mentioned that I grew up somewhat as what some would call "disadvantaged" - I came from a single-parent home, we didn't have a lot of money, and often in the lack of such things a kid my age then would find solace in reading and then using imagination to explore the world around me.   And, as a kid, I read a lot - by the time I was 12, I had read the whole contents of the World Book Encyclopedia through three times, as well as the entire Old Testament of the Bible, a gourmet cookbook, and three books on World War II history, among other things (for the younger generation, not to sound condescending, but before Kindle we had these things called books made from ink and paper) including a whole 12-volume set of story books called My Book House that was compiled some years earlier by an educator in Illinois by the name of Olive Beaupre Miller.   I also read age-appropriate stuff as well, including Robert Newton Peck's books (I got to know the author as a personal friend over the years, and he is a marvelous person who lives 40 miles from me here in Florida now) and my early exposure to my beloved Armenians, William Saroyan's book My Name Is Aram as well as his two classic short stories, "The Miraculous Phonograph Record of 1921" and "The Parsley Garden."  As a matter of fact, many of the books I read then are now considered "politically incorrect" by the powers-that-be both in Washington and sitting on many public schoolboards, but back then we called them something else - classics!  Do any of you, for instance, ever read the story of the little Black migrant worker kid, Roosevelt Grady?   Those were good stories with solid values!  Many of these things I read due to some initial exposure from school then (our teacher in 5th and 6th grade - I came from a very small school! - was strict but he taught us much) but many of them I also discovered on my own.  And, whether you read them for leisure or as part of a class assignment, they often had the same effect - things in those stories piqued my imagination, and I would often try to put into practice what I had read.   Which leads now to the next part of the discussion.

Reading was by no means the only thing many of us from my generation did.   In those days, we enjoyed doing a lot outside.  Some kids played sports, and although it wasn't my cup of tea personally, that too taught them some important lessons about teamwork.  Play then was not idle entertainment - you learned from it.  Although I wasn't into sports, what I did like to do was fish a lot, as well as learning about wild plants and catching different critters.   Let me spend a few hours around a shallow creek bed, and I would come home with a coffee can chock full of all sorts of things.   Primarily, I caught crayfish (which we called "Crawdaddin'" then), and those were always fun to get your hands on.  Where I grew up at near Grassy Lick Run in Kirby, WV, as a matter of fact, I often found baby crayfish, smaller than a kernel of corn, and caught them by the dozens.  Then there were these odd little critters called water pennies, which looked like tiny pennies under rocks and of course you had to know what you were looking for.   As I read up on those things - I would check out scores of books from the public library about freshwater life (I would have made a great limnologist as a matter of fact!) and then I would see either what I had caught, or I would go looking for some of these things.  That actually made me an ace in Biology later on too.   But, my wildlife collecting was not limited to aquatics, as I also loved haunting a bunch of hazelnut bushes growing just beyond our driveway, where I would often find scores of walking stickbugs, as well as the occasional praying mantis.  I learned from an early age that these stickbugs for some reason loved hazelnut bushes, and come to find out later that is actually one of their favorite foods.  In the fall, I also harvested a lot of the hazelnuts myself - what people will pay $4 a jar for in Wal-Mart these days (hazelnuts, or filberts as some call them, are expensive at times) I got by the bushel for nothing!  And praying mantises - oh what an adventure those were.  For some reason, it was always quite a prize to catch one of those, because then that was probably the biggest bug we had in West Virginia, and it generated fascination.  I remember reading somewhere that people would tie a "leash" on a praying mantis in Vietnam or somewhere, also making it a little house, and of a night it would catch mosquitoes and other pests.  So, I decided to try that, and managed to make a tiny house out of the top of an old Clorox bottle for the next mantis I caught.  I attached the "house" to my bedpost, and when I caught a good-sized mantis, I leashed him with some packing string to the bedpost.  I cannot recall if it worked or not, but it was a good idea (at least at the time!).   When I was around 7 or so as well, I used to also catch Japanese beetles which for some reason loved the flower bushes around my great-grandmother's house in Hendricks, WV.   For some wondering what a Japanese beetle was, it is an invasive species that somehow got loose in the US and would often reek havoc on flowerbeds and gardens.  Back then, we had them all over the place, and they were fun to catch.  They had a glossy brown carapace with a green head, and also had spiky legs.  They were fairly easy to catch, and ironically my catching of those did a great service to my great-grandmother's flowers - she never needed pesticide with me around! 

A major creature that always had my interest as well were toads.  Toads came in all sizes - some were tiny peepers, and others were bigger than my hands.  I mentioned in another story how at times - for some reason it involved church functions! - toads and frogs would get me into trouble.  But, I could not resist catching them.  After a rain, in particular, it was fairly easy to find toads all over the rural roads, and in a night I could sometimes catch a dozen of those.  The last time I actually caught a frog was when I was in my early teens, and that led to a humorous situation.   My family used to like just taking leisurely drives (another lost art today, as everyone is so choked with their own concerns that they don't take time out to just travel - sad really), and on this one particular occasion my grandmother Elsie, my step-grandfather Lonnie, Mom, and I went on one of those trips, exploring the back roads of Hampshire and Hardy Counties.   It was summer, and it had just rained then, and of course the roads were full of toads and frogs.  And, since we were in no hurry, I was catching a bunch of them.   Now, as we were cruising along down these dark country roads in the early evening, one of the frogs got loose, and somehow it made its way to the front seat.   Now, to preface this story,  my grandmother Elsie was not a little woman, OK?  She easily weighed over 300 pounds, and she always wore skirts.  Any rate, we are traveling along, when simultaneously that frog that made its way to the front seat found its way up my grandmother's leg, and at the same time, I opened a can of Pepsi with a "SHHHHHEEEEEEE!" to which Mom hollered "Snake!"  My grandmother went ballistic!  When my step-grandfather brought the car to a screaming halt, my grandmother hops out of the car and is doing some screaming herself as she is jumping around trying to get that "snake" off her leg.  Finally, the frog has had enough of that, and just sort of leaps out of her skirt and lands in some tall grass on the side of the road.  By this time, all of us except my grandmother are laughing hysterically.  That is one of the most fun nights I ever had, and to this day I still chuckle when I picture my rotund grandmother dancing around on that West Virginia country road screaming like a banshee trying to shake a snake off her leg.   If only we had video technology with us then - that would have made a funny YouTube!

