Happy New Year!

The Holy Family box is on its way to the recycling facility. I assume it will be back next year:) Places are closing early for New Years celebrations. It is suppose to be cool tonight for people out celebrating. I am hoping to stay up until NY turns midnight to see what Anderson Cooper and Kathy G. can do to make us laugh. I hope they leave their clothes on this year!

Holy Family

Day after Christmas and when I went to the dumpster, the Holy Family was sitting in the recycle dumpster. Hopefully, it was just the cardboard box....but you never know....

Olgivanna Wright

Many years ago I worked for a company near Spring Green, WI that would do work for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. They would ask that the drawings be delivered so a conversation could be had with the person working on the project just to make sure everyone understood the symbols and information on the drawing. One day I was finishing up my explanation with an architect in the grand drafting room at Taliesin when Mrs. Wright entered the room. She came over and asked who I was. I told her. She then invited me to her private quarters for cookies and tea. Her quarters had a grand view toward the east. We sat at the table near the windows and she proceeded to ask me questions about what was going on outside of Taliesin. We talked about government. We talked about the arts. The tea and cookies arrived and they were excellent. She expressed dismay that she did not get out much. I suggested that since she was the owner of the place she could do what she pleased. She was amused by that suggestion. We had a simple conversation which began several years of delivering small projects to Taliesin so that Mrs. Wright could have conversations with me. One time she suggested that she invited me into her quarters to make Wesley Peters mad since she never allowed him in there. A couple of times, I got to meet Svetlana Stalin who was married to Wesley Peters. I held their daughter for a short time during one visit while Svetlana and Mrs. Wright had a private conversation. I have read that Mrs. Wright tried to manipulate the people around her. Perhaps she was using me to make some of the staff mad. I never particularly felt that way. I did tell her of meeting her husband. After I finished the story, she laughed and laughed. She said many people had told her that they had met Frank Lloyd Wright. She said my story sounded just like the Frank she was married to. She told me she did not view her husband so much an architect, but more of an artist. That has always made sense to me. If you view his creations as art, they are very vibrant....more to follow.

Little Oscar smelled of beer and cigarettes

One of the joys of summer is seeing the wiener-mobile as they travel the country. Some people do not like wieners, but they make a tasty treat at baseball games and summer pick nicks. When I was a kid, I remember the first time the wiener-mobile came to our town. At that time, there really was a Little Oscar who was a little person. He rolled into our town. There was a crowd of kids with the parents standing in the back. The door opened and out popped Little Oscar. I was at the front of the crowd and it sort of pushed us up against him. I was kind of surprised that he smelled of cigarettes and beer. Good times were being had as he rolled down the road apparently. He got the crowd to move back and pretty soon, the parents had stepped away to talk. As soon as he realized they could not hear him, he started to say some pretty salty things to us kids. We all learned some new words that day. Of course, when we tried them out on our parents, we got to taste bars of soap. They wanted to know what hoodlum of the town was teaching us sailor language. As kids, we were pretty truthful. When we told them it was Little Oscar, we got to eat some more soap. It was not good to lie to your parents, they said. Over the years I have met a number of people who worked at Oscar Mayer who all said that Little Oscar had quite a dirty mouth on him. He was told to keep it shut, but he had learned how to teach the kids a lesson, I guess. The people who knew him also said he was very fond of his cigarettes and beer. We actually had a friend named Oscar. We used to sing a rather ribald version of the wiener song about wanting to be someones wiener so all the girls would be in love with me.....

9/11

I thought a lot about that terrible day from 11 years ago. Maybe it is because that day was also a Tuesday. In the next few days I will think about the eerie silence when the planes were grounded.

The Old Bag

When we were kids, we had a baseball field at the corner of the block. The corner yard was big, so it had an equal right and left field. Past left field was a front yard of a neighbor who did not object to our games. Past right field lived a woman who we called The Old Bag. Fortunately, none of us batted left handed. Anything hit to right field was an automatic out. However, every once in awhile someone would hit a monster hit to right field that went into The Old Bag's front yard. She must have been always watching us play baseball. As soon as that ball went toward her front yard, she was out on the porch. If the ball went into her yard, she was there to pick it up. She took it in the house and threw it away! Hence, to us, she was The Old Bag. At that time, most people had a housekeeper. The Old Bag had one. The housekeeper would sometimes smuggle the balls back to us. However, she explained that The Old Bag would keep count of our balls to make sure they went into the bottom of the garbage can. The garbage was collected early in the day, so we rarely had a chance to tip it over to get our balls back! The teams shared the duties of providing balls. They were mostly whiffle balls anyway. so they did not last a real long time since we used wooden bats. Our summers were filled with efforts to keep the Old Bag away from our balls. Sometimes, she would come out and yell at us about playing baseball. There were no easily accessible baseball fields and our parents knew where we were. So, our parents just told us to keep playing and try not to hit the ball into the Old Bag's yard. At the time, the backyards in the block were open so we could run around in the big area between the houses. Of course, The Old Bag had a fence around her back yard. Any stray balls that flew into the yard were immediately scooped up and disposed of. She must have kept a keen eye on us. One time she reported me to my parents that I was peeing behind a big tree in the next yard. I figured no one could see me because I was between a tree and a garage. Actually, we all peed there, both the boys and the girls on the block. My parents said I should come in to pee, but the single bathroom of the house was on the second story. You never knew when it was occupied, so planning ahead was a hard thing for a little kid. I have no clue what the Old Bag's name was. She was just a nasty old lady who stole our balls. I suppose I am her age now. STAY OFF MY LAWN YOU NASTY LITTLE KIDS!

