Last Days of Summer

By Steve Kluger

There’s not an avid page turner who doesn’t have favorite characters from American literature.

For me it was always Huck Finn, Jay Gatsby, Holden Cauldfield, Atticus Finch and Ignatius J. Reilly. . . hell Br’er Rabbit for that matter.

But now, having read Steve Kluger’s Last Days of Summer (1998 William Morrow), I’m of the humble opinion that one Joey Margolis of Brooklyn, New York, may just top them all.

Never have I read a character that can hold a candle to Margolis. Or hold a gun to the little beggar (for that matter), which most of the people who come into contact with him—at one time or another—at least threaten to do.

Having lost his father in the late 1930s to divorce and a hated woman he calls Nana Bert, Margolis (a NY Giants fan) relocates with his Jewish mother and aunt in an Italian neighborhood on Brooklyn’s Montgomery Street. There in an apartment with a bedroom window view of Ebbetts Field, the playground of his most hated Brooklyn Dodgers, Margolis (among other activities) slingshots marbles down at Cookie Lavagetto, Hugh Casey and Pee Wee Reese.

Being the new Jewish kid/target on the block our precocious character is abused, bruised and bullied by a pre-teen Italian mafia—Corelli, Verrastro, Fiore, Bierman, and Delvecchi (“Get it, Margolis? Sheenies walk on that side of the street!”).

Fearing more black eyes, cut lips, etc., the identity of these perps is a secret that Joey (telling his shrink) says he will take to his grave. This fear and the fact that he now longs desperately for a father figure, results in behavior that today’s psychiatric professionals might refer to as ACTING OUT.

Margolis:

• Finds himself in the Juvenile Detention Center of Brooklyn for peeing in the borough’s water supply. While in the slam (his words as he enjoys firing dialogue at his interrogators from cop and robber movies of the day) he baffles the Center’s policemen and psychiatrists by lying his way through “rehabilitation.”

• Drives Janet Hicks, his sixth grade teacher to a medical leave. Before caving (nervous breakdown) the teacher writes to Margolis’ mother:  “Joseph remains a challenging student. While I appreciate his creativity, I am sure that you will agree that a classroom is an inappropriate forum for a reckless imagination. There is not a shred of evidence to support his claim that Dolly Madison was a lesbian, and even fewer grounds to explain why he even knows what the word means, etc.”

• Handles his infatuation with classmate Rachel Panitz with acts of hostility—throwing pens, erasers, paper clips, fountain pens, and light weight textbooks at the child, just to get her “attention!”

• Pretends, along with his Japanese friend Crag Nakamura, to be The Shadow to Nakamura’s Green Hornet. Through succinct TOP SECRET notes, which the “Super Heroes” fire back and forth between their apartments in a can on a string, they plot to do away with Mrs. Aubaugh, a poor shopkeeper who happens to have a wooden leg. The Shadow and Hornet are convinced that the prosthetic houses (in a secret compartment) everything from German made bombs designed to blow up U.S. aircraft to a Morse lamp she uses at Atlantic Beach to signal Nazi U-boats.

Sound like an endearing little chap?

No, hell no, yet Kluger has managed to create in the 12-year-old the most beloved malcontent since Tony Soprano.

Unlike the evil Soprano, Margolis is funny, really funny!

And for all those poor souls he ticks off (family, friends, neighbors, teachers, ballplayers, jailers, detention officers, school girls, psychiatrists), no one wants to choke him harder than Charlie Banks, a hard hitting, hard living third baseman of Margolis’ beloved New York Giants. Banks, the object of Margolis’ affection and would-be father figure, wants to grip Margolis’ neck as though it were the handle of his 38-ounce Louisville Slugger.

Why?  Well the little pest enjoys agitating through the U.S. mail.  Craving attention, he writes often belligerent BS letters to everyone from the President of the United States to the aforementioned third sacker of the 1940 New York Giants, offering up tips on, in FDR’s case, how to run the country (lower the voting age to 9 and keep an eye on Denmark) to why Charlie Banks should hit “one out” for Margolis, and preface the home run by dedicating it to Joey on the radio.

Miraculously everyone writes back to the persistent penman. Kluger opens the novel with this gracious response from the President of the United States.

THE WHITE HOUSE

November 26, 1936

Dear Joseph:

Please allow me to express my deepest gratitude for the dollar you contributed to my campaign. Although I have indeed considered lowering the voting age as you suggest, I’m afraid I would have to draw the line at eighteen. Nine is out of the question. I wish it weren’t. In any event, I’m touched by your support.