Animals were not the only thing I hunted a lot back then either.  For us Appalachian people, wildcrafting is something that is integral to our culture, and from an early age we were taught about certain plants that either were nutritional or medicinal, and it is a passion I still have to this day although I don't do as much of it - wild plants are just not that readily available in the metropolitan Tampa Bay area.   You basically learned the seasons certain things were harvestable, as well as how to find them.   Back in the day, it was more for necessity than it was the hobby it became later when my generation came along, but it was still a good skill to learn.  What I find interesting though is how now these celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay are taking things we used to gather in the wild as a staple and turning them into gourmet delicacies.  Take ramps, for example.   For the person not familiar with mountain culture, ramps are a type of wild leek with broad leaves and a pungent (that doesn't describe it - they reek!) smell that we used to gather in the woods usually after the first snow melt in April.  Back home, a ramp harvest meant at least a month of ramp suppers at churches, fire halls, etc., and many a poor mountain family even made a little extra income off their wild harvest.   The traditional way of cooking them was to saute them in bacon grease or butter, and they were usually cooked with potatoes and/or eggs and served with some sort of beans on the side.   I personally never ate them that way, but also found them to be a great ingredient in soups and sauces though (not to mention they are fairly good raw, but if you are married, do not plan on kissing your wife or husband for a while afterward, because you may be sleeping in a separate bed until the odor wears off!).  Then, a couple of weeks ago, I watched Gordon Ramsay on Master Chef doing a mystery challenge with a bunch of amateur but talented chefs that entailed - you guessed it! - ramps.  Mind you, many of these people had probably never seen a ramp before, so it was actually quite funny to watch them cook with ramps - they really had no idea, not even the best of them!  Any rate, besides ramps I got to know poke greens pretty well, as one summer at my step-grandfather's we ate a lot of those (with a lot of groundhogs too!) and my step-grandfather taught me all about how to harvest them.  Basically, what poke greens (or pokesalad as they are sometimes called) are entail the shoots and tender tops of the pokeweed plant.  The milky substance in the stems of the plant is poisonous, as are the clusters of black berries, but the young leaves are edible and have a similar taste to kale or collards when cooked.   Today, I would not eat them anymore personally, but I would have no problems gathering them.   Also, there was wild garlic, the slightly milder cousin of ramps and much more abundant.  I gathered wild garlic all the way up into my early adult years, as I still value it as a cooking ingredient.   Back in the day though, I would go out and gather whole grocery bags full of it, because it was quite abundant then.  Many people thought of it as a weed, and cattle farmers hated it because it tainted the milk their cows produced, but I thought it was a great commodity.   Any rate, it is really too bad I don't have the access to wild plants like I used to, because there are so many more worth mentioning.

Then there was fishing.  Up until I was about 9, I had never actually fished.  For one I was afraid of water and couldn't swim (still can't to this day) and my contact with a river at that time was skirting the edge and wading in the shallows looking under rocks for critters.  Then, when I was 9, I spent a year with my dad in Brunswick, GA, and he taught me how to fish, and I have enjoyed it since.   My earliest fishing was for crappies and brim in the cattle pond above my grandmother's house in Augusta, WV at the time.  It was fairly easy to catch them, and my favorite fishing spot was an overhanging willow on the shore of the pond that had a deep hole.   I learned to fish two ways then - one was with a conventional rod-and-reel, and the other was with a simpler hand-line.   The hand-line worked fantastic at the pond, because the willow was directly over the hole and I could just drop the line straight down.   Fishing was reserved for the nearby creeks and rivers.   In the Grassy Lick Run in Kirby back then, there was a fairly deep hole almost directly behind our house, and essentially there were two sizeable fish you could catch - chubs and hogsuckers.   Chubs were essentially large minnows that had no real nutritional value and were better as a bait fish, although they could grow up to a foot.   Hogsuckers though were the fun fish to catch.  If you have ever seen one of these fish, they are just plain ugly!  They are often hard to spot, as they are the same coloration as the bottom of the creeks, but they also grew to a good size - some reached 3 feet if you could find them.  They didn't have any nutritional value either - you could eat them, but they were greasy, bony, and by just looking at them you would wonder how anyone could eat something that ugly anyway!  But, some of the poor hillbillies in the area loved them, so when I caught them I would either give them to one of those families that lived in town or feed them to Jill, our dog.   The fun was in catching them, though.  A hogsucker will not bite a baited hook, so you have to be clever with them.  The trick to catching one is to maneuver an unbaited hook as close to their mouth as you can get it, and then give a good yank and snag them.   And, boy, would they put up a fight too!  I guess no one, not even an ugly hogsucker, likes having a hook jabbed in their lip though.   Also, handlines would not work with these - the hole in the creek was too deep where these fish were found, and also you had to be on the lookout for snakes, as the abundant brush and big rocks around would easily harbor both rattlers and copperheads.   So, a rod was much safer.   I later learned how to make my own fishbait too from some fishfood I had from an unsuccessful turn at keeping goldfish at home - the recipe I used was simple; you mixed the fishfood with water and cornmeal, formed it into small balls, and baked it.  Found out later it was a good catfish bait too.   It has literally been years since I fished last, and I have often thought about taking advantage of the many lakes we have here in Polk County, FL, and maybe doing some fishing when the weather cools down in the fall.   There is something therapeutic and relaxing about fishing a quiet lake or stream, and perhaps it would save a lot of people tons of money on therapy if they would learn how to fish.  Besides, these shrinks get paid way too much anyway, if you ask my humble opinion.

The unattractive but fun to catch hogsucker.

Another interesting little fish - less than 5 inches long - that I often caught with my hands in the rock pools in the creek was a curious little thing called a "miller's thumb," or banded sculpin.  A homely little fish, it was a small inedible perch that you could find all over the creeks.  Usually they liked prowling in large rockpiles near or under bridges, and their coloration made them hard to spot.  They were also hard to catch, as they flitted and darted about in such a way that you had to match their speed.  The fact they were a unique little critter made them a prized catch for me as a kid, and I would spend hours sometimes trying to track the little devils down.   They also had voracious appetites, and could crush a small crayfish in their big mouths.   But, you had to be careful catching them, because they hung out in areas that were also perfect hangouts for copperheads.   The creek I first encountered these was Grassy Lick when we first moved to Kirby in 1980 when I was about 10.  Although native to the area, I always was puzzled why they could never be found elsewhere - could have been just the geography of Grassy Lick Run I suppose. 

The elusive "millersthumb," or banded sculpin.

There are many more things that could be said about these simpler times I once knew - sitting up by the radio on summer nights listening to WBT-AM when my big band show was on, building forts in the woods, and hunting down ladyslipper flowers in the pine forest on the ridge above the house.   It was also a time when you didn't have hippies yelling about "global warming" and you still could drink soda out of a glass bottle, and then make ten cents off the empty bottle at the local general store.  And, it was also a time when on Saturday mornings you could look forward to good cartoons (the primetime networks have diminished themselves further by eliminating Saturday lineups like that), and one had a social life - in my teens I was always busy with either church functions or high school band, so I was never bored.   You read books, they sparked the imagination, and you learned something in the process while having fun without some "thought police" telling you that you couldn't do that.   I often miss those days.  Sometimes we didn't have much to work with then, as during part of my childhood I spent at my grandmother's where they didn't even have an indoor bathroom or hot water.  However, I also remember that feel of clothing washed in a wringer washer and air-dried on a clothesline, as well as having homemade piping-hot yeastbread once a week (my grandmother made these huge hotrolls that were delicious, with Robin Hood flour if anyone remembers that).  I often wonder if I am better off now than I was then, or is it the other way around?  I guess I can be thankful for the long way I have come as I have gotten a family, am in graduate school, and have accomplished so much in other areas.  However, those simpler times do beckon at times, and I feel the pangs of homesickness on occasion, but I also know that the best of my experience will always be with me.  And, in writing them down, may they also be a legacy to others, that some may rediscover the simpler way of life one day.  





