The year was 1969. I was driving down Route 2, in eastern Massachusetts, heading west from Cambridge to Arlington. This was, and still is, a nicely kept road, bordered by trees, lawns, and attractive New England neighborhoods. So, it was a bit jarring when I noticed a giant two-word message spray painted on a retaining wall. It said, “Ted Stay.”
It must have been July 20 or 21 that I saw that crude, but effective billboard, a picture of which appeared the following day in the Boston Globe. I’m able to narrow down the time frame because the message was meant for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, in response to calls for his resignation.
On the evening of July 18, Ted attended a party on Martha’s Vineyard’s Chappaquiddick Island. He left with a 28-year old campaign worker, Mary Jo Kopechne. There is much speculation as to where they were headed, but we will never know for sure. We do know that his car went off the Dike Bridge into Poucha Pond. We know that she drowned, he survived, and the police weren’t notified until the next day.
This is too clean and simple to be totally accurate, but to me, the citizenry of Massachusetts fall neatly into three different groups. There are those who adored him, including the the Route 2 spray painter, the 62 percent of our voters who returned him to office in the next election, and the tens of thousands who lined up to view his casket or wave solemnly at his passing hearse.
Then, there is a loud, vitriolic minority who rule the talk radio airwaves, some of whom still call him a murderer, and all of whom believe that his liberal policies have contributed heavily to the decline of this once great nation.
And finally, there is a tiny (or so it often seems) third group, comprised of those of us, who view him as neither hero nor villain. For us, he was the third brother – not Jack, not Bobby. We like him a little or we dislike him a little, and the same for his policies.
Those who do not adore him believe that his family handed him a Senate seat which he did not earn. “If your name were Edward Moore, instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke,” said his opponent for the nomination, Ed McCormack.
And of course, he was right. It wasn’t that Ted had a lousy resume; he had no resume at all. But McCormack sounded like a bully and the voters didn’t like that. So Ted was elected. He became part of our political furniture. Certainly not a mover and shaker. He was just there. Until that night.
This past weekend, I watched nearly every minute of the services and listened to all of the eulogies. And I was moved. They described a wonderful man, with a huge heart, who treated ordinary people with the same focused attention he gave to the powerful. They described a man who had worked tirelessly, brilliantly, and selflessly, and who had become the biggest mover and shaker in Washington.
But I felt with complete certainty that, at the JFK Library and later at the Mission Hill church, Chappaquiddick silently hovered over the room. It didn’t get mentioned by name, nor should it have been.
But when Teddy Jr., delivering his eloquent and touching eulogy, mentioned redemption and referred to his father “righting wrongs of his own failings,”and when President Obama mentioned “experiencing personal failings and set-backs in the most public way possible,” we knew that they were respectfully acknowledging the invisible witness.
Ted clearly panicked that day in 1969. His actions appeared selfish and cowardly. And because he was a good and decent man, he felt unbearable shame and guilt, as any good and decent person would.
They say he lost his presidential bid in 1980 because he was unable to answer the question: “Why do you want to be president?” I think he heard a different question in his mind: “Why do you deserve to be president?” And the demons would not let him answer.
There was the period in his life of notoriously bad behavior. The public drunkenness and the womanizing. I remember, back then, hearing Orrin Hatch tell us what he had told Ted privately: that his lifestyle was getting in the way of the good work that they were doing together and should go on doing together.
The eulogizers didn’t speak about the period of self-destruction, or at least not directly. We heard over and over that Vicki had saved him. Yes, here was a man who badly needed saving. Somehow she convinced him to forgive himself, or perhaps she helped him broker a deal with his demons.
Ted never had to worry about being re-elected. Except once. In his 1994 race against Republican newcomer, Mitt Romney, the polls showed the challenger remarkably close. I voted for Romney, thinking that it would be a refreshing change to replace our senator-for-life with a younger, pro-business, fresh thinking Republican.
But Ted’s faithful were not going to turn him out. He won with 58 percent of the vote -- a squeaker for him, but convincing enough to discourage future would-be challengers from being foolish enough to enter Kennedy Country.
Mitt later saw an opportunity to win the Massachusetts governorship. Again, I voted for him. He got off to a promising start, showing us his tough, pragmatic CEO brand of leadership. Then, when we needed him most, he was missing in action.
Though he denied the rumors, Mitt was quietly gearing up for his presidential bid, using Massachusetts as a stepping-stone, and he was busy with the very time-consuming work of changing his stance on social issues to make himself acceptable to the GOP’s conservative base. To win the nomination, he would need an extreme makeover.
For all the years that liberal was a dirty word, and when successfully labeling your opponent a liberal was all you needed to win an election, Ted Kennedy proudly remained liberal-in-chief. You knew where he stood, and you knew he would remain there, no matter what.
“It was his character – his courage, his kindness, his persistence, his honesty, and his almost heroic patience in the face of setbacks – that was the most important element of his success.”
The above quote comes from an editorial comment on the inside flap of Peggy Noonan’s book, When Character Was King, a loving portrait of her boss, Ronald Reagan. Can that same character label be suitably applied to Ted Kennedy?
Well, there are those three groups. Those who adore him would smile with approval. Those who despise him would be infuriated by the praise. And some of us, in the third group, might finally let go of our indifference.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
The Superior Scribbler Award
Several weeks ago, Rae at Weather Vane presented me with the Superior Scribbler Award. I'm late in responding, but I do have excuses. To begin with, I'm lousy at following assignments. I'll spare you the self-analysis. Just take my word for it.
Also, my last post went off in a direction of its own. It became a two-parter and then a three-parter. That wasn't my plan. When you let your writing breathe, it can turn into a beast.
Rae, are you buying any of this?
You can read the story behind this award by clicking on the link below.
The award comes with a list of rules, and here they are:
1. Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to five deserving bloggers.
2. Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author and the name of the blog from whom he or she as received The Award.
3. Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on their own blog, and link to This Post, which explains the award.
4. Each Blogger who wins the Superior Scribbler Award must visit This Post and add their name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives this prestigious honor.
5. Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on their blog.
So, which five lucky bloggers will be getting the news that I have designated them Superior Scribblers?
Sorry, you'll have to wait, and so will they. I'm often late on my assignments, but I do take them seriously.
Truthfully, I don't yet know how I will determine my fabulous five.
There are some new bloggers out there who would love to have this award. Maybe I'll run a contest.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
The Baltimore Colt & Mr Broadway-Part III
In January of 1969, I was away at college. One day, while sitting around my apartment, I answered the phone, and heard my father’s voice say:
So, would you like to go to the Super Bowl? He was headed for Miami with some of his buddies, and he had an extra ticket.
The Super Bowl? Truthfully, I was on the verge of saying, “Thanks Dad, but I’m kind of busy.” Did I really need to be in the stands, watching the NFL Champion Baltimore Colts, generally considered to be the best football team in history -–better even than the vintage Vince Lombardi Green Bay Packers-- annihilate the flashy, fun to watch, and weakest AFL Champion to date, New York Jets?
He broke the brief silence. “It will be fun. I’ll see you in Miami.” Then, he hung up.
I met him at the hotel, where we and most of his friends had to sleep in the lobby, because the rooms had been oversold. That was my father. He didn’t sweat the details. Rooms? Who needs rooms? In fact, he didn’t quite have tickets either, but he scrounged some up.
You’re probably thinking, “What a great dad, taking his kid to The Super Bowl.” True enough, but I need to provide a touch of perspective. Once I arrived in Miami, I quickly figured out what was what.
Dad wanted a week of deep-sea fishing and pool-side-vodka-and-tonic card playing with his cronies, with a splash Super Bowl thrown in. So he used the I think I’ll take our kid to The Super Bowl ploy to get a free pass from my mother, who probably thought, “Well this will be a nice father and son experience. How could I possible object? ”
Sunday, January 12, 1969, Miami, FL, The Orange Bowl
SUPER BOWL III.
I don’t know about you, but when I arrive early at a stadium or arena to watch an event, I pay close attention to those who begin filling the seats around me, and I decide, based on very little information, what kind of people they are and whether or not I’m going to like them, or at least be able to tolerate them.
Hey, if I’m going to spend several hours in this temporary, human zoo of a neighborhood, I want to have some idea of who I’m going to like and who I will eventually want to kill. I don’t think that’s just me. I think its human nature. I’m pretty sure you do it too.
We arrived quite early. My seat was one row back from Dad and his gang, so we were kind of together, but not really. They would periodically look back and talk to me so that I would feel included. Then the seats around me began filling in, creating my very own soon-to-be community of friends, neighbors, and blood enemies.
The Colts, that season, had beaten every team they played. They lost one game to the Cleveland Browns, then came back and trounced them the next time they met. This team had zero weaknesses.
No question about it. This would not be the year for severely disrespected AFLers to show the world that our brand of football was every bit as first-class as that stodgy, stale, NFL brand that owned the majority of football hearts and minds.
To my left, a gang of eight middle-aged guys were climbing the steps and heading toward my row. They were loud NFL diehards. The odds were good they would not be sitting anywhere near me. They eventually reached my row, checked their tickets and filed in. Fabulous. These were my next-door neighbors.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly introduced themselves. Six of them were the kind of NFL meatheads who believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the AFL champions could be beaten by Notre Dame. My guess was that they had all been drinking since breakfast, but one of them (The Ugly) stood out from the others: louder, drunker, and proudly annoying.