Mrs. Roosevelt joins me in thanking you for your kind words. I hope that the next four years will justify your continued faith in us.

Yours very truly,

Franklin D. Roosevelt

For the most part Kluger tells this unlikely yet riveting tale though correspondence loaded with language that might best be described as Streets of New York (Margolis cusses like a ball player—Charlie swears like a Brooklyn street urchin!).  And just to mix it up a bit and move the story along, the novelist drops in an occasional post card, newspaper article, telegram, grade school report card and psychological assessment from the shrink.

The FDR letter (page 1) is a classic. Kluger had me from FDR’s: “Please allow me.  . . .”. Then I turned a page and read the first letter from Margolis to Banks and was hooked!

Mr. Charles Banks, NY Giants

c/o Third Base

The Polo Grounds

Coogans Bluff, NY

Dear Mr. Banks

I am a 12-year-old boy and I am dying of an incurable disease. It is a horrible one. I have to spend most of my life in hospitals and in bed with high fevers and very white skin. This is because I have no more corpuscles, which you may remember is what provides you with antibodies. I am also paralyzed. Sometimes I am racked with so much pain that I cry out in the night and say things like “Dear God, Dear God.”

The reason I’m writing is because I read in a magazine once where Babe Ruth visited a dying boy in a hospital, and although he provided him with an autograph which he had asked for, what the boy really wanted was for Babe to hit one out for him. Well he did, and the Leukemia went away like that. You do not have to come and visit me, but I would appreciate t if you would hit one out. All you have to do is point to left field or whatever makes you comfortable and then say, “This is for my friend Joey Margolis” (on the radio if possible) and then swing.

I hope you can do this soon because I don’t think I will be around much longer.

Your friend,

Joey Margolis

It’s Banks reply that kick starts Margolis, snow balling an avalanche of letters between the two that takes the reader all the way to the novel’s fitting and yes, sentimental, ending.

Mr. Joseph Margolis

236 Montgomery Street

Brooklyn, New York
Dear Friend:

Many thanks for your letter and the kind words contained therein. I am enclosing my picture with the autograph you requested.

Keep on slugging.

Best wishes,

Charles Banks

Having none of the form letter Margolis re-dips his pen to ink and (in this abbreviated version of letter number two below), suggests that “. . . Lou Gehrig once visited this blind boy in a hospital etc.”  The Margolis follow-up begins:

Dear Mr. Banks

“I am a 12-year-old boy and I am blind.”

He closes with this most appropriate salutation.

“I must stop writing now. It is so very, very dark.”

Thank You.

Your friend,

Joey Margolis

As the flow of “love” letters accelerates, familiarity breeds contempt. Now knowing the penmen’s Yin and the yang we join Margolis and Banks as they “slug” their way through the early War years in New York City. There’s a focus on the New York Giants and politics with Joey calling Charlie out for his temper “. . . you can bet I have more important things to do with my life than waste my time with a bully who just because he gets caught trying to steal home would pop a pitcher in the mouth etc.” and Banks jabbing Margolis’ beloved FDR, calling the President “. . . a Noodle Head and Dime Store New Dealer.” To this Margolis counters by wondering if Charlie “. . . ever had an inauguration or has an oval office.

This along with show business (Banks dates a ravishing redheaded Broadway song bird named Hazel MacKay who sings with the Benny Goodman band), and the subject of Margolis’ recalcitrant behavior in school highlight early correspondence (Dear Mrs. Margolis, I Had hoped that Joseph would return from summer vacation ready to apply himself in a more cooperative fashion. Instead . . . etc.).

There are numerous fascinating characters (the Jewish aunt is a hoot) and plenty of twists in this page turner and we follow the “friends” from the streets of Brooklyn to Manhattan night spots to road trips with the New York Giants. Eventually, Margolis joins the team (rooming with Banks) as a batboy, a bat stacker who has the misimpression that he’s now a major league ballplayer.

Here, barely out of New York’s Penn Station Banks writes to his girl friend informing her that Margolis’ aunt has sent them off by telling Banks to keep Joey away from the bad element!

“. . . What a laugh. He is the bad element. When I got back to the compartment the kid was gone. Where he was was at the other end of the smoker with dice and the whole team around him, rolling 7s and saying such things as ‘Aunt Carrie needs a new girdle’ etc.  And by the time I got there he was in the middle of telling a (dirty) joke . . .  well after that I locked him up.”

And in the end, when Charlie’s off to the Pacific to fight the war the correspondence continues. Here (in part) Banks tells his friend that he is in fact HIS FRIEND.