Tommy Gun

On Cajun Pawn the other night, someone was trying to sell a Tommy Gun. They wanted $65K for that weapon that was made during WWI, but ended up sitting on docks in the United States at the end of the war. When I was a kid, my parents took me to Washington DC on vacation. One of the places we got to go to was the FBI Building. It was the old building. Some poor FBI agent who was probably in trouble, got to show us around the facility. There were probably only 6 to 8 people on the tour and I was the only kid. He took us down into the basement to show us the firing range. When we got down there, the range guy was loading up Tommy Guns for some sort of raid. Our guide got excited and asked if he could demonstrate one to the tourists. The range guy said OK, and handed him a Tommy Gun loaded with a 100 round canister. He acted like a kid with a new toy. He said he had never gotten to fire one of those guns. So, we went into the range in the basement. No ear plugs or any hearing protection. He let loose with a couple of burst from the Tommy Gun. As I recall, he made a happy yell. Empty shells were flying all over the place. I think he probably did a couple of more bursts before he turned around. He asked me if I wanted to shoot the Tommy Gun. Did I? He asked my parents and they said OK. So, he took me to the firing line. Gave me the gun and sort of stood behind me to make sure I didn't blast away at the tour, I suppose. I did a short burst, probably five rounds. It was awesome. He took back the Tommy Gun and said he had to return it to the range master. I picked up a few of the empty brass. I had those for quite a few years. Either my mother threw them out or I traded them for something. I was just a little kid, probably 10 or less. I doubt they let the kids shoot the guns at the FBI building any longer. I doubt you get to the firing range. I remember my ears rang for a couple of days. Ear plugs would have been a good idea. I have no idea if I hit the target, but I certainly knew how our tour guide felt when he got a chance to fire a Tommy Gun.

Barry Goldwater

I used to exchange letters with Barry Goldwater on a regular basis. He rarely agreed with me, but he always sent me a real letter, not the computer generated dribble that most politicians send you now. One time I wrote him about some issue. I got a pretty venomous letter in return. I got to wondering who wrote that letter out of his office, so one day I called his office to inquire about the response. A lady answered the phone. I identified myself and asked about the letter I sent to Mr. Goldwater. She was quiet for a moment and then she said "I told the Senator that he should not send you that letter." I was a bit surprised that Senator Goldwater had written that letter. She told me that he had. She said she held the response a day or two to see if he would change his mind. He did not, so she mailed it with trepidation. She then informed me that I was on the list. I asked what the list was. She said it was the people who Senator Goldwater wanted to see all the mail from. She told me it also allowed me to talk with Senator Goldwater. She said he was in the office and I could talk to him if I wanted. I could not think of anything to ask him. She laughed and said the Governor of Arizona was not even on the list. A few years later, I asked Senator Goldwater to see if there was a FBI file on me. He called me at work. He said he would be glad to ask, but he could not even find the FBI file on himself, so he held little hope that I would find anything. He said when those requests went to the FBI, the request was held and clerks got a list of names to pull the file. The files were then sent to other agencies. When the clerks were allowed to try to find the file, there was never a file, so the clerk could respond that the file did not exist. He imagined that after he died, the FBI file on Barry Goldwater would suddenly appear. Several years later, after Barry Goldwater's death, the file on him was released. All in all, it was pretty boring, but he was correct that there was one that remained slippery to find. After he was out of office, I once saw him at a car wash in Phoenix. I sat down next to him. I said I was surprised to see him getting his car washed. I figured he would have minions to do that. He said he did not even have minions when he was Senator. It was just him and his secretary that did all the work. He said he never had a very large staff like the people that replaced him.

Frank Lloyd Wright

As a little kid, I actually met Frank Lloyd Wright. My parents had just moved to Southwest Wisconsin from Central Wisconsin. They were driving down the County Highway on the south side of the Wisconsin River from Muscoda to Spring Green. My parents had lived in the area years before so they were familiar with Taliesin. So, when my dad got to a driveway just below Taliesin, he turned into it and drove up to the house area. There was a barn there. The bottom level was used for the tractors and some trucks. The loft area opened to a higher level on the hill. My father said sometimes the cows and horses would wander into the loft and look down upon the road. That day, the loft was empty. As we sat there, a man came up the hill with a couple of dogs and a shotgun broken over his arm. He had the funny Frank Lloyd Wright hat on. Of course I did not know who he was then, but he was an old man and came up to the car. He asked my father what he was doing there. My father replied, "We just came to look at the barn." The old man asked my dad if he was there to see someone. My dad said no. As the old man was talking, he took out a couple of shells and put them into the shotgun. It was a side by side double barrel as I recall. The old man asked my dad if he had an appointment. My dad said no. The old man(Frank Lloyd Wright) snapped the gun together, then said "This is my land, so get the hell off of it." The driveway was a narrow one lane driveway. My dad had to back down onto the county road. As I recall, there was much cursing as he backed down the driveway. Years later, I had a chance to tell this story to the last Mrs. Wright. After I got to this point she laughed and laughed and said "Yes, that was Frank!"