Two of the eight were AFL fans (The Good), who after some quick declarations of who we all were, switched seats to sit near me. They handed me an extra beer, and started calling me: “Boston.” I called my neighbor, in the next seat, “Houston.”
We shared stories of my Patriots and his Oilers. When he especially liked one of mine, he would laugh and jab me in the shoulder. My father glanced back, took in the scene, and clearly thought it was hilarious.
Throughout the afternoon, I would hear: “Hey, pass this one down to Boston.” And, I’d be handed a beer, accompanied by a friendly punch in the shoulder.
Prior to the arrival of my new best friends, I was thinking that this would be like watching a bullfight. A young, attractive, and inexperienced matador had drawn the biggest, meanest bull on the planet, and I would be rooting for the matador not to get gored.
The five Bad Guys, to my left, would be rooting for the matador to get gored, stomped on, tossed against the wall, and get gored again. The Ugly sixth would have been severely disappointed by that outcome.
But all in all, these guys were my favorite neighbors. The group to my right included a surprising number of women and teenage girls who were obviously recycling the hats and dresses they must have worn to the Kentucky Derby. They would have little idea of what was going on down on the field. They were a football audience I had never seen before.
To drum up interest for this absurd mismatch, league execs abandoned the bland title of AFL-NFL Championship Game, and officially renamed the contest: The Super Bowl. And guess what? It actually did create a lot of good buzz, but most of that buzz was due to the fact that for the very first time, this battle between the league champions had a genuine rock star:
Joe Namath.
And like any true rock star, Joe Willie had fans – lots of them. Many were brand new to football. And many of these brand new fans were women and teenage girls. They may not have known Joe’s stats, but they knew he was sexy, and they headed for Miami or to their television sets in record numbers. This would change professional football forever.
“This will be Namath’s first professional game,” said ex-NFL quarterback and coach, Norm Van Brocklin. That insult, and others like it, were felt deep in the gut of every AFL player and fan.
Joe was not the silent type. His angry response to one public insult was: “We’ll win the game. I guarantee you.” The quote became a front-page headline in most newspapers. So, more times than I could count, the Ugly would yell out, at the top of his lungs, “This will be Namath’s first professional game.” And more times than I could count, Houston would yell back, “We’ll win the game. I guarantee you.”
And the Derby chicks to my right would look over, shake their heads, and make faces.
The game got underway.
On their first possession, the Colts marched down field, headed for a touchdown. They did not get it. Stopped on the Jets’ 27-yard line, they had to settle for a field goal. But they missed it. Houston was elated. He, of course, punched me in the shoulder.
We watched a first half of football that nobody expected to see. The Colts missed another field goal. The Jets scored a touchdown. The half ended with the Jets on top, 7-0. I was not relieved. My Bad Guy neighbors were a little quiet, but as one of them put it, “Hey for the Colts, being down 7-points at the half is the same as being up 14-points.”
He was probably right. The Colts would make the necessary adjustments, as had the Packers in Super Bowl I. The Jets had most likely played their hearts out and had little left in the tank, just like the Chiefs, in Super Bowl I.
We all figured the Colts would come out roaring in the second half.
They did not.
It was like they had some kind of collective nervous breakdown.
The Jets controlled the ball for most of the third period. When the Colts did have the ball, they fumbled, got intercepted, and blew big plays.
Houston was jubilant. His buddies were slumped in their seats. The Derby Chicks were having a ball. Namath was actually going to deliver on his guarantee. The mighty Colts were powerless to stop him. It was a little too soon to start celebrating, but we were pretty darn sure that Vindication Day had arrived for 20 million AFL fans.
Then, something happened to change the game. Well, it changed the game for me. The quarterback, Earl Morrall was pulled from the game. Morrall, who had a great season, had been the beneficiary of an injury to the Colt’s real quarterback, Johnny Unitas.
There are those who say that Unitas’ injured elbow was completely healed and there are others who doubt that it was. But with four minutes left in the third quarter, Number 19 was standing behind his center. Johnny Unitas, the quarterback who had thrown touchdown passes in 47 consecutive games, and who ran an offense better than any quarterback in history was now on the field.
Suddenly, I became unaware of what was happening in the seats around me. All of that faded to black. With the sudden twist of plot, I was into this drama, totally. If you read my Part I, you know why. At 10 years old, the greatness of Johnny U. was permanently wired to my soul.
Johnny U. played well, but not well enough to win. It may have been the sore arm, or the rust from spending the entire season on the bench, or it may have been his teammates who couldn’t shake off the bewilderment of what was happening to them.
Final score: Jets 16, Colts 7.
Namath’s teammates carried him off the field, on their shoulders. His finger, pointed high in the air, said it all, “We’re number one.” The Colt players were stunned and no doubt embarrassed. I didn’t see much sportsman-like congratulating going on. Some Colts just turned and made their way to the locker room.
But I saw Unitas shaking hands with some of the Jets. Of course.
The next day, on the plane back to college, I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes and replayed the game. When I got to four minutes left in the third period, I stopped and realized that if Unitas had turned the game around and won it, that would have been just fine with me. I could have waited another year for the vindication that I so badly wanted.
A sportswriter wrote that if those same Colts played those same Jets nine more times, the Colts would win all nine contests. I would not have challenged that claim. But on the day it mattered, an unlikely messiah made good on an outrageous boast, delivering exactly what he had guaranteed.
The next year, the merger between the NFL and the AFL would be finalized. The AFL name would disappear. It would all be one big NFL, with an American Football Conference and a National Football Conference.
Three old NFL teams: The Steelers, the Browns, and the Colts would move over to the AFC, blending the two leagues into one.
That decision ended the greatest sports rivalry of my life.
THE END
So, would you like to go to the Super Bowl? He was headed for Miami with some of his buddies, and he had an extra ticket.
The Super Bowl? Truthfully, I was on the verge of saying, “Thanks Dad, but I’m kind of busy.” Did I really need to be in the stands, watching the NFL Champion Baltimore Colts, generally considered to be the best football team in history -–better even than the vintage Vince Lombardi Green Bay Packers-- annihilate the flashy, fun to watch, and weakest AFL Champion to date, New York Jets?
He broke the brief silence. “It will be fun. I’ll see you in Miami.” Then, he hung up.
I met him at the hotel, where we and most of his friends had to sleep in the lobby, because the rooms had been oversold. That was my father. He didn’t sweat the details. Rooms? Who needs rooms? In fact, he didn’t quite have tickets either, but he scrounged some up.
You’re probably thinking, “What a great dad, taking his kid to The Super Bowl.” True enough, but I need to provide a touch of perspective. Once I arrived in Miami, I quickly figured out what was what.
Dad wanted a week of deep-sea fishing and pool-side-vodka-and-tonic card playing with his cronies, with a splash Super Bowl thrown in. So he used the I think I’ll take our kid to The Super Bowl ploy to get a free pass from my mother, who probably thought, “Well this will be a nice father and son experience. How could I possible object? ”
Sunday, January 12, 1969, Miami, FL, The Orange Bowl
SUPER BOWL III.
I don’t know about you, but when I arrive early at a stadium or arena to watch an event, I pay close attention to those who begin filling the seats around me, and I decide, based on very little information, what kind of people they are and whether or not I’m going to like them, or at least be able to tolerate them.
Hey, if I’m going to spend several hours in this temporary, human zoo of a neighborhood, I want to have some idea of who I’m going to like and who I will eventually want to kill. I don’t think that’s just me. I think its human nature. I’m pretty sure you do it too.
We arrived quite early. My seat was one row back from Dad and his gang, so we were kind of together, but not really. They would periodically look back and talk to me so that I would feel included. Then the seats around me began filling in, creating my very own soon-to-be community of friends, neighbors, and blood enemies.
The Colts, that season, had beaten every team they played. They lost one game to the Cleveland Browns, then came back and trounced them the next time they met. This team had zero weaknesses.
No question about it. This would not be the year for severely disrespected AFLers to show the world that our brand of football was every bit as first-class as that stodgy, stale, NFL brand that owned the majority of football hearts and minds.
To my left, a gang of eight middle-aged guys were climbing the steps and heading toward my row. They were loud NFL diehards. The odds were good they would not be sitting anywhere near me. They eventually reached my row, checked their tickets and filed in. Fabulous. These were my next-door neighbors.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly introduced themselves. Six of them were the kind of NFL meatheads who believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the AFL champions could be beaten by Notre Dame. My guess was that they had all been drinking since breakfast, but one of them (The Ugly) stood out from the others: louder, drunker, and proudly annoying.
Two of the eight were AFL fans (The Good), who after some quick declarations of who we all were, switched seats to sit near me. They handed me an extra beer, and started calling me: “Boston.” I called my neighbor, in the next seat, “Houston.”
We shared stories of my Patriots and his Oilers. When he especially liked one of mine, he would laugh and jab me in the shoulder. My father glanced back, took in the scene, and clearly thought it was hilarious.
Throughout the afternoon, I would hear: “Hey, pass this one down to Boston.” And, I’d be handed a beer, accompanied by a friendly punch in the shoulder.
Prior to the arrival of my new best friends, I was thinking that this would be like watching a bullfight. A young, attractive, and inexperienced matador had drawn the biggest, meanest bull on the planet, and I would be rooting for the matador not to get gored.
The five Bad Guys, to my left, would be rooting for the matador to get gored, stomped on, tossed against the wall, and get gored again. The Ugly sixth would have been severely disappointed by that outcome.