“I can’t tell you where we are but this time it is the medics who are putting in the longest hours. Gee usually all doctors are lucky—camps and nurses and leaves. (it has taken me 2 hours to write this much. You know why.)

We lost Shiloh today. He was in the first landing party on the beach and they did not even let him get out of the boat before they chopped him. It turned out he was only 16. That’s you in 2 yrs. Maybe this is why I have not been able to stop thinking about you since I heard the news, and remembering the first letter you ever wrote to me and how we almost didn’t get to be friends and how little you looked when you told me about your father and Nana Bert and etc. We have come a long way together. . .”

Through these spirited, sometimes sentimental notes we fall hard for Kluger’s characters, see them evolve and do so laughing right to the bittersweet end, of this, one of the written words most poignant and endearing friendships.

For a copy check with your local librarian, drop by your local bookseller or purchase a used paperback of Last Days of Summer at Amazon—for less cash than Joey Margolis might pilfer (on a good day) from that blind man’s tip jar at the corner Brooklyn newsstand.  Just click above on the book’s cover.

The Life and Times of the THUNDERBOLT KID

By Bill Bryson

Writing nostalgia can be tricky. Experiencing sentimental longings or wistful affections for the past is one thing. Presenting these emotions in a way that enables a reader to readily identify with the writer’s past, well that’s another.

So, should any creative writing teachers out there find themselves looking for a textbook, one that might help students better understand this delicate, challenging genre, here’s a thought.

Try The Life and Times of the THUNDERBOLT KID, by Bill Bryson.

In this hilarious, keenly insightful memoir one will find all the ingredients that make for a great reminiscence–identifiable characters (parents, teachers, adults in general), annoying traits (the human condition so fill in the blank here), historic markers (products, entertainment, America’s Civil Defense), the setting of time and place (home town when the good old USA was the good old USA).

If we don’t know Bryson’s characters or relate to all of his references that’s okay. As readers we’ll recall OUR characters and then, before we know it, we’ll be enjoying our moments from the past.

And that’s the trick of writing nostalgia! When the work is so damned full of pitch-perfect observations we (in a sense) think the book’s about us.

Hey, we all didn’t all grow up in Des Moines, Iowa, in the 1950s. Many of us aren’t 60-year-old males who once ran around in cape and costume imagining that we had super powers that would allow us to see Mary O’Leary naked (even if many of us had similar thoughts). Maybe we didn’t have a paper route, one with senile slow paying customers who kept vicious attack dogs. Not all of us were comic book freaks or glued to our TVs just to hear the Lone Ranger’s faithful sidekick Tonto, shout, “Get ‘um up, Scout!” Hell, there are probably a few of us who never even caught our dad and mom doing it!

But those of us in the 1950s club—at one time or another—have certainly pondered some of the questions that gave Bryson pause. Why were those freakin’ TV dinners that we loved always steamy hot in the mashed potatoes compartment and frosty cold on the fried chicken side? Why wasn’t’ Dale Evans named Dale Rogers and why did Roy’s wife always dress as a man? Why do we ALL have an uncle who spews food while he eats? And why did Donald Duck and his flock of nephews wear caps and shirts but were naked from the waist down?

Through the Kid, we can enjoy Bryson’s edgy observational humor (another key to writing great nostalgia) but do so knowing that with his eye for reality, a turn of the page may NOT always offer up that “. . . sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past!”

Bryson on the atomic bomb: “What was scary about the growth of the bomb wasn’t so much the growth of the bomb as the people in charge of the growth of the bomb. The big hats at the Pentagon were actively thinking of ways to put this baby to use. One idea, seriously considered, was to build a device somewhere near the front lines in Korea, induce large numbers of North Koreans and Chinese troops to wander over to have a look, and then set it off.”

Bryson’s Kid, makes us think!

The Kid? Well the creation of the Thunderbolt Kid was a childhood must for Bryson, enabling him to deal with the fact that parents, most adults in fact, must—due to their boring, mundane behavior—be aliens, life form from another planet. This called for the drastic creation of the TK, a character when assembled would have young Bryson decked out in a most eclectic costume—a sacred jersey of Zap sporting an electric thunderbolt, X-ray goggles, a Zorro whip and sword, a Sky King neckerchief, a Roy Rogers decorative vest (you get the idea).