Polkas and Dance Bands, New Family History, and Other Random Thoughts

I am not writing as much as I usually do, but I have had a couple of things I wanted to talk about today so I figured I would "suck it up" and do just that.  This post may be a little different, but it should also be informative too, so hang on to your hat!

Last Friday, I got some new CD's in the mail of a polka variety, and they were some great stuff.  That, of course, pushes my CD collection to 1095 discs, 5 short of 1100.   I started collecting CD's 17 years ago, although I had been collecting vinyl since I was 10 years old.   Anyone who knows me also knows that my primary musical preference is vintage dance bands - Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk, etc. - yet over the years it has gotten much more complex than even those.  Which is why I am going to talk a little about that, and also do my first-ever directory here of good music sources for any of you with similar interests.

Big bands essentially played dance music, since the first orchestras came onto the scene in the early 1900's.   And, of course, big dance bands didn't just appear out of nowhere - they had roots!  The roots, I discovered, are intertwined with America's own history as a "melting pot" of ethnic groups, and that makes big bands probably one of the most American of musical forms, because they represent everything!  Some of my fellow big band afficianados say the era started with Art Hickman's orchestra in San Francisco in 1913, while others say it was Fletcher Henderson in 1923, and still others maintain that there wasn't a true "Big Band Era" until Benny Goodman supposedly initiated it in 1935.   I don't think any of these are the facts - in reality, it took small bands to make big bands, and it also took a diversity of cultural contributions to simmer into the delicious musical stew known as the big band.   If one really looks at the facts, the true origins of the big bands go back to the late 1800's and early 1900's, when bands playing a lot of different music - jazz in New Orleans, klezmer in the big East Coast cities among the Jewish communities, cowboy string bands in the Southwest, German-Czech-Polish-Slovenian folk musicians forming polka bands up around the Great Lakes region and the upper Midwest, and Latins in the islands, Florida, and the Southwest forming small orchestras to play rumbas, sambas, etc.    Not to mention overseas influences - the bal musette orchestras on the streets of Paris, and the tipicas in Spain, Cuba, and Argentina playing tangos, among others.   Add to that the "chamber" or "parlor orchestras" that played ritzy parties for the upper crust in Boston, Manhattan, and Nob Hill in San Francisco - small ensembles heavy on strings and successfully fusing ragtime and classical so debutantes could dance the soft-shoe with their dapper tuxedoed escorts.   All of that was American entertainment at the turn of the last century - recordings were not abundant, and some that would become big names were still struggling musicians.  It is actually quite unfortunate that many of those little orchestras of various genres were not recorded then, as they would have been a valuable documentary legacy of some great music.  However, there are some new orchestras today, such as the Mont Alto Theatre Orchestra in Colorado and the Lenny DeLux Vaudeville Orchestra in Georgia, that are rediscovering and recording that era of music in stereo, so we now in the digital age have the advantage of hearing what the earlier stuff sounded like.   I also wanted to make mention though, for those who see a totally jazz root of the big dance bands, of the late Will Marion Cook, who was perhaps the first big bandleader ever, as he had a big orchestra in the 1880's that unfortunately was never recorded.   An African-American, Cook was also a prolific composer, and along with fellow African-American composer William Grant Still he created a new concert idiom that a White bandleader some years later, Paul Whiteman, would solidify into "Symphonic Jazz" and some 25 years afterward another White bandleader, Stan Kenton, would take it to even more pioneering extremes.  This too, interesting enough, is all part of the big band legacy as well. 

And, it must be noted that not all big bands were "big."  Some of the greatest recordings of that era were made by small groups and soloists, such as accordionists Charles Magnante and Ernie Felice, small combos such as the Three Suns, and unique groups like the all-harmonica Rascals, led by their zany Russian-born leader Borrah Minnevitch (one member of this group, Armenian-American Jerry Murad, formed an award-winning harmonica trio later called the Harmonicats, and another, a dwarf named Johnny Puleo, formed his own harmonica orchestra).  Then, there were other great personalities - mandolin virtuoso Dave Apollon, pioneering guitarist Les Paul, and small-group jazz combos such as Slim and Slam, the Nat King Cole Trio, Louis Jordan's Tympany Five, and the John Kirby Sextet - all of these were also part of the big dance band soup too.   And, it must be added that the era just didn't start in 1935 and end in 1945 - big bands were still making good records even into the 1980's, and in 1960, one even made the Top 40 - Si Zentner's recording of "Up A Lazy River."  I mean, even Lawrence Welk, the most visible of bandleaders after 1950, still has an audience 20 years after his death with his signature TV show!  I tend to be a lot more all-compassing than many collectors, and I feel as if many big band afficianados miss out on some rare gems because they more or less focus on just the "swing" aspect of the genre or they limit themselves to the 1935-1945 timeframe.   I hope to change that too, as all great instrumental (and some vocal!) dance music deserves to be preserved.

As of last week, I launched a small campaign as a matter of fact to get Jimmy Sturr, the 18-Grammy winning current reigning "Polka King," inducted into the Big Band Hall of Fame and Museum located in West Palm Beach, FL.   I got to actually meet Jimmy in person at the Strawberry Festival in Plant City, FL, this year (he is a nice guy, I might add), and that got my wheels turning.  Jimmy does have a program, if you get satellite, on Friday nights on the RFD-TV network, and he features quality music.  Although he is the reigning "Polka King," and among his accomplishments are his induction into the International Polka Association Hall of Fame as well as being the only dance band/polka band on record to play on the Grand Ole Opry stage, I feel that he deserves recognition for his part in preserving the legacy of big bands as well, which he does with excellence in both his live performances and on television.  I only hope that maybe some fellow big band afficianados will take that into consideration as well - many, unfortunately, are not even aware of Jimmy's existence even, despite the fact he's won 18 Grammys and has had a band for over 40 years.  So, perhaps it is time to introduce this great musician and showman to the wider world.

Me meeting polka legend/bandleader Jimmy Sturr in person at the 2012 Strawberry Festival, Plant City, FL.  He is autographing a CD for me also.

My CD collection now at 1095!!