But all in all, these guys were my favorite neighbors. The group to my right included a surprising number of women and teenage girls who were obviously recycling the hats and dresses they must have worn to the Kentucky Derby. They would have little idea of what was going on down on the field. They were a football audience I had never seen before.
To drum up interest for this absurd mismatch, league execs abandoned the bland title of AFL-NFL Championship Game, and officially renamed the contest: The Super Bowl. And guess what? It actually did create a lot of good buzz, but most of that buzz was due to the fact that for the very first time, this battle between the league champions had a genuine rock star:
Joe Namath.
And like any true rock star, Joe Willie had fans – lots of them. Many were brand new to football. And many of these brand new fans were women and teenage girls. They may not have known Joe’s stats, but they knew he was sexy, and they headed for Miami or to their television sets in record numbers. This would change professional football forever.
“This will be Namath’s first professional game,” said ex-NFL quarterback and coach, Norm Van Brocklin. That insult, and others like it, were felt deep in the gut of every AFL player and fan.
Joe was not the silent type. His angry response to one public insult was: “We’ll win the game. I guarantee you.” The quote became a front-page headline in most newspapers. So, more times than I could count, the Ugly would yell out, at the top of his lungs, “This will be Namath’s first professional game.” And more times than I could count, Houston would yell back, “We’ll win the game. I guarantee you.”
And the Derby chicks to my right would look over, shake their heads, and make faces.
The game got underway.
On their first possession, the Colts marched down field, headed for a touchdown. They did not get it. Stopped on the Jets’ 27-yard line, they had to settle for a field goal. But they missed it. Houston was elated. He, of course, punched me in the shoulder.
We watched a first half of football that nobody expected to see. The Colts missed another field goal. The Jets scored a touchdown. The half ended with the Jets on top, 7-0. I was not relieved. My Bad Guy neighbors were a little quiet, but as one of them put it, “Hey for the Colts, being down 7-points at the half is the same as being up 14-points.”
He was probably right. The Colts would make the necessary adjustments, as had the Packers in Super Bowl I. The Jets had most likely played their hearts out and had little left in the tank, just like the Chiefs, in Super Bowl I.
We all figured the Colts would come out roaring in the second half.
They did not.
It was like they had some kind of collective nervous breakdown.
The Jets controlled the ball for most of the third period. When the Colts did have the ball, they fumbled, got intercepted, and blew big plays.
Houston was jubilant. His buddies were slumped in their seats. The Derby Chicks were having a ball. Namath was actually going to deliver on his guarantee. The mighty Colts were powerless to stop him. It was a little too soon to start celebrating, but we were pretty darn sure that Vindication Day had arrived for 20 million AFL fans.
Then, something happened to change the game. Well, it changed the game for me. The quarterback, Earl Morrall was pulled from the game. Morrall, who had a great season, had been the beneficiary of an injury to the Colt’s real quarterback, Johnny Unitas.
There are those who say that Unitas’ injured elbow was completely healed and there are others who doubt that it was. But with four minutes left in the third quarter, Number 19 was standing behind his center. Johnny Unitas, the quarterback who had thrown touchdown passes in 47 consecutive games, and who ran an offense better than any quarterback in history was now on the field.
Suddenly, I became unaware of what was happening in the seats around me. All of that faded to black. With the sudden twist of plot, I was into this drama, totally. If you read my Part I, you know why. At 10 years old, the greatness of Johnny U. was permanently wired to my soul.
Johnny U. played well, but not well enough to win. It may have been the sore arm, or the rust from spending the entire season on the bench, or it may have been his teammates who couldn’t shake off the bewilderment of what was happening to them.
Final score: Jets 16, Colts 7.
Namath’s teammates carried him off the field, on their shoulders. His finger, pointed high in the air, said it all, “We’re number one.” The Colt players were stunned and no doubt embarrassed. I didn’t see much sportsman-like congratulating going on. Some Colts just turned and made their way to the locker room.
But I saw Unitas shaking hands with some of the Jets. Of course.
The next day, on the plane back to college, I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes and replayed the game. When I got to four minutes left in the third period, I stopped and realized that if Unitas had turned the game around and won it, that would have been just fine with me. I could have waited another year for the vindication that I so badly wanted.
A sportswriter wrote that if those same Colts played those same Jets nine more times, the Colts would win all nine contests. I would not have challenged that claim. But on the day it mattered, an unlikely messiah made good on an outrageous boast, delivering exactly what he had guaranteed.
The next year, the merger between the NFL and the AFL would be finalized. The AFL name would disappear. It would all be one big NFL, with an American Football Conference and a National Football Conference.
Three old NFL teams: The Steelers, the Browns, and the Colts would move over to the AFC, blending the two leagues into one.
That decision ended the greatest sports rivalry of my life.
THE END
Friday, July 31, 2009
The Baltimore Colt & Mr. Broadway-Part II
The famous, and often irritating, sports announcer and commentator, Howard Cosell cautioned us not to take our sports too seriously, “because lets face it, sports is the toy department of life.” I agree completely. But there are times when many of us, the highly rational included, find ourselves living in a recurring dream where no matter how hard we try to find our way out of the department store, we end up back in that damn toy department.
It’s not rational to mourn the loss of a game, as you would the loss of a person, or even a beloved pet. We know that. We know that moping around the day after our team goes down in defeat, instead of moping around about war, starvation, and melting glaciers is juvenile at best. When our team walks away losers, we of course remind ourselves that it is, after all, only a game, though it may take a lot of those reminders to ease our suffering.
I don’t know the psychology behind fan-dementia. I’ve heard the sports-as-emotional-safety valve theory. Maybe that explains it. You scream at players and referees instead of killing your spouse or children.
Then again, maybe it’s some kind of evolutionary hard wiring. Two cavemen would start pounding each other with clubs to determine who would have first crack at the dinosaur meat. A crowd would gather. Some would root for the tall, handsome caveman and others for the pudgy, endearing caveman. This may have given birth to caveman clubbing championships. Some, like me, would root for his favorite. Others, like my father, would place a bet.
January 15, 1967.
Contrary to what you may think, the game was not called Super Bowl I, nor was it called The Super Bowl. And that was just fine, because there was nothing super about it. The first ever AFL–NFL Championship Game, which pitted the champions of the upstart American Football League against the iron of the National Football League did not have to live up to the hype, because there wasn’t any, at least not by today’s standards.
This landmark game, which, years later, would retroactively be named Super Bowl I, took place at the Los Angeles Coliseum.. The merger between the leagues that formed today’s National Football League, was newly in the works, and I suppose the brass believed that the heated rivalry (more like mutual hatred) would make the game a really big deal. It did not.
Hardcore NFLers believed that the season was over with the Packers winning the NFL Championship. This was after all a great Packers team, coached by none other than the great Vince Lombardi. To hardcore and even softcore NFLers, the AFL Champion Kansas City Chiefs were little more than a glorified college team, composed of NFL rejects and wannabes. To them, this game was just a business scheme. To them, the game was a joke.
And because The Game That Was Not Called Super Bowl I was considered a a laughable contest, it did not have what we’ve now come to expect as givens in our over-the-top-hyped-to-the-max unofficial national holiday known as Super Bowl Sunday. It did not have a sell-out crowd. With an attendance of 60,000, the Coliseum was about one-third empty.
It did not have ticket prices, unaffordable to most of us. The average ticket price was $12.00, and you could have gotten a seat for 6 bucks. A 30-second television commercial did not go for $3 million. It went for $80,000.
There was however a segment of the population for whom the game did mean something – the diehard fans of the American Football League. To most of us, this game was the most important professional football game of our lives.
The Chiefs had a great season. There was no doubt in our minds that they belonged in the championship game. They didn’t get there by some fluke. They were the best in the AFL, and now they were our team.
According to Ange Coniglio who runs the site: Remember the AFL, the number of fans who attended AFL football games from 1960 to 1970 totaled 17 million. It’s impossible to know how many others watched the games on television, but I think we can safely say that there were about 20 million of us out there, emotionally involved with the Patriots, Bills, Jets, Chargers, Raiders, Oilers, Dolphins, Broncos, and Chiefs.
And at the end of the 1966 season, all of us became Kansas City Chiefs. Nick Buoniconti, the great linebacker for the Dolphins, who started his career with the Patriots (and would likely have remained a Patriot, had the team not needed to free itself of his exorbitant $38,000 salary), said that he had never rooted so hard for a team in his life.
At stake, was nothing less than vindication –-for the fans and players of the AFL.
I was away at college. There was one television set in the entire dorm, and it was located in a big room off the lobby – open to everyone who showed up.
So fifteen AFLers watched the game with fifty NFLers. It may have been my own paranoia, but within those groups there were no shades of gray. There were the arrogant Packers-This-Game-Is-A-Joke group and the confident Chiefs-Will-Surprise-The-World group. There was also a small group of those who really didn’t give a shit. Most them were girls who thought we were all morons.
The first half was a good football game. The Chiefs played the Packers to a near tie. The half ended with the Packers on top, 14-10. If not for a missed field goal, it would have been 14-13. So far, the game was anything but a joke. It was good, competitive football. The Packers players were surprised. NFL fans were pleasantly quiet. AFL fans were ready to celebrate.
You see the Chiefs really didn’t need to actually beat the Packers; they just needed to be contenders. They could be Rocky Balboa losing to Apollo Creed.
Apollo was the official winner; he won the match. Rocky was the real winner; he won the fans.