And Bryson would take this creation he lived through (lived, hell, survived Adult World through) to a day when he would be forced to jumpstart his X-ray vision to something more (remembering Mary O’Leary) functional and in fact more suited to his needs:

Bryson: “. . . it was necessary to perfect ThunderVision, a laser like gaze that allowed me to strip away undergarments without damaging skin or outer clothing. That ThunderVision, stepped up a grade and focused more intensely, could also be used as a powerful weapon to vaporize irritating people (adults—a key target of the Kid) was a pleasing but entirely incidental benefit.”

There are moments in The Kid splashed with laughter, passages when we stop and say, “Hey, my family didn’t walk around naked but I had a neighbor, Bunky, a kid whose mother, Mrs. D cup, thought their house was a nudist colony with windows and walls! If one just happened by (which it was my habit to do almost daily) she could be caught wandering the house like a naked free range chicken.

Bryson on his father’s penchant for “dressing” as Donald Duck when building his mid-night snacks: “There was one other notable thing about my father’s making of snacks that must be mentioned. He was bare-assed when he made them. It wasn’t, let me quickly add, that he thought being bare-assed somehow made for a better snack; it was just the he was bare-assed already (believing it healthy he slept naked from the waist down). And when he went downstairs late at night to concoct a snack he always went so attired (or unattired). Goodness knows what Mr. and Mrs. Bukowski next door must have thought as they drew their drapes and saw across the way (as surely they must) my father, bare-assed, padding about his kitchen reaching into high cupboards and assembling the raw materials of his nightly feast.”

With my apologies to Mr. Bryson for this review’s condensations: “Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear!”

On time and place: “I can’t imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s. No country had ever known such prosperity. When the war ended the United States had $26 billion worth of factories that hadn’t existed before the war, $140 billion in savings and war bonds just waiting to be spent, no bomb damage, and practically no competition. All that American companies had to do was stop making tanks and battleships and start making Buicks and Frigidaires—and boy did they.”

On the average Kid’s day in Des Moines during those booming 50s?: “. . . long periods of the day were devoted to just seeing what would happen—what would happen if you pinched a match head while it was still hot or made a vile drink and took a sip of it or focused a white-hot beam of sunlight with a magnifying glass on your Uncle Dick’s bald spot while he was napping. (What happened was that you burned an amazing swift, deep hole that would leave Dick and a team of specialists at Iowa Lutheran Hospital puzzled for weeks.)

On the question of what good is a dim witted friend? “Then, realizing the enormity of what we had just done (wiped out a neighbor’s prize zinnia garden with wooden swords)—I told Buddy that this was not a good time for me to be in trouble on account of my father had a fatal disease that no one knew about, so would he mind taking the blame? And he did. From this I leaned that lying is always an option worth trying. I spent the next six years blaming Buddy for everything bad that happened in my life. I believe that he even eventually took the rap for burning the hole in my Uncle Dick’s head even though he had never met my Uncle Dick.”

On school, which the Kid hated: “I probably wouldn’t have gone at all if it hadn’t been for mimeograph paper. Of all the tragic losses since the 1950s, mimeograph paper may be the greatest. With its rapturously fragrant, sweetly aromatic pale blue ink, mimeograph paper was literally intoxicating. Two deep drafts of a freshly run-off mimeograph worksheet and I would be the education system’s willing slave for up to seven hours. Go to any crack house and ask people where their dependency problems started and they will tell you, I’m certain, that it was with mimeograph paper in the second grade.”

On teachers: “They were never going to like me anyway. There was something about me—my dreaminess and hopeless forgetfulness, my lack of button-cuteness, my permanent default expression of pained dubiousness—that rubbed them the wrong way. I always did everything wrong. I forgot to bring official forms back on time. I forgot to bring cookies for class parties, and Christmas cards and valentines on the appropriate festive days. I always turned up empty-handed for show-and-tell. I remember once in kindergarten, in a kind of desperation, I just showed my fingers.”

On the tree house: where it was the boys of Des Moines habit to take their clothes off. “The only girl in the neighborhood anybody really wanted to see naked was Mary O’Leary (hence the rationale for Thunderbolt Kid’s ThunderVision glasses). She was the prettiest child within a million galaxies, but she wouldn’t take her clothes off. She would play in the tree house happily with us when it was wholesome fun, but the moment things got fruity she would depart by the way of the ladder and stand below and tell us with a clenched fury that was nearly tearful that we were gross and loathsome. This made me admire her very much, very much indeed (but not quite enough to ditch the idea of the Kids ThunderVision glasses crafted to allow one to see no deeper than articles of clothing).”