There are of course other great polka bandleaders of the past that deserve similar recognition - some that come to mind are of course Whoopee John Wilfahrt, who started the first well-known Polka band in New Ulm, MN, back in the 1920's.  Also, there is Harold Loeffelmacher, the late leader of the Six Fat Dutchmen, as well as Will Glahe, whose versatility was both in polkas and in society-style tango music too.  Additionally, there were early pioneers Lawrence Duchow, Romy Gosz, Dick Rodgers, Bernie Roberts, and Larry Chesky, not to mention Slovenian-American legends Frankie Yankovic, Johnny Pecon, Lou Trebar, and Verne Meisner.   Some big band historians do recognize some of them - Richard Grudens, for instance, in one of his books includes Whoopee John, the Six Fat Dutchmen, and Dick Rodgers in his "roll call" of big bands, and others have rightfully included Frankie Yankovic.   I also feel that many great klezmer legends need recognition as well, including late clarinetist Dave Tarras, bandleader Sam Musiker, Naftule Brandwein, Abe Schwartz, and Mickey Katz, among others.   There are so many more that could be mentioned but time or space don't allow.  If conventional big band halls of fame and literature can't recognize these great talents, I am even contemplating doing my own "Big Band Hall of Fame," possibly even virtually if resources don't allow a tangible place, that would include them.  Besides, I owe a lot to polka music for my interest in big bands anyway - as a kid, it was polka that got me interested later on in big bands! 

That being said, I now want to share with you some great resources to find music if you are interested in collecting.   Today, almost anything can be found on Amazon or EBay, and I do shop on those a lot, but over the years I have established a select number of people I deal with on a regular basis that I want to share here for you to take a look at, so let us begin that.

The first resource I want to share with you is one I have personally been dealing with for almost 15 years now, and if you are looking for any vintage big band music on CD, this is your place to find it.  The company is World's Records, and they are based out of Novato, CA, just north of San Francisco.  Ren Brown, the owner, has operated this company for many years, and simply put, if he don't have it, he will find it for you, and if he can't find it, then it simply doesn't exist!  Their website is at www.worldsrecords.com, and you can sign up to receive weekly notifications from them of anything new they have in stock.   

The second source is one of the few places I shop with that unfortunately Worlds Records doesn't stock, and they are based out of Australia.  I have gotten several items off of them over the years, and they have basically reissued every recording Paul Whiteman ever made, as well as excellent material in complete collections of Smith Ballew, Leo Reisman, Freddy Martin, and others.  The company is Crystal Stream Audio, and their website is www.crystream.com.au .   They are also very affordable collections, considering the material you get on them.

A third resource is a good one for getting a lot of bandleader Orrin Tucker's recordings, as well as some excellent material from rare hotel/society bands that has not been issued anywhere else on CD, and the company is Bermuda House, based out of California.   Their CD's are very affordable (around ten bucks each) and they have a lot of material from rare LP's of orchestras such as Ernie Hecksher, Meyer Davis, Ron Howard, Jack Malick, and others.  Their website is http://www.bermudahouse.com/, and their founder, Bob Stone, is also a wealth of knowledge in regard to Orrin Tucker trivia. 

Another source I have found quite good over the past several years is a good friend of mine from Herculaneum, MO, by the name of Mark Caputo.  Mark has several hundred thousand rare radio transcriptions of big band remotes, and practically any big band that has ever been on radio, Mark has a sampling of them somewhere.  He unfortunately does not have a webpage, so in order to contact him, you would need to email him at mmwcaputo@msn.com, or write his address at Mark Caputo, 19 Howe Crossing, Festus, MO  63028.   He will generally charge you about $10 per disc you request, and he makes them to order.  I would suggest requesting a listing from him to see what you are looking for, as he has a LOT!  He will be good to email you that as well upon request. 

Now, we want to talk polka!  My main vendor for polka CD's is Jimmy K Polkas, located in Ohio.  He has an excellent selection of all styles - Tex-Czech, Polish, Slovenian, Dutchmen-style - and he also is pretty easy to order from as well.   His website is http://www.jimmykpolkas.com/index.html.

Another great vendor - who has also become a good friend, as he's a nice guy - is Cy Pfannenstein in Minnesota.   He has a somewhat larger collection than Jimmy K's, but he also has a gift for tracking down something you're looking for if you can't find it anywhere else.   His website is http://www.cysmusic.com/.  

The final resource I wanted to list is a good place to buy vintage klezmer recordings, and that is the Bookstore at the Jewish Workmen's Circle in New York.   They are a little offbase politically, as they are somewhat socialist, but they do manage to maintain a great reservoir of items of Yiddish culture, including a resource for getting some vintage klezmer music in reissue.   Thier website is at http://circle.org/, and you will have to look around a bit to find the bookstore to order from them, but it is there.  

These are just some of the resources I use personally to find good music, and I also have some good ones as well for liturgical music, Southern Gospel, and Assyrian and Armenian music too, although all of that is outside the scope of this article.  Write me if interested though.  Again, if these resources don't have what you are looking for, you can also find a lot of great stuff on Amazon.com as well.  


Any rate that is our musical journey for today, but I wanted to also mention another neat development this week too.  As you have seen, I have posted much about my family history in earlier articles, and on occasion I get these little gems of genealogy from some unexpected sources.  One of those emailed me a couple of days ago, and as it turns out, he is a third cousin to me.   His name is Marcus Briggs Cloud, and my relation to him comes from my great-grandmother, Nettie Richburg Compton, who was the sister to his great-great grandmother, Mary Susan "Sudie" Richburg McLeod.   Marcus is also fascinating in that he is a full participating member of the Muskogee Creek Indian nation, which is a part of our genetic makeup too, as I know I am about 1/8 Muskogee myself.  A Harvard Divinity School graduate, he now teaches at a Muskogee college in Oklahoma, and getting in contact with him yesterday was actually a pleasant surprise, as he is very interesting.   He also educated me a lot about my own Muskogee heritage, as he is a wealth of information about that (he even posts his Facebook entries sometimes in Muskogee language!).  One thing he shared with me was a photo of my great-great grandmother, Parsilla Buckelew Richburg, which I will share with you here too:

My great-great grandmother, Parsilla Buckelew Richburg (1851-1931)

As we continued to correspond, Marcus also shared with me the mystery about the Muskogee blood in our veins and where it was at, and wouldn't you know it, I was looking in the wrong place!  See, for many years I thought the Creek connection came from the Thrower branch of the tree, as a lot of unsubstantiated stories - read that "family legends" - circulated about that, in particular my great-grandmother Carrie Parker Thrower.  However, I was puzzled because I could not find anything, until yesterday when Marcus told me where it was.  Parsilla's grandfather, Richard Taylor, was actually registered with the Eastern Creek Tribe in south Alabama after a major Creek/US conflict occurred at a place called Fort Jackson around 1813-1814 (the Treaty of Fort Jackson, as Marcus told me, happened in 1814 ending the hostilities, but it was a hollow and ambiguous victory depending on which account you hear about it).  So, with documented proof, I can now begin to track that part of my family history, and I cannot express the gratitude I have to my cousin Marcus for his assistance with that - he was a true blessing.   Hopefully, later on, I can document some more as I learn more and acquire more information from my own research. 