Hell, in the regular season, the Packers had beaten the San Francisco 49ers 20-7; the Detroit Lions 31-7; the Chicago Bears 17-0, and they had destroyed the Atlanta Falcons 56-3.
Losing by a touchdown or even by a touchdown and a field goal, and suddenly, we’re more than just officially in the same league – we are really in the same league.
Tragically, we would be denied both the official win and the real win. Lombardi and his Packers went into the locker room at half-time and made the necessary adjustments. The second half was the game we were dreading. The Packers won decisively. Final score: 35-10. They carried Lombardi off the field on their shoulders. His grin said it all. He had defended Rome from the barbarians.
Those of us, lingering by the television set, took the verbal blows.
We would be the junior league for another year. In fact, for another two years. The second AFL-NFL Championship Game, which was not called Super Bowl II, was nearly a carbon copy. We had great hopes for that one too. It was an upset in the making. Again it was the Green Bay Packers, but a weaker edition than the 1967 champs, against the Oakland Raiders, our toughest team. Final score: Packers win, 33-14. Oh the Agony!
And with that defeat, I started to lose hope. “Every dog has his day,” my father always said, but I really had to wonder how many long years of snickering we would have to endure before we would have ours. It’s just a game. It’s just a game. It’s just…
Twenty-six years later, I was in Miami on a business trip. I would be meeting a new business associate from Chicago for lunch, and then the two of us would spend an afternoon making sales calls together. Driving to the restaurant, I realized that I had allowed way too much time for lunch. Our first appointment was only ten minutes away. What on earth would we talk about for an hour and a half?
I asked him if he was originally from Chicago. No, he said, he was from San Diego. “Oh,” I said. “So those ’64 -’65 Chargers, do you think they could have beaten the best of the NFL, had there been a championship game?” His eyes lit up. We ordered drinks. We went over the roster, player by player. Damn, we were running out of time. We ordered another round.
I don’t remember which of us brought up The Game That Was Not Called Super Bowl I. But we felt the same way about it. He had rooted for the Chiefs harder than he had ever rooted for his own Chargers, and he took the loss as hard as I did. This was first-degree commiserating.
And then I said something.
I don’t know where it came from. Truthfully, I don’t. I said. “Look, deep down, whether we were aware of it or not, we were all afraid that the Chiefs were going to go out onto that field and be humiliated…that the game would be 60-minutes of our guys fumbling, dropping passes, getting flattened on the line, and generally, curling up in the fetal position.”
That didn’t happen.
No, we were beaten by a better team, but we were not humiliated.
But, you were afraid we would be, weren’t you?
I guess we all were. Whether we admitted it or not, we had to be.
Actually, we came out of it pretty well. We lost, but we did not look like the amateurs they took us for.
We left the restaurant feeling pretty good. We kept talking football – AFL football. We missed the exit for our first appointment, and arrived ten minutes late. No matter, the person we were meeting was twenty minutes late. We sat in the lobby, relishing the old, forgotten victory that we had just dug out of the dirt.
Call it rationalizing, and maybe it was, but I decided to hold on to it anyway. I had walked away from the television set, twenty-six years earlier, with a sense of relief, and that was a kind of victory, one that had been lost in the immediate swirl of loud, gloating voices.
And I came to discover that lots of us, deep down, felt that same sense of victory that we failed to recognize when it would have provided some welcome consolation. Thoughts and emotions can get awfully tangled up, even in the toy department.
Of course the consolation prize that I discovered in that Miami restaurant couldn’t undo the feeling of gloom I felt way back then, following that championship game. No, it would take almost a miracle to do that.
And, there was another game on the horizon –
The Game That Was Called Super Bowl III.
TO BE CONTINUED…
It’s not rational to mourn the loss of a game, as you would the loss of a person, or even a beloved pet. We know that. We know that moping around the day after our team goes down in defeat, instead of moping around about war, starvation, and melting glaciers is juvenile at best. When our team walks away losers, we of course remind ourselves that it is, after all, only a game, though it may take a lot of those reminders to ease our suffering.
I don’t know the psychology behind fan-dementia. I’ve heard the sports-as-emotional-safety valve theory. Maybe that explains it. You scream at players and referees instead of killing your spouse or children.
Then again, maybe it’s some kind of evolutionary hard wiring. Two cavemen would start pounding each other with clubs to determine who would have first crack at the dinosaur meat. A crowd would gather. Some would root for the tall, handsome caveman and others for the pudgy, endearing caveman. This may have given birth to caveman clubbing championships. Some, like me, would root for his favorite. Others, like my father, would place a bet.
January 15, 1967.
Contrary to what you may think, the game was not called Super Bowl I, nor was it called The Super Bowl. And that was just fine, because there was nothing super about it. The first ever AFL–NFL Championship Game, which pitted the champions of the upstart American Football League against the iron of the National Football League did not have to live up to the hype, because there wasn’t any, at least not by today’s standards.
This landmark game, which, years later, would retroactively be named Super Bowl I, took place at the Los Angeles Coliseum.. The merger between the leagues that formed today’s National Football League, was newly in the works, and I suppose the brass believed that the heated rivalry (more like mutual hatred) would make the game a really big deal. It did not.
Hardcore NFLers believed that the season was over with the Packers winning the NFL Championship. This was after all a great Packers team, coached by none other than the great Vince Lombardi. To hardcore and even softcore NFLers, the AFL Champion Kansas City Chiefs were little more than a glorified college team, composed of NFL rejects and wannabes. To them, this game was just a business scheme. To them, the game was a joke.
And because The Game That Was Not Called Super Bowl I was considered a a laughable contest, it did not have what we’ve now come to expect as givens in our over-the-top-hyped-to-the-max unofficial national holiday known as Super Bowl Sunday. It did not have a sell-out crowd. With an attendance of 60,000, the Coliseum was about one-third empty.
It did not have ticket prices, unaffordable to most of us. The average ticket price was $12.00, and you could have gotten a seat for 6 bucks. A 30-second television commercial did not go for $3 million. It went for $80,000.
There was however a segment of the population for whom the game did mean something – the diehard fans of the American Football League. To most of us, this game was the most important professional football game of our lives.
The Chiefs had a great season. There was no doubt in our minds that they belonged in the championship game. They didn’t get there by some fluke. They were the best in the AFL, and now they were our team.
According to Ange Coniglio who runs the site: Remember the AFL, the number of fans who attended AFL football games from 1960 to 1970 totaled 17 million. It’s impossible to know how many others watched the games on television, but I think we can safely say that there were about 20 million of us out there, emotionally involved with the Patriots, Bills, Jets, Chargers, Raiders, Oilers, Dolphins, Broncos, and Chiefs.
And at the end of the 1966 season, all of us became Kansas City Chiefs. Nick Buoniconti, the great linebacker for the Dolphins, who started his career with the Patriots (and would likely have remained a Patriot, had the team not needed to free itself of his exorbitant $38,000 salary), said that he had never rooted so hard for a team in his life.
At stake, was nothing less than vindication –-for the fans and players of the AFL.
I was away at college. There was one television set in the entire dorm, and it was located in a big room off the lobby – open to everyone who showed up.
So fifteen AFLers watched the game with fifty NFLers. It may have been my own paranoia, but within those groups there were no shades of gray. There were the arrogant Packers-This-Game-Is-A-Joke group and the confident Chiefs-Will-Surprise-The-World group. There was also a small group of those who really didn’t give a shit. Most them were girls who thought we were all morons.
The first half was a good football game. The Chiefs played the Packers to a near tie. The half ended with the Packers on top, 14-10. If not for a missed field goal, it would have been 14-13. So far, the game was anything but a joke. It was good, competitive football. The Packers players were surprised. NFL fans were pleasantly quiet. AFL fans were ready to celebrate.
You see the Chiefs really didn’t need to actually beat the Packers; they just needed to be contenders. They could be Rocky Balboa losing to Apollo Creed.
Apollo was the official winner; he won the match. Rocky was the real winner; he won the fans.
Hell, in the regular season, the Packers had beaten the San Francisco 49ers 20-7; the Detroit Lions 31-7; the Chicago Bears 17-0, and they had destroyed the Atlanta Falcons 56-3.
Losing by a touchdown or even by a touchdown and a field goal, and suddenly, we’re more than just officially in the same league – we are really in the same league.
Tragically, we would be denied both the official win and the real win. Lombardi and his Packers went into the locker room at half-time and made the necessary adjustments. The second half was the game we were dreading. The Packers won decisively. Final score: 35-10. They carried Lombardi off the field on their shoulders. His grin said it all. He had defended Rome from the barbarians.
Those of us, lingering by the television set, took the verbal blows.
We would be the junior league for another year. In fact, for another two years. The second AFL-NFL Championship Game, which was not called Super Bowl II, was nearly a carbon copy. We had great hopes for that one too. It was an upset in the making. Again it was the Green Bay Packers, but a weaker edition than the 1967 champs, against the Oakland Raiders, our toughest team. Final score: Packers win, 33-14. Oh the Agony!
And with that defeat, I started to lose hope. “Every dog has his day,” my father always said, but I really had to wonder how many long years of snickering we would have to endure before we would have ours. It’s just a game. It’s just a game. It’s just…
Twenty-six years later, I was in Miami on a business trip. I would be meeting a new business associate from Chicago for lunch, and then the two of us would spend an afternoon making sales calls together. Driving to the restaurant, I realized that I had allowed way too much time for lunch. Our first appointment was only ten minutes away. What on earth would we talk about for an hour and a half?