On TV: “In 1950, not many private homes in America had televisions. Forty percent of the people still hadn’t even seen a single program. Then I was born and the country went crazy (through the two events were not precisely connected). By late 1952, one-third of American households—twenty million homes or thereabouts—had purchased TVs. In May 1953, United Press reported that Boston now had more television sets than bathtubs and people admitted in an opinion poll that they would rather go hungry than go without their television. Many probably did.”

On the indestructible 1950s: “I don’t know how they managed it, but the people responsible for the 1950s made a world in which pretty much everything was good for you. Drinks before dinner? The more the better! Smoke? You bet! Cigarettes actually made you healthier, by soothing jangly nerves and sharpening jaded minds, according to advertisements. “Just what the doctor ordered!” read ads for L&M cigarettes, some of them in The Journal of American Medical Association where cigarette ads were gladly accepted right up to the 1960s. X-rays were so benign that shoe stores installed special machines that used them to measure foot sizes, sending penetrating rays up through the soles of your feet and right out the top of your head

As Bryson and Des Moines move into the 1960s we see change and, again, not the change that makes (at least for this reader) those “wistful affections for the past.” As old edifices come down and shopping centers pop up we join Bryson in his longing for the 1950s. In the end, as he gives us this dose of reality, we turn the pages (of time) with reluctance, and do so with only a sliver of hope, the hope that perhaps another reader’s 1960s might just be the 1950s Bill and I recall with such fondness.

One never knows how others will relate to the written word, in this case humorous memories and reminiscences from Bill Bryson’s childhood in the The Life and Times of the THUNDERBOLT KID. But having read this outlandishly entertaining book . . . this KID of the ‘50s is going to get himself fitted for cape, costume and ThunderVision goggles. Just on the off-chance that I might be able to flush out an adult version of Mary O’Leary.

For a copy of THE THUNDERBOLT KID check a local library, order through your independent bookseller or purchase in used paperback at Amazon for less than what the average creative writing student spends for a cup of Starbucks Mocha. Just click above on the book’s cover.

The Lost Continent - Travels In Small-Town America

By Bill Bryson

If one should visit this old Harper & Row publication the recommendation here is simply this:

Have a hanky handy!

As Bryson trips across the USA feeling the country’s pulse, there are times when our author gets a bit snotty!

But hey Little Lulu, hold on to the Kleenex! The majority of your tissues will be wiping Bryson induced tears—tears of snuffling, sobbing, raucous laughter.

At first blow what we have here is a latter- day version of Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie (1960). Like Steinbeck, Bryson (1989) puts in the old dip stick on his trip and checks our levels—people, food, politics, economics, geography, local radio and TV, technology, environment, change!

But sorry no Steinbeckian poodle pup or pickup with cozy camper here. Bryson (back from England) launches his sojourn from his childhood home in Des Moines, Iowa, and sees the USA in his mom’s old Chevrolet, aiming the Chevette at sights and scenes from his past—taking us back to a day when Father (especially his) didn’t really know best, landing us in the cheap motels and bug infested campgrounds of our childhood vacations. And there’s a great deal to chew on here (he eats local a lot and gripes about both food and service) —all wrapped neatly in both realistic and nostalgic snapshots of America.

Ah, for the day when we vacated with our parents and siblings in the Merry Oldsmobile spending the last hundred miles of the journey wondering if this camp ground would finally be the one with an indoor crapper.

Bryson: “…Usually we were forced to picnic by the side of the road. My father had an instinct for picking bad picnic sites—on the apron of a busy truck stop or in a little park that turned out to be in the heart of some seriously deprived ghetto, so that groups of children would come and stand silently by our table and watch us eating Hostess cupcakes and crinkle-cut potato chips—and it always became incredibly windy the moment we stopped, so that my mother spent the whole of lunchtime chasing paper plates over an area of about an acre.”

Nothing escapes the author’s acerbic wit in this tell-it-like-it-was (and is) journey. And one of the stars of this four to five gem work goes to Bryson for the aforementioned snotty tone. So should this—38 of 50 state “tour” de force—happen to offend a reader by jiggling the poundage of a few fatties at a K-Mart or by calling out a town or townie, well, let’s see. . .what would Bryson say?

How about! “Well, deal with it!”

The Lost Continent isn’t just a humorous writer tooting through and describing small town America. With Bryson we get a hell of a lot more. Through beautifully crafted, almost poetic passages, we feel the dank smog and fog of the lowlands, see the bright lights of the cities, inhale the crisp fresh air of a Midwestern country day, dabble our toes in the Atlantic and Pacific and visit national museums and parks (which he finds great but woefully mismanaged) while enjoying a fact filled, sometimes alarming US history, civics and or