That all being said, I want to close now, but Lord willing I will be back again soon.  Take care and God bless.

Life's Choices, Wrong Decisions, God's Provisions...And All That Other Stuff That Could Be The Story Of Our Lives!

Due to some extenuating circumstances, I have not been able to post articles for several weeks, and now I am able to and am happy I am back.   We had a slight disruption in our communications due to changing services, and the fact it took so long for these people to set us up for the services (ugh!).  However, during that time I have had some time to regroup and consider new posts, and as I have done so, I want to begin to take a different approach.   It will take me a little bit to shift gears here, but bear with me as I do so, because it will be a good ride!

I have had some time to ponder things about my life, and although this may overlap slightly with my spiritual perspectives, it is still important.   I imagine that many of you reading this have from time to time wondered about if your life could have taken a different course, what would you have done differently?  As I have been researching my own roots and writing down my life's story over the past few years, I have likewise thought about that.  There are so many things I could have done differently, but due to youthful bliss (or stupidity, depending on perspective) I didn't, and in some ways I believe I am where I am today because of it, for better or for worse.   For instance, I recall the very place where I made some decisions that brought me to this place now, and I really wished I would have taken a different approach back then!  However, it is a fact of human existence that our choices do have consequences, and inevitably we will at some point "miss it," and make an incorrect decision.  I have thought about where I have done this - granted, it was nothing I would say was disastrous or anything mind you, but it significantly redefined my directions a little nonetheless - and as I have done so, a couple of things were revealed to me about that which I am going to share now here.  

The first lesson here is obviously we will occasionally make an incorrect decision, and with that we may lose out on something better.   In my own case, it was a decision about transferring to another school and not staying where I was mainly because I got a combination of bad counsel from some people I looked up to and also my own youthful stupidity.  Back 20 years ago, I was enrolled at a small college in a town called Graceville, FL, in the panhandle of the state.  The school was a small Baptist college, and for most of the time I was pretty secure there because it was where I needed to be.  However, in February of 1990, not long after I made the decision to leave the Baptists and affilliate with a Pentecostal church, I contemplated joining a Pentecostal denomination called the Foursquare Church and eventually did so due to the fact one of my ministry mentors, Dr. Jack Hayford, was a leading figure in that particular denomination.   I got myself involved with this small church in Alabama, and to make a long story short, it was a big mistake doing so!  Now, to this day I still keep in touch with a number of people who were at one time part of that particular congregation (including the pastor back then, who is now retired - the church has long since disbanded though) and I am close with a number of them.  That being said, my decision to go there cannot be blamed upon the church people or the pastoral leadership - it was totally my decision.   However, a few not-so-good experiences happened, I got some bad counsel, and upon acting on that counsel I made a fateful decision in 1991 to attend the Foursquare college in California, and therefore I dropped out of the school in Graceville and headed west, arriving there on New Years Day of 1992.   That plan ended up failing miserably, and within a month I was back in Dothan, AL, and for all intents not able to find a place to live or anything.   It also caused my then-fiancee and I to marry almost out of necessity and too soon (the marriage has been great though, as we have celebrated 20 years recently) and I had to find a way to continue my education fast - and, that is how I ended up graduating from Southeastern University.   And, it was a rough road, probably much rougher than it should have been, although everything eventually settled and my life found its groove.   However, upon looking back on the whole thing, I now know that the original plan I was supposed to have followeed would have been to finish school in Graceville, gotten married a couple of years later than we did, and then life would have been a little more stable for us - not without challenges obviously, but stable.  Also, my choice of church at the time should have been different - on occasion while in Graceville, I did attend services at the First Assembly of God there, which was back in the day an excellent church that I always felt at home visiting.   Ironically, it was their pastor who officiated at our wedding too!  And, although an incorrect decision may not totally derail you and you do find yourself back on the path you are supposed to be on, it is much better when you are more in tune with where you are supposed to be in the first place and stay on the original course.  It took a number of years to recuperate from those decisions, and recently we finally got the message as to where we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to do, and it is good to be back on track again!

Second, through all the above, another dimension was realized that it took me a while to learn but is a valuable lesson - if we are people of faith (Christians) we need to have a total dependance, surrender, and trust in God and His direction for us, as we are imperfect and can screw things up if we are not careful.   I know this is probably something more suitable for my Sacramental Present Truths page, but I am sharing it here for a reason too mainly because it is a part of my personal life story, which is what the articles on this site reflect as well.   I have learned some valuable lessons in the past few years in regard to that, and here are some of them:

1.   It takes good discernment to hear God's voice, and discernment may take time to develop when it comes to yourself.

2.  God wants us to surrender our will to his, and trust him to lead us in the right direction.

3.  Although we may make a wrong decision, God always prepares a detour for us to get back on course, and may use alternative things to get us there too.  

4.  We can learn from mistakes, and indeed should, but we should never wallow in regret over them.

These are important lessons that at times may seem like they come too late, but that enters another thing - God's timing.  I am the most impatient person in the world, and am not too proud to admit it.   And, that being the case, when I have gone through some issues in the past, I have often gotten very frustrated with God's timing (at one point, the mention of that phrase even became a cussword to me).  However, although things may seem to be caving in over our heads, God's timing is always perfect, but that is where the tough part is - it takes literally every fiber of our being sometimes to trust in God with a situation like that, and I am well aware of that, believe me!  Over the years, I have had fights with God, and at times have told him off (I always come back with my tail between my legs though) and the wait is at times worse than the actual situation!  This is especially true when you are waiting to get that right job, and you need it yesterday because things are past due and you are getting threats from the landlady, your car people, etc.  Yet, that call for the job doesn't come, day after day - the silence is deafening.  Then, to complicate the scenario, your phone gets disconnected and any job chance you may have had just got flushed down the crapper.  You stand on promises day and night, you rebuke and bind oppressing spirits...every trick in the book, you try, but the heavens seem too silent.  Then, one day, you get this peace - it is as if you know things will work out, although you haven't seen anything, and a couple of weeks later - voila! - that call for the best job you ever had comes out of the blue, and then it all comes together!  Lest you haven't guessed, I have been there before too - and, it isn't a place I want to revisit again, that is for sure!  Weathering the storm is often the hardest part of  the storm, but that is 90% of the battle.   Also, a lot of it is in our own heads too - there is a reason why in Ephesians 6 we are to have the helmet of salvation upon us, because a lot of the attack we face does come through the gates of the ears, eyes, and other senses and sets up shop in the courtyard (our minds) and can eventually invade the sanctuary (our hearts).  Although in recent years I don't really advocate anyone dealing with Joyce Meyer, many years back she did write an excellent book called Battlefield of the Mind (Tulsa, OK:  Harrison House, 1995) that I still rely on as a study aid today due to its solid content.  One thing she says in this book about that very issue that stood out to me was this:

   Thinking about what you're thinking about is very valuable because Satan usually deceives people into thinking that the source of our misery and trouble is something other than what it really is.   He wants them to think they are unhappy due to what is going on around them (their circumstances), but the misery is actually due to what is going on inside them (their thoughts).  (Meyer, 64)

Reading that, I realized that this has nothing to do with "claiming" anything, but rather taking the apparent "lemon" we are encountering and turning it into lemonade.  If we dwell on the levity of a situation, it can mess with our heads and make us worse off than what the situation actually is, and it is also where we risk doing something dumb because we want to do God's job and fix things ourselves, thus creating a bigger mess.  For instance, there are some people who, in their financial desperation, turn to things like these online cash advances (I never did, because to be honest reading those pages for those things gives me a headache) and then end up in a worse mess later than they were in before.  Some people I have heard have even taken out twenty of those things at once, creating thousands of dollars of unnecessary debt (they would be good candidates for President, based on the performance of our current leader in that regard!) and digging themselves a deeper hole than before.   All of this comes from putting unnecessary obsessive energy into the problem itself and more or less giving that problem more worship than we give God - that, people, is a sin, and that sin is idolatry!  Lest you differ, think about the priority you give your problems versus the time you spend in Bible study or prayers, and think about what gets neglected as well - your other responsibilities, your family, etc.  And, that leads to the next important life lesson I have learned.

If you are put in a situation where you are unemployed, incapacitated, or otherwise inhibited, it is a good idea to focus on some stuff to keep that obsession from controlling your life.  Of course, it should be taken as a time to maybe build upon your relationship with God - you have the time to spend in meaningful devotional practices, so take advantage of that!  Additionally, there are all those projects you have been unable to touch for maybe years, so channel some of that energy into those - things such as genealogy, cooking, a building project, etc., will make your life more meaningful when threats of unemployment or physical disability are there.   Granted, if your financial situation is affected, you may have limits, but that is where you use the brain God gave you for good - use what you have!  You will find that if you keep yourself busy and fulfilled, you are more at peace and God will have the freedom to work behind the scenes to help your situation better.  

There are two things also you need to seek for during a trial like that, as they are the root answer to your prayers for provision.  They are as follows:

1.  Restoration

2.  Stabilization

Maybe not necessarily in that order, but these two things are what we all strive for, and they are not usually going to be instantaneous.  However, they are in God's will - God is in the restoration business, as that is what salvation is all about remember!   And, through restoration comes stability in all areas of life.  You can, and should, pray for those things, and also for a season of protection against the enemy's attacks, especially if you are still healing up.   And, although they may not happen overnight, God's promises in His Book are true, and we need to definitely stand on those and believe for them - one promise is Phillipians 4:19 - God supplying our needs according to His riches in glory.   This is not "blab and grab" theology, but we definitely do need to trust in God's provision, and He will do what He said He would do, but that doesn't include "greeds!"  For instance, if you need transportation, God is not going to necessarily give you a Beemer in your driveway - instead, He may open the door for you, as He did for us a few years back, to get a reliable, affordable vehicle to get you where you need to go.  These TBN preachers really tick me off to that regard because they often spout such nonsense as "God wants us all to prosper," which of course He does, but the twist in their interpretation that makes this into a heresy is that apparently they feel it necessary to tell people that we are all meant to be millionaires or something - hogwash!!   First of all, if that were true, then why aren't the parking lots of their megachurches filled with BMW's and Rolls Royces??  Secondly, how many of us actually need a million bucks, seriously??  I know a lot of us would like a million or two in our bank accounts, but I think the majority of us could manage without it.  When God says He will supply our needs, He does that for us - sometimes it may take a little time to do it, but He will come through.  He knows, for instance, you need income to pay your bills, and that you need the roof over your head, food in your belly, clothes on your back, and other necessities, and He will take care of that.  I cannot tell you how many times in the past when, at the most vulnerable time, God has sent people into our path who have given us a little cash to meet a pressing need when we were lacking, and at one point in time I remember even getting a check from a church in California I didn't know from Adam that provided an electric bill payment when we were short back during my college years. 

That just goes to show that if you take into account what I have said, God then has the liberty to work in your situation. I have often found too that when pressed with a situation, once I stop obsessing over it and get on with life, God works it out somehow.   And, as Acts 10 says, He is no respector of persons, so we are all eligible for that grace and heir to those promises. 

So much more could be said on this subject, and believe me, I have many stories that shaped the words you have just read that I could share in detail if time permitted.  However, you have your own situations in life too that likewise you could relate, and who's to say some of you haven't already figured this out!  Any rate, this was not meant to be a Bible teaching or anything like that, but rather a testimonial of my own experience, although definitely it is the abridged version.   My hope is that it can help someone reading it to be encouraged that God is still sovereign, He does still provide, and His promises are meant for all who trust in them.   God bless until next time.

Mr. Beecher

There are those people you come across in life that just really stand out, and then the real joy is getting to know these individuals as your friends.   In many cases, people like this are often people who either share a common interest, or they are part of an area you are interested in.  Back in 1995, when I was still in college and working at Carpenter's Home Estates in Lakeland, FL, I met one of these individuals who still to this day is someone I will always remember.  So, today, I want to tell you a little about this person.

Gene Beecher was a skinny little fellow who talked a lot, had some radical ideas, and at times could shock some of the people with a more conventional outlook at Carpenter's Estates.  It was really odd how he ended up buying a home there anyway, as Carpenter's at that time was owned by the former Carpenter's Home Church, which back in the day (before its decline) was perhaps the biggest Pentecostal megachurch in central Florida.  At the time, I worked as a security officer there, as Carpenter's was fairly good about hiring students from our college to work, and although it paid hardly anything, it was a good gig for the time.  Although hired by the church, many of us worked at the adjacent property which was a large condominium community owned then by the church and staffed by us as far as security went.  And, a good part of the job was meeting a lot of fascinating people - I could name several I got to know, as it was fairly easy to become close with them as some were lonely and would just come down by the desk to chat or you would see them during rounds, etc.   We also had a few people from the parish Barb and I attended at the time - Christ the King, a charismatic Episcopalian church a short distance from where I worked - and we ran into them on occasion too.   But, few of them stood out as much as Gene Beecher, and as I begin to talk about him, you will see why.

Eugene Beecher, a man of many talents!

Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I have an avid interest in vintage big band recordings, and that being the case, it came as a bit of a pleasant surprise one night when this skinny, wizened, little old man dressed like a beatnik professsor came down to the desk and noticed I was reading George T. Simon's book The Big Bands.  He struck up a conversation about this book, and as I told him a little about my interest, he told me to look in the back of Simon's book.   For big band enthusiasts and collectors, this book is a virtual encyclopedia of practically every orchestra from the time period between the early 1900's and mid-1950's, and at the back of the book Simon has an extensive list of bands that he either didn't have the time to document in detail or had little information on.  So, when this fellow pointed me to the back of the book, I was directed to that section, and reading down the list, I found the name "Gene Beecher" among the orchestra leaders, and lo and behold, I was actually talking to this guy!  Turns out that Gene Beecher - known in his day as the leader of what was called a "Mickey Mouse" orchestra, meaning he played in a similar style to Lawrence Welk (Beecher claimed Welk stole the "Champagne Music" sound from him, as he claimed he was the first to use it, but that remained to be seen since another famous bandleader, Shep Fields, had a similar sound called "Rippling Rhythm" at around the same time) - was a territory band (meaning he was well-known in a certain geographical region, in his case Cleveland, OH) and he was also a childhood friend of a man who was probably one of the greatest legends of the era, Artie Shaw.   When Beecher had his orchestra, he played banjo and guitar, and his wife Lois (who at that time was still alive but suffering from serious dementia) was the "canary" (girl singer, in dance-band lingo) with the orchestra.   He also had a moniker - as did many orchestra leaders - as he billed himself as "Beecher the Music Teacher," and in that he had a similar gimmick with his orchestra as did the better-known Kay Kyser.  Although as far as I am aware no commercial recordings of his orchestra exist, a few years ago a friend of mine, Mark Caputo in Herculaneum, MO - who collects and reissues old big band broadcasts on CD (he has several hundred thousand of them!) happened to have one of Mr. Beecher's old broadcasts from 1939, and I was fortunate enough to get a copy of it from him.    Mr. Beecher was right in that he said his band sounded like Welk's or Field's, and on it he sings a little too, but what is ironic is his own taste in music - despite having what was called a "Sweet Band" in the day, Beecher was a solid fan of people like Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton, which I found paradoxical but interesting.   I suppose this came too from his close friendship with Artie Shaw, whom he chatted with once a week at least on the phone (I tried unsuccessfully to have him get me an autograph of Shaw, but it never happened as Shaw was noted for being a little moody at times with fans) up until he passed away in 2002.   Any rate, after that initial discussion with Simon's book, Mr. Beecher and I had a lot of nightly talks, and it made going to work a joy for a long time.

An advertisement for Mr. Beecher's orchestra from the 1930's - Gene is at the upper left of the page.

As I mentioned, Carpenter's Estates was a retirement condo, and that being said it is also worth mentioning that Mr. Beecher at the time was in his late 80's, although he was very sharp and vibrant.   Although he had never attended college, the man could be called a true intellectual due to the fact he was well-read, and he kept up with a lot of things.  Although I didn't see eye-to-eye with him on politics or religion (he was considered by many of his neighbors, many of whom were conservative Pentecostal Christians, to be an oddball because he called himself a "Zen master," although it was doubtful he actually practiced that - he did that to repel the more over-zealous religious people), he was a fascinating individual with a good heart and we discussed a lot of music.  As a matter of fact, many of us guys who were working security got to know him pretty well, and with a couple of the other guys he also discussed philosophy and art.  Speaking of art, I should mention that for a bit.  When Mr. Beecher retired to Florida I believe in the early 1980's, he took up painting as a hobby, and painted in a style known in the art community as "Naive Art," which was in a similar vein to the late artist Grandma Moses.  This type of art is impressionistic, Dali-esque in that it was a little odd-looking to the untrained eye, but it had a following.  After Mr. Beecher passed away in 2002, his paintings cornered an art market and they are today worth thousands.   Lucky for me, I was able to obtain one, as Mr. Beecher gave me one himself - it is a picture of a creature that looks like a yellow six-legged cat or something.  His son, whom he called "Inky," still manages the propagation of his art today, and I believe personally that was a good thing - if art with that type of value is to be managed, it should be by a family member, and "Inky" Beecher has done well in preserving his father's legacy from his base in New Jersey. 

Although I eventually left Carpenter's upon graduation from college, I still kept in touch with Mr. Beecher up until the time of his passing, although we mostly talked by phone.  In the last couple of years of his life, he had grown somewhat frail, and had to go to assisted living over in what was called the Villa, a part of the Carpenter's complex that provided assisted care for residents that couldn't care as well for themselves.   when he passed away, he was about 92 or 93 years of age if I recall, and he had lived a long, full, and satisfying life.  I still miss him to this day, but fortunately I have many good memories of him as well as even one of his paintings and recordings of his orchestra.   It was truly a blessing to get to know Eugene Beecher as a person as well as a veteran orchestra leader, and I count it as a blessing - few individuals impact me personally like that, and he was one of those definitely.  May he rest in peace, and may his legacy always continue to be celebrated.  

Mama Fazool

There are those people in your life that you encounter that leave an impression, and in some cases it is a mixed impression - you love them and want to strangle them at the same time.  Such is the case with someone we know from years ago, a 92-year-old lady by the name of Frances Williams, whom we affectionately nicknamed "Mama Fazool." (more on that momentarily)

In 2004, we attended a small independent church in Dunedin, FL, called Holy Apostles Catholic Charismatic Church.  It was not a Roman Catholic parish, but was part of a small independent jurisdiction called the Catholic Charismatic Church of Canada, which is made up of former Roman Catholics who wanted to also exercise a Pentecostal spirituality.  The group has a handful of parishes in the US, and one of those was about 30 minutes from where we lived at the time.  Their bishop, Bill (Bishop Angelo) Nicolaro, was a former Italian-American Roman Catholic deacon and New Jersey native who had graduated from the Cursillo program back when the charismatic movement was strong in the Roman Church, and feeling a calling to shepherd, he was spurned by the powers-that-be in the local Roman Church (something many of us know something about!) and therefore sought Holy Orders from Patriarch Andre Barbeau, who was the spiritual head of the Catholic Charismatic Church at that time.  Being the CCC believed in the Ignatian model of ministry, it allowed its clergy to be married, and thus Bishop Angelo was able to eventually be consecrated a bishop, and in true fashion as an Ignatian-model bishop, he remained pastor of the parish as well.   "Father Bill," as we called him, was also assisted by another priest, Fr. Larry Upham (a former Episcopalian) and Deacon Mark Bryan, a practicing attorney by trade, and Deacon Donald Staley, who like myself was from a Pentecostal background.  A spiritually-expressive group, Holy Apostles Parish would be a church home for us for a couple of years, and it was there we met an eccentric octegenarian Italian lady by the name of Frances Williams, and this is now her story.

The one and only "Mama Fazool," Frances Williams.

Although "Williams" was not a very Italian-sounding name, Frances was widowed, and her late husband was a non-Italian.   A native of Binghamton, NY, she was very vocal and proud about her Italian heritage, which she expressed mostly in her cooking, and in particular her homemade pasta e fagioli, which she considered her signature dish.  And, that is how she got her nickname, Mama Fazool.    In reality, any stereotypes about Italian ladies all being great cooks though was shattered by Mama Fazool - in reality, she was not that great a cook, but we humored her a lot as she was an old lady.   For a "foodie" like myself, she was a little too sloppy with her cooking for my taste (canned beans in the pasta e fagioli, for one), and oftentimes she could cook some downright nasty stuff - she bragged, for instance, about putting pigs' feet, beef tripe, and chicken lips, among other things, into her pasta sauce.  She also suggested, on one occasion, that we could get creative with our Thanksgiving leftovers - including the turkey trimmings, stuffing, and even the cranberry sauce! - by dumping it all into a pot and making a soup out of it (we graciously declined that suggestion by the way - yuck!).   To her credit though, she actually did have a gift for baking, and she created some really delicious cookies, most notably her homemade pizzelles (a type of light waffle-like cookie, usually flavored with vanilla, chocolate, lemon, or aniseseed, that was prepared on a special type of iron heating appliance).   I personally wouldn't mind having the recipe for those for my food blog, to be honest!  You can buy pizzelles in the store, and while they are good, the homemade ones are much more tasty.  Anyway, her cooking was part of the story, as there are so many more things to tell about her.

Let's see - where do we begin??  Ah yes - Mama Fazool was the consummate opportunist, and if she could take advantage of a free car trip, she would.   A typical outing with her usually involved hitting practically every thrift store, yard sale, and garbage pile on the side of the road she would encounter, and that led to a couple of amusing situations with her.  One day - I think we were coming back from church, and we took her that day as her usual ride, her neighbor Pat Savage, was out of town - we were passing on Alternate 19 in downtown Dunedin, FL, when Mama Fazool just happened to see a yard sale that got her attention.   Mind you, if you saw this woman's small apartment, it would be easy to conclude that the last thing she needed was more junk, as she had bric-a-brac all over the place in her house.   So, like a little kid seeing the  entrance to the Chuckie Cheese, she started hollering "OOH! OOH! OOH!" and of course my dear wife Barb, who is a sucker for this stuff, had to stop.   We get out, and Mama Fazool is flitting from table to table of this thing as fast as her walker could take her, until she happens upon this metal container.  She is picking this thing up, looking at it, and this look comes in her eyes and then she says it - "This would store a lot of cookies!"  However, upon looking at it, I asked her, "You do know what that is, right?"  "Well yes - it's a cookie jar!"  "Um no..." I respond.  "That is an urn for someone's cremains."   Being a superstitious old guinea (this is a woman who performs a spell every New Years Eve to exorcise the "evil eye" out of her house, as well as religiously reading horoscopes, etc.) the urn went back on the table and nothing more was pursued concerning it.   I don't think the idea of snicker-doodles coated with someone's charred spleen appealed to her either, thank goodness!

Her exploits at Mass were also legendary.  Fr. Bill loved to razz her, as she often set herself up for some friendly banter, and he like most of us loved the crazy old bitty.   Some of the other church folk though didn't take her exploits as lightly though, including her neighbor and weekly ride, Pat Savage.  Pat was a very devout lady, former charismatic Baptist, who was also a retired school teacher and thus she could be pretty straight-laced.   However, Pat was also one of the most sincere people I had ever met, and she lived her faith, although if people didn't understand or know here they could easily get the impression she was uppity.  Pat was also very intelligent, and she taught a ladies' Bible study that later expanded to include all the adults who wanted to participate, and she did a capable job of it.  On one occasion, she wanted the class members to say a few words about some Biblical prophets she assigned to each person.  Mama Fazool was assigned Jonah, and of course to "help" her out she came over to our house and we showed her that VeggieTales movie Jonah, which although cute (who doesn't love talking vegetables after all, right?) was not exactly the version Pat was looking for.  So, when it came time for Mama to give her little presentation, she told people about how God punished the people of Nineveh by slapping them upside the head with mackerels, and that Jonah was cursed for his disobedience by being turned into an asparagus and getting eaten by a vegan whale.  If only my Old Testament professor, Dr. Jerry Lee, were alive, he would be rolling over in his grave over that one!  And, Pat almost went to her grave over it, as Mama Fazool almost gave the poor woman a stroke!  It was obvious her Bible knowledge was minimal, for although she knew there was somebody named Jonah in the Bible, she didn't know where he was in there or much else beyond that.  But, it was a funny story regardless.   Plus, I think on the trip home that day she learned a little something, as Pat gave her a talking-to.

Mama Fazool in front of the sanctuary at Holy Apostles in Dunedin, FL.

A third story took place on the weekend of my 35th birthday in November 2004.  Anyone who knows me knows that I love Persian and other Middle Eastern food, and Clearwater has a restaurant called the Mirage Grill that serves some of the best.  When Barb asked me where I wanted to have my birthday dinner, of course I said the Mirage, and I wanted Mama Fazool to come with me.   That turned out to be an experience in more ways than one!  For one thing, I got put on the spot by the live entertainment, a belly dancer, and I was a little embarrassed (although I can laugh at it now though!).  But, then there was Mama Fazool - she really got into the spirit of things when she was doing a sort of convalescent conga/bunny hop with her walker and the belly dancer, tooting the horn on the walker as she went.   That is one of those occasions when a video camera would have come in handy.  Then she started waving around her hanky to the beat of the music, which caught the attention of a seventy-something-year-old Coptic man at the next table - I explained to her that by waving that hanky in some Middle Eastern cultures, she was saying she was open for marrying.  Upon telling Fr. Bill about it the next day, he asked how many camels we could have traded her for, as he got a big kick out of it too.  

All-in-all, I have a lot of fond memories of this old crazy Italian, as she was a lot of fun and also had a giving nature.  However, she could also drive you crazy, as she was as mentioned earlier the consummate opportunist.   One night at an Albertson's - mind you, this was at 10 at night too! - she spent 45 minutes haggling over a pack of wieners with a bag boy, and she would also make odd requests like asking someone to take her to pick up underdrawers for her son, who was in his 50's, disabled, and lived fairly close to her.   However, she was definitely never dull to be around, and she loved life.  In time, we lost touch with her, although I learned that she had moved up to North Carolina with her daughter.  She is now 92, very much alive, and probably driving her daughter as crazy as she drove everyone else, yet she was someone you couldn't help but love either.   May she live to be a hundred and cook enough pasta e fagioli and pizzelles to feed all of North Carolina.