I asked him if he was originally from Chicago. No, he said, he was from San Diego. “Oh,” I said. “So those ’64 -’65 Chargers, do you think they could have beaten the best of the NFL, had there been a championship game?” His eyes lit up. We ordered drinks. We went over the roster, player by player. Damn, we were running out of time. We ordered another round.
I don’t remember which of us brought up The Game That Was Not Called Super Bowl I. But we felt the same way about it. He had rooted for the Chiefs harder than he had ever rooted for his own Chargers, and he took the loss as hard as I did. This was first-degree commiserating.
And then I said something.
I don’t know where it came from. Truthfully, I don’t. I said. “Look, deep down, whether we were aware of it or not, we were all afraid that the Chiefs were going to go out onto that field and be humiliated…that the game would be 60-minutes of our guys fumbling, dropping passes, getting flattened on the line, and generally, curling up in the fetal position.”
That didn’t happen.
No, we were beaten by a better team, but we were not humiliated.
But, you were afraid we would be, weren’t you?
I guess we all were. Whether we admitted it or not, we had to be.
Actually, we came out of it pretty well. We lost, but we did not look like the amateurs they took us for.
We left the restaurant feeling pretty good. We kept talking football – AFL football. We missed the exit for our first appointment, and arrived ten minutes late. No matter, the person we were meeting was twenty minutes late. We sat in the lobby, relishing the old, forgotten victory that we had just dug out of the dirt.
Call it rationalizing, and maybe it was, but I decided to hold on to it anyway. I had walked away from the television set, twenty-six years earlier, with a sense of relief, and that was a kind of victory, one that had been lost in the immediate swirl of loud, gloating voices.
And I came to discover that lots of us, deep down, felt that same sense of victory that we failed to recognize when it would have provided some welcome consolation. Thoughts and emotions can get awfully tangled up, even in the toy department.
Of course the consolation prize that I discovered in that Miami restaurant couldn’t undo the feeling of gloom I felt way back then, following that championship game. No, it would take almost a miracle to do that.
And, there was another game on the horizon –
The Game That Was Called Super Bowl III.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Baltimore Colt & Mr. Broadway - Part I
When you’re a kid, things get poured into your brain that never leave. That’s how most of us become sports fans. We get infected before we’re able to build our natural defenses.
What I remember most about 1959 was watching professional football, on Sunday afternoons, in my living room, with my father. Being an especially astute 10-year old, I noticed a big difference in the way Dad watched baseball and the way he watched football.
When we watched Red Sox games, he would glance at the newspaper, leave the room or talk on the phone, then returning his attention to the game, he would ask: “What did I miss? But when he watched football, he watched every play. If the phone rang, he would hold it to his ear and talk, but his eyes would be focused on the screen. He had an on-off switch in his head, so that if I spoke during a play, he heard my voice, with all of the words filtered out. It converted my chatter into white noise.
In Boston, in the 1950’s, we did not have a professional football team of our own. We watched the New York Giants. We rooted for the Giants, but we knew that they were not really ours. It was like we were borrowing them.
I’m going to have to correct a previous statement. I rooted for the Giants. Dad rooted for a different team every week. When I asked him why, he explained that when he bet on a game, it only made sense to root for the team that his money was riding on. He added, instructively, that I should never, ever make a sentimental bet.
Some fathers preach safe sex, mine preached safe gambling. I suppose all vices can get you into trouble, so you need to watch the ones that you think are most likely to entrap your kid.
One Sunday afternoon, the Giants were about to play the Baltimore Colts. When quarterback, Johnny Unitas took the field, my father said, without taking his eyes off the set, “He’s the best there ever was.” Dad was not one for superlatives. With all the games, in all the sports that we watched before and after this one, he only said that about one other player, running back, Jim Brown.
For me, this was one outstanding piece of information. I knew that I would walk into school the next day and let my friends know how smart I was. The method chosen for this sort of announcement would be critical. If I stood up and blurted it out, it would be obvious that I was simply passing on information that I just received from someone else. So I knew that I would have do it with a kind of casual thinking-out-loud delivery:
Hey, did you guys watch the Colts game yesterday? Man, Unitas has to be the best there ever was.
It has been said about Unitas, that for most of any game, he was great, but there were other quarterbacks who were his equal, that is, until the final two minutes. Back in those days, quarterbacks called their own plays. Unitas was completely in charge, and he was a master. For him, being down by a touchdown, with two minutes to play was like playing with the game tied.
Johnny U. (as he was called) completed a touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games. A feat, often compared to Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak. The 1959 season ended with the Colts beating the Giants in the championship game, which is still often referred to as the greatest game ever played. For most fans, it solidified Unitas’ position as football’s number one QB.
Finally, in 1960, we got our own team, the Boston Patriots. They were the last franchise awarded in the upstart American Football League. Mainstream pundits everywhere said the league wouldn’t last. Earlier attempts to challenge the NFL had failed, and surely this one would be no different.
That old AFL were a fun gang to watch. With wide-open offenses, they scored a lot of points. The uniforms were colorful and so were the players – like Abner Haynes, Clem Daniels, Elbert “Golden Wheels” Dubenion, Cookie Gilchrist, Gino Cappelletti,Wahoo McDaniel, Big Daddy Lipscomb and Lance Alworth.
But it was not always easy being a fan. For one thing, the Patriots had no home of their own. They borrowed playing time at Harvard Stadium, Boston University Field, Boston College’s Alumni Field, and Fenway Park. Following the Patriots, literally meant following them around.
Worse than that –much worse than that– was the putdown factor.
NFL fans, players, and most sportswriters looked down upon the AFL as a junior league. I heard this a lot: Any AFL team could be beaten by a good college team. AFL teams can’t play defense. Their biggest stars wouldn’t even be starters in the NFL. No matter how much success the league began to enjoy, the insults never let up.
You’d be sitting at a bar, watching the Chargers and the Chiefs, or the Pats and the Raiders, and someone would yell to the bartender to switch channels to the real game, meaning the NFL game, regardless of how dull it might be. You might protest, but you would usually be shouted down.
The AFL wasn’t going to go away. AFL teams were attracting more talented players, which included opening the doors to more and more black players, never an NFL priority. We AFLers were extremely loyal fans. Our days of borrowing an NFL team were over for good. We were not going to let this league die.
Seeing the writing on the wall, the NFL made a big strategic move. They would merge with the AFL. Well, imagine that!
The merger would not be fully completed until 1970, but in 1967 they would begin their new relationship with a slate of inter-league exhibition games. On August 13, the NFL Baltimore Colts played the AFL Boston Patriots at Harvard Stadium.
That morning, my father put down the newspaper, and said, “We should go to the game.” I probably told him I was busy. After all, I was now a semi-rebellious 18-year old, living THE Sixties.
He probably told me to stop thinking I was so cool. We drove to the stadium, bought tickets and ended up in about the fifth or sixth row. The announcer began calling the names of the Colt’s starting offense. With their helmets tucked under their arms, Each player trotted onto the field, right up to the section of stands where we were seated.
We all gave each Colt a warm welcoming applause. And, then, the announcer’s voice said, “at quarterback, Johnny Unitas.”
And, instantly, I was 10 years old.
He trotted toward us and stopped, as had each of his teammates. But this time, the crowd rose to its feet, clapped – louder than any clapping I had ever heard – and cheered, and didn’t stop. The slender man wearing the white uniform, the crew cut, and the boyish smile seemed genuinely touched. He nodded a thank you. Near me a man with a small boy had tears in his eyes. And so did another. And another.
Mind you, this was years before men got together for the specific purpose of group crying. Public tears, in the men’s department of life, were not yet fashionable.
My father looked at me with a grin. The grin said, well you hot shot, smart-ass, think you know everything little punk, you will never forget this moment as long as you live.
And he was right about that. Actually, he was right about all of it, but that’s another story.
The Colts beat the Pats 33 to 3. I didn’t remember the score; I had to look it up. The score really didn’t matter. It was just a meaningless exhibition game. But for the fans of the Boston Patriots, of the American Football League, who happened to be in the stands that afternoon, this was Validation Day.
If you happen to be an old AFL fan, I do not need to explain what we felt on that August afternoon, watching our guys, the new guys, the cast-offs, the disrespected, playing on the same field with the Baltimore Colts.
Or, how it felt having The Greatest There Ever Was as a guest in our home.
My father has been gone for nearly two decades. Often, when I think of him, I think of that day.
But there is more to this story.
In fact, this is really just background information, intended to put the real story more squarely in perspective.
TO BE CONTINUED…
What I remember most about 1959 was watching professional football, on Sunday afternoons, in my living room, with my father. Being an especially astute 10-year old, I noticed a big difference in the way Dad watched baseball and the way he watched football.
When we watched Red Sox games, he would glance at the newspaper, leave the room or talk on the phone, then returning his attention to the game, he would ask: “What did I miss? But when he watched football, he watched every play. If the phone rang, he would hold it to his ear and talk, but his eyes would be focused on the screen. He had an on-off switch in his head, so that if I spoke during a play, he heard my voice, with all of the words filtered out. It converted my chatter into white noise.
In Boston, in the 1950’s, we did not have a professional football team of our own. We watched the New York Giants. We rooted for the Giants, but we knew that they were not really ours. It was like we were borrowing them.
I’m going to have to correct a previous statement. I rooted for the Giants. Dad rooted for a different team every week. When I asked him why, he explained that when he bet on a game, it only made sense to root for the team that his money was riding on. He added, instructively, that I should never, ever make a sentimental bet.
Some fathers preach safe sex, mine preached safe gambling. I suppose all vices can get you into trouble, so you need to watch the ones that you think are most likely to entrap your kid.
One Sunday afternoon, the Giants were about to play the Baltimore Colts. When quarterback, Johnny Unitas took the field, my father said, without taking his eyes off the set, “He’s the best there ever was.” Dad was not one for superlatives. With all the games, in all the sports that we watched before and after this one, he only said that about one other player, running back, Jim Brown.
For me, this was one outstanding piece of information. I knew that I would walk into school the next day and let my friends know how smart I was. The method chosen for this sort of announcement would be critical. If I stood up and blurted it out, it would be obvious that I was simply passing on information that I just received from someone else. So I knew that I would have do it with a kind of casual thinking-out-loud delivery:
Hey, did you guys watch the Colts game yesterday? Man, Unitas has to be the best there ever was.
It has been said about Unitas, that for most of any game, he was great, but there were other quarterbacks who were his equal, that is, until the final two minutes. Back in those days, quarterbacks called their own plays. Unitas was completely in charge, and he was a master. For him, being down by a touchdown, with two minutes to play was like playing with the game tied.
Johnny U. (as he was called) completed a touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games. A feat, often compared to Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak. The 1959 season ended with the Colts beating the Giants in the championship game, which is still often referred to as the greatest game ever played. For most fans, it solidified Unitas’ position as football’s number one QB.
Finally, in 1960, we got our own team, the Boston Patriots. They were the last franchise awarded in the upstart American Football League. Mainstream pundits everywhere said the league wouldn’t last. Earlier attempts to challenge the NFL had failed, and surely this one would be no different.
That old AFL were a fun gang to watch. With wide-open offenses, they scored a lot of points. The uniforms were colorful and so were the players – like Abner Haynes, Clem Daniels, Elbert “Golden Wheels” Dubenion, Cookie Gilchrist, Gino Cappelletti,Wahoo McDaniel, Big Daddy Lipscomb and Lance Alworth.
But it was not always easy being a fan. For one thing, the Patriots had no home of their own. They borrowed playing time at Harvard Stadium, Boston University Field, Boston College’s Alumni Field, and Fenway Park. Following the Patriots, literally meant following them around.
Worse than that –much worse than that– was the putdown factor.
NFL fans, players, and most sportswriters looked down upon the AFL as a junior league. I heard this a lot: Any AFL team could be beaten by a good college team. AFL teams can’t play defense. Their biggest stars wouldn’t even be starters in the NFL. No matter how much success the league began to enjoy, the insults never let up.
You’d be sitting at a bar, watching the Chargers and the Chiefs, or the Pats and the Raiders, and someone would yell to the bartender to switch channels to the real game, meaning the NFL game, regardless of how dull it might be. You might protest, but you would usually be shouted down.
The AFL wasn’t going to go away. AFL teams were attracting more talented players, which included opening the doors to more and more black players, never an NFL priority. We AFLers were extremely loyal fans. Our days of borrowing an NFL team were over for good. We were not going to let this league die.
Seeing the writing on the wall, the NFL made a big strategic move. They would merge with the AFL. Well, imagine that!
The merger would not be fully completed until 1970, but in 1967 they would begin their new relationship with a slate of inter-league exhibition games. On August 13, the NFL Baltimore Colts played the AFL Boston Patriots at Harvard Stadium.
That morning, my father put down the newspaper, and said, “We should go to the game.” I probably told him I was busy. After all, I was now a semi-rebellious 18-year old, living THE Sixties.
He probably told me to stop thinking I was so cool. We drove to the stadium, bought tickets and ended up in about the fifth or sixth row. The announcer began calling the names of the Colt’s starting offense. With their helmets tucked under their arms, Each player trotted onto the field, right up to the section of stands where we were seated.
We all gave each Colt a warm welcoming applause. And, then, the announcer’s voice said, “at quarterback, Johnny Unitas.”
And, instantly, I was 10 years old.
He trotted toward us and stopped, as had each of his teammates. But this time, the crowd rose to its feet, clapped – louder than any clapping I had ever heard – and cheered, and didn’t stop. The slender man wearing the white uniform, the crew cut, and the boyish smile seemed genuinely touched. He nodded a thank you. Near me a man with a small boy had tears in his eyes. And so did another. And another.
Mind you, this was years before men got together for the specific purpose of group crying. Public tears, in the men’s department of life, were not yet fashionable.
My father looked at me with a grin. The grin said, well you hot shot, smart-ass, think you know everything little punk, you will never forget this moment as long as you live.
And he was right about that. Actually, he was right about all of it, but that’s another story.
The Colts beat the Pats 33 to 3. I didn’t remember the score; I had to look it up. The score really didn’t matter. It was just a meaningless exhibition game. But for the fans of the Boston Patriots, of the American Football League, who happened to be in the stands that afternoon, this was Validation Day.
If you happen to be an old AFL fan, I do not need to explain what we felt on that August afternoon, watching our guys, the new guys, the cast-offs, the disrespected, playing on the same field with the Baltimore Colts.
Or, how it felt having The Greatest There Ever Was as a guest in our home.
My father has been gone for nearly two decades. Often, when I think of him, I think of that day.
But there is more to this story.
In fact, this is really just background information, intended to put the real story more squarely in perspective.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
Jenny Sanford is the first lady of South Carolina, and might have been in the running for next first lady of the United States. That is, until that wild and wacky hiker of a husband of hers confessed to spending Fathers Day down in Argentina, doing the dirty tango, thus putting a rather abrupt end to his political future and probably his marriage.
Please shout: Olé!
Jenny seems like a nice woman. So I thought I would send her some words of advice. Sure, she’s probably getting plenty of that already, but mine is different, because I’m putting my advice in a song.
To get the most out of this, you will need to sing it as you read it. I’m not kidding. This is the only way it’s going work.
But first, I will need you to go grab some of your favorite gangsta rap music and play it until you are immersed -- mind, body and soul. Select that tender tune you first heard blasting out of car, in line at the drive-thru, or stopped next to you at an interminable red light, to which you responded by racing to the mall in breathless pursuit of your very own CD, which you’ve been saving, like a chilled bottle of champagne, for the right occasion, which just happens to be right now.
So pop it in, and by all means, crank up the volume.
Please no cheating. I shouldn’t have to say this, but you will not get the same effect from Rod Stewart’s Greatest Hits or anything from Norah Jones. That stuff will not help you with the proper interpretation of my song. In fact anything like that will kill the message, not to mention the rhythm.
O.K. I’m assuming you’ve done as I asked, and your mind and body are now on the same wavelength with mine. But first let’s do a short warm-up exercise to help open your lungs and close your mind. Ready? All together now, one…two…three…sing…
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
KEEP THE HOUSE!
DON’T BE A MOUSE!
DUMP YOUR SPOUSE!
Again. This time, Louder.
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
KEEP THE HOUSE!
DON’T BE A MOUSE!
DUMP YOUR SPOUSE!
I can’t hear you! Jenny can’t hear you!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
KEEP THE HOUSE!
DON’T BE A MOUSE!
DUMP YOUR SPOUSE!
Great. Now please take a moment to catch your breath.
Now visualize yourself staring straight into the MTV camera.
You should try to come up with a threatening facial expression. Think gangsta. And, for the best possible delivery, keep pointing your index finger as though you’re jabbing it into someone’s chest.
Oh, one more thing: there’s no profanity in my lyrics. If you really dig your gangsta rap, feel free to drop-in the F-word, wherever you think it’s needed.
Ready? All together now, one, two, three…
HE WENT TO ARGENTINA TO PLAY WITH HIS CHIQUITA
DON’T CRY FOR HER LIKE YOU DID FOR EVITA
THANKS TO HER HE’LL NEVER BE PREZZ
BUT HE’S THE ONE TO BLAME LIKE JUST YOUR GUT SAYS.
HE’LL APOLOGIZE WITH NOTHING BUT LIES, SO JUST…
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
HE WENT BEFORE THE CAMERAS TO TELL HIS STORY
HE LOOKED SO STUPID, HE’LL NEVER HAVE THE GLORY.
JEN, YOU DID THE RIGHT THING BY NOT JOININ’ IN
THAT MISSUZ SPITZER THING CAUSES CRAWLIN’ OF MY SKIN.
LET HIM TWIST ALONE, TOTALLY ALONE, AND…
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
HIS AIDS COME TO YOU. THEY BEG AND CAJOLE
TO SAVE HIS FUTURE IS GOOD FOR THE PARTY
BUT HER TAN LINES TRUMPED ALL THAT FISCAL CONTROL
THOSE PLEAS FOR FORGIVENESS ARE PRETTY DAMN TARDY.
STAND IN HIS WAY? STAND IN HIS WAY? YOU’LL…
TRIP THAT LOUSE!
TRIP THAT LOUSE!
HOLIDAYS ARE COMIN’ AND THIS GETS STICKY
HAVIN’ HIM AT THE TABLE SHOULD MAKE YOU SICKLY
THIS TURKEY-GUY PLEASE KEEP OFF YOUR LIST
HE CAN GO SALSA WITH HIS ARGENTINE MISS.
LEAVE HIS CHAIR EMPTY, JUST…
SKIP THAT LOUSE!
SKIP THAT LOUSE!
HE’S PROBABLY TELLIN’ YOU HE’S FILLED WITH REMORSE
HE WANTS TO BE PUNISHED, BEATEN WITH FORCE
DON’T HESITATE. THIS WILL MAKE YOU FEEL GOOOOD
GRAB SOMETHING ROUGH, HIDE HIS FACE WITH A HOOD
AND WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT…
WHIP THAT LOUSE!
WHIP THAT LOUSE!
AS HE CRUMBLES, TEARS OF PITY YOU MAY SHED
YOU MAY EVEN WEAKEN AND LET HIM INTO YOUR BED
HE MAY HAVE HIS WAY, THEN FALL OFF TO SLEEP
WHILE HE’S LYIN’ PEACEFUL, REMEMBER HE’S A CREEP.
GO GET YOUR SCISSORS AND…
SNIP THAT LOUSE!
SNIP THAT LOUSE!
THE DAY WILL COME WHEN YOU’RE READY FOR SOME FUN
TRY SAN DIEGO FOR ITS SURF AND ITS SUN
FIND A BLOND SURFER FOR YOUR OWN BOY HOTTIE.
WHEN THE GOV ASKS WHY? IT’S THAT TWENNY-SOMETHIN’ BODY.
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN TO…
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
A very special thanks to those of you who actively participated. If Jenny will sing this number with the same sneering, finger pointing, take-no-poop attitude, she’ll be just fine. Trust me. Music works miracles.
Please shout: Olé!
Jenny seems like a nice woman. So I thought I would send her some words of advice. Sure, she’s probably getting plenty of that already, but mine is different, because I’m putting my advice in a song.
To get the most out of this, you will need to sing it as you read it. I’m not kidding. This is the only way it’s going work.
But first, I will need you to go grab some of your favorite gangsta rap music and play it until you are immersed -- mind, body and soul. Select that tender tune you first heard blasting out of car, in line at the drive-thru, or stopped next to you at an interminable red light, to which you responded by racing to the mall in breathless pursuit of your very own CD, which you’ve been saving, like a chilled bottle of champagne, for the right occasion, which just happens to be right now.
So pop it in, and by all means, crank up the volume.
Please no cheating. I shouldn’t have to say this, but you will not get the same effect from Rod Stewart’s Greatest Hits or anything from Norah Jones. That stuff will not help you with the proper interpretation of my song. In fact anything like that will kill the message, not to mention the rhythm.
O.K. I’m assuming you’ve done as I asked, and your mind and body are now on the same wavelength with mine. But first let’s do a short warm-up exercise to help open your lungs and close your mind. Ready? All together now, one…two…three…sing…
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
KEEP THE HOUSE!
DON’T BE A MOUSE!
DUMP YOUR SPOUSE!
Again. This time, Louder.
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
KEEP THE HOUSE!
DON’T BE A MOUSE!
DUMP YOUR SPOUSE!
I can’t hear you! Jenny can’t hear you!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
KEEP THE HOUSE!
DON’T BE A MOUSE!
DUMP YOUR SPOUSE!
Great. Now please take a moment to catch your breath.
Now visualize yourself staring straight into the MTV camera.
You should try to come up with a threatening facial expression. Think gangsta. And, for the best possible delivery, keep pointing your index finger as though you’re jabbing it into someone’s chest.
Oh, one more thing: there’s no profanity in my lyrics. If you really dig your gangsta rap, feel free to drop-in the F-word, wherever you think it’s needed.
Ready? All together now, one, two, three…
HE WENT TO ARGENTINA TO PLAY WITH HIS CHIQUITA
DON’T CRY FOR HER LIKE YOU DID FOR EVITA
THANKS TO HER HE’LL NEVER BE PREZZ
BUT HE’S THE ONE TO BLAME LIKE JUST YOUR GUT SAYS.
HE’LL APOLOGIZE WITH NOTHING BUT LIES, SO JUST…
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
HE WENT BEFORE THE CAMERAS TO TELL HIS STORY
HE LOOKED SO STUPID, HE’LL NEVER HAVE THE GLORY.
JEN, YOU DID THE RIGHT THING BY NOT JOININ’ IN
THAT MISSUZ SPITZER THING CAUSES CRAWLIN’ OF MY SKIN.
LET HIM TWIST ALONE, TOTALLY ALONE, AND…
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
HIS AIDS COME TO YOU. THEY BEG AND CAJOLE
TO SAVE HIS FUTURE IS GOOD FOR THE PARTY
BUT HER TAN LINES TRUMPED ALL THAT FISCAL CONTROL
THOSE PLEAS FOR FORGIVENESS ARE PRETTY DAMN TARDY.
STAND IN HIS WAY? STAND IN HIS WAY? YOU’LL…
TRIP THAT LOUSE!
TRIP THAT LOUSE!
HOLIDAYS ARE COMIN’ AND THIS GETS STICKY
HAVIN’ HIM AT THE TABLE SHOULD MAKE YOU SICKLY
THIS TURKEY-GUY PLEASE KEEP OFF YOUR LIST
HE CAN GO SALSA WITH HIS ARGENTINE MISS.
LEAVE HIS CHAIR EMPTY, JUST…
SKIP THAT LOUSE!
SKIP THAT LOUSE!
HE’S PROBABLY TELLIN’ YOU HE’S FILLED WITH REMORSE
HE WANTS TO BE PUNISHED, BEATEN WITH FORCE
DON’T HESITATE. THIS WILL MAKE YOU FEEL GOOOOD
GRAB SOMETHING ROUGH, HIDE HIS FACE WITH A HOOD
AND WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT…
WHIP THAT LOUSE!
WHIP THAT LOUSE!
AS HE CRUMBLES, TEARS OF PITY YOU MAY SHED
YOU MAY EVEN WEAKEN AND LET HIM INTO YOUR BED
HE MAY HAVE HIS WAY, THEN FALL OFF TO SLEEP
WHILE HE’S LYIN’ PEACEFUL, REMEMBER HE’S A CREEP.
GO GET YOUR SCISSORS AND…
SNIP THAT LOUSE!
SNIP THAT LOUSE!
THE DAY WILL COME WHEN YOU’RE READY FOR SOME FUN
TRY SAN DIEGO FOR ITS SURF AND ITS SUN
FIND A BLOND SURFER FOR YOUR OWN BOY HOTTIE.
WHEN THE GOV ASKS WHY? IT’S THAT TWENNY-SOMETHIN’ BODY.
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN TO…
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!
A very special thanks to those of you who actively participated. If Jenny will sing this number with the same sneering, finger pointing, take-no-poop attitude, she’ll be just fine. Trust me. Music works miracles.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Mama and The Papa
Her nickname was Mama, pronounced Ma-maah. She was a black woman from Louisiana, who came to New York to begin a career that she would not be allowed to pursue in almost any other U.S. city. In 1961 she rented the basement of a building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and started an experimental theater, which she named Café La Mama.
She started her theater to help two of her friends who wanted to be playwrights. Even back then, Broadway was ruled by box office mainstreamism, and Off-Broadway -- once a freer alternative -- was fast becoming a near clone. The fresh artistic voices that were often angry, irreverent, even revolutionary, found homes in the random collection of New York churches, cafes and basements that became collectively known as Off-Off-Broadway.
La Mama began with tiny audiences. Mama would walk on stage before each performance and ring a cowbell to get all five or ten, in attendance, to stop talking. To sustain the theater and the playwrights and actors who slept on her floor and ate her food, Mama kept her day job.
They did daring, ground-breaking work in that basement at 321 Ninth Street, work that got them noticed, but they were forced to move, several times – pushed out by complaining neighbors, racism, phony charges of prostitution, zoning regulations, and license requirements aimed at cleaning up the riff-raff.
New York was not hospitable, but Mama dealt with it all, attracting, protecting, and nurturing new artists, allowing them to push the artistic envelope, while she battled city hall.
Mama’s real name was Ellen Stewart. You can be an avid theatergoer and not recognize the name. She was a tireless promoter, but never a self-promoter, which might explain why the names of some that she nurtured: Sam Shepard, Terence McNally, Nick Nolte, Bette Midler, Harvey Keitel, Danny DeVito, James Coco, and Al Pacino are more recognizable. Ellen introduced Harold Pinter to American audiences.
In 1965 Ellen took her show on the road. Her troupe performed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Denmark, and eventually in more than 70 countries. Ellen spread the gospel of experimental theater all over the world, and brought the world’s artists back to La Mama.
In the late 1960s, La Mama, the anti-Broadway, harnessed the energy, creativity, and social upheaval of the times in ways that sometimes pushed their productions onto Broadway stages, Hair, Godspell, and Jesus Christ Superstar started at La Mama before going neon.
Even with success, La Mama lacked a permanent home, that is, until 1970 when Ellen’s tenacious fundraising, having won grant money from the Ford, Rockefeller, and Kaplan foundations, enabled La Mama to buy its own building, from which it could not be evicted.
That is, until 1992, when the theater was threatened with foreclosure and needed to be saved.
Friends, made along the way, helped rescue La Mama. Friends like Robert DeNiro, Estelle Getty, Sally Kirkland, F. Murray Abraham, and Billy Crystal. Mama was never about getting rich, and maybe that had a little something to do with earning the respect and admiration of those who mattered most.
For nearly 50 years, Ellen Stewart has provided a stage for the new, the original, and the provocative.
Still, her work is not done. Asclepius is now running at La Mama. Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine and healing. Some think the play is Ellen’s poetic commentary on our present health care system. Asclepius was conceived, written, and directed by Ellen Stewart. She is believed to be 91 years old, and has been in ill health for the majority of those years.
The story of Ellen Stewart and La Mama -- from a dingy dirt floor basement to one of the most influential forces in American theater -- really is quite a story.
But it is not the story I came here to tell.
You see, in 1950, when Ellen first arrived in the Big Apple, with sixty dollars to her name, it was to pursue her dream of becoming…
…a fashion designer.
Alone and broke, she walked into St. Patrick’s Cathedral, lit some candles, and prayed for a break. On the way out, she noticed the sign across the street for Saks Fifth Avenue. She had never heard of Saks Fifth Avenue, but she walked in, found the personnel department and asked for a job. While sitting there, designer, Edith Lances walked in, looking for someone to snip threads from brassieres. Instantly, Ellen had a job.
If you don’t have religion, that might make you reconsider.
Black women who worked at Saks were required to wear blue smocks. I’m sure all blue smocked black women looked pretty much alike to everyone else. Maybe that was the point: to conceal their individuality. But, customers began to notice the colorful handmade clothing that Ellen wore under her blue smock. They wanted to know what department they could visit to buy something like it for themselves.
Three months after starting at Saks, snipping threads from bras, Ellen became executive designer of sportswear. Her designs were a sensation. She became the only American to have two gowns at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. The career of her dreams was now reality.
And she lived that reality, until her health made her quit. She had a heart condition and more. Ellen does not shed much light on the details of her life. Those who love her story are left to connect the dots themselves. But she ended up resigning from Saks and doing freelance designs for Bergdorf Goodman, Lord & Taylor, and Henri Bendel.
Then, she had a nervous breakdown. She went to Morocco for a change of scenery and a change of life. She rested and reflected. Then, she returned to New York, rented a basement and opened her theater.
And now, as commentator, Paul Harvey used to say, you know the rest of the story.
Well, not quite. There’s still a piece missing.
And here it is.
When she first arrived in New York, in 1950, she explored the neighborhoods. On the Lower East Side, she happened onto Orchard and Delancy Streets, where the sidewalks were crammed with tables and pushcarts, piled high with fabric.
There she met Abraham Diamond. The elderly Jewish merchant and the black woman from Louisiana became friends. When she’d visit, he would hand her a packet of fabric with a request to make something special. She would come back, wearing what she had made, and he would parade her around, showing off her creations -- the creations that, at Saks, would be seen and admired, sticking out, irrepressibly, from under her blue smock.
The fabric, of course, was a wonderful gift, but perhaps not as precious as the accompanying words of advice, that to find fulfillment, she should have a pushcart, and that she should push it for others.
Ellen later said that, while recovering in Morocco many years later, the words of the man she called, Papa Diamond came back to her.
The basement she rented at 321 Ninth Street was supposed to be a studio, for displaying her designs. Instead it became Café La Mama, with a pushcart wheel hung over the entrance.
Find fulfillment by pushing the cart for others. Interesting concept.
------------------------------------------------------------
Postscript: It is not easy to obtain the facts of Ellen Stewart’s life. Do the research and you will find contradictory information on her age, place of birth, the exact nature of her health problems, and other details that would normally be easily accessible. But, on personal matters, Ellen has not been one to set the record straight. One day there will be a definitive biography, written by a privileged member of her inner circle. Until then, she will live in the kind of mystery that surrounds an avant-garde stage character. And, she probably prefers it that way.
She started her theater to help two of her friends who wanted to be playwrights. Even back then, Broadway was ruled by box office mainstreamism, and Off-Broadway -- once a freer alternative -- was fast becoming a near clone. The fresh artistic voices that were often angry, irreverent, even revolutionary, found homes in the random collection of New York churches, cafes and basements that became collectively known as Off-Off-Broadway.
La Mama began with tiny audiences. Mama would walk on stage before each performance and ring a cowbell to get all five or ten, in attendance, to stop talking. To sustain the theater and the playwrights and actors who slept on her floor and ate her food, Mama kept her day job.
They did daring, ground-breaking work in that basement at 321 Ninth Street, work that got them noticed, but they were forced to move, several times – pushed out by complaining neighbors, racism, phony charges of prostitution, zoning regulations, and license requirements aimed at cleaning up the riff-raff.
New York was not hospitable, but Mama dealt with it all, attracting, protecting, and nurturing new artists, allowing them to push the artistic envelope, while she battled city hall.
Mama’s real name was Ellen Stewart. You can be an avid theatergoer and not recognize the name. She was a tireless promoter, but never a self-promoter, which might explain why the names of some that she nurtured: Sam Shepard, Terence McNally, Nick Nolte, Bette Midler, Harvey Keitel, Danny DeVito, James Coco, and Al Pacino are more recognizable. Ellen introduced Harold Pinter to American audiences.
In 1965 Ellen took her show on the road. Her troupe performed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Denmark, and eventually in more than 70 countries. Ellen spread the gospel of experimental theater all over the world, and brought the world’s artists back to La Mama.
In the late 1960s, La Mama, the anti-Broadway, harnessed the energy, creativity, and social upheaval of the times in ways that sometimes pushed their productions onto Broadway stages, Hair, Godspell, and Jesus Christ Superstar started at La Mama before going neon.
Even with success, La Mama lacked a permanent home, that is, until 1970 when Ellen’s tenacious fundraising, having won grant money from the Ford, Rockefeller, and Kaplan foundations, enabled La Mama to buy its own building, from which it could not be evicted.
That is, until 1992, when the theater was threatened with foreclosure and needed to be saved.
Friends, made along the way, helped rescue La Mama. Friends like Robert DeNiro, Estelle Getty, Sally Kirkland, F. Murray Abraham, and Billy Crystal. Mama was never about getting rich, and maybe that had a little something to do with earning the respect and admiration of those who mattered most.
For nearly 50 years, Ellen Stewart has provided a stage for the new, the original, and the provocative.
Still, her work is not done. Asclepius is now running at La Mama. Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine and healing. Some think the play is Ellen’s poetic commentary on our present health care system. Asclepius was conceived, written, and directed by Ellen Stewart. She is believed to be 91 years old, and has been in ill health for the majority of those years.
The story of Ellen Stewart and La Mama -- from a dingy dirt floor basement to one of the most influential forces in American theater -- really is quite a story.
But it is not the story I came here to tell.
You see, in 1950, when Ellen first arrived in the Big Apple, with sixty dollars to her name, it was to pursue her dream of becoming…
…a fashion designer.
Alone and broke, she walked into St. Patrick’s Cathedral, lit some candles, and prayed for a break. On the way out, she noticed the sign across the street for Saks Fifth Avenue. She had never heard of Saks Fifth Avenue, but she walked in, found the personnel department and asked for a job. While sitting there, designer, Edith Lances walked in, looking for someone to snip threads from brassieres. Instantly, Ellen had a job.
If you don’t have religion, that might make you reconsider.
Black women who worked at Saks were required to wear blue smocks. I’m sure all blue smocked black women looked pretty much alike to everyone else. Maybe that was the point: to conceal their individuality. But, customers began to notice the colorful handmade clothing that Ellen wore under her blue smock. They wanted to know what department they could visit to buy something like it for themselves.
Three months after starting at Saks, snipping threads from bras, Ellen became executive designer of sportswear. Her designs were a sensation. She became the only American to have two gowns at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. The career of her dreams was now reality.
And she lived that reality, until her health made her quit. She had a heart condition and more. Ellen does not shed much light on the details of her life. Those who love her story are left to connect the dots themselves. But she ended up resigning from Saks and doing freelance designs for Bergdorf Goodman, Lord & Taylor, and Henri Bendel.
Then, she had a nervous breakdown. She went to Morocco for a change of scenery and a change of life. She rested and reflected. Then, she returned to New York, rented a basement and opened her theater.
And now, as commentator, Paul Harvey used to say, you know the rest of the story.
Well, not quite. There’s still a piece missing.
And here it is.
When she first arrived in New York, in 1950, she explored the neighborhoods. On the Lower East Side, she happened onto Orchard and Delancy Streets, where the sidewalks were crammed with tables and pushcarts, piled high with fabric.
There she met Abraham Diamond. The elderly Jewish merchant and the black woman from Louisiana became friends. When she’d visit, he would hand her a packet of fabric with a request to make something special. She would come back, wearing what she had made, and he would parade her around, showing off her creations -- the creations that, at Saks, would be seen and admired, sticking out, irrepressibly, from under her blue smock.
The fabric, of course, was a wonderful gift, but perhaps not as precious as the accompanying words of advice, that to find fulfillment, she should have a pushcart, and that she should push it for others.
Ellen later said that, while recovering in Morocco many years later, the words of the man she called, Papa Diamond came back to her.
The basement she rented at 321 Ninth Street was supposed to be a studio, for displaying her designs. Instead it became Café La Mama, with a pushcart wheel hung over the entrance.
Find fulfillment by pushing the cart for others. Interesting concept.
------------------------------------------------------------
Postscript: It is not easy to obtain the facts of Ellen Stewart’s life. Do the research and you will find contradictory information on her age, place of birth, the exact nature of her health problems, and other details that would normally be easily accessible. But, on personal matters, Ellen has not been one to set the record straight. One day there will be a definitive biography, written by a privileged member of her inner circle. Until then, she will live in the kind of mystery that surrounds an avant-garde stage character. And, she probably prefers it that way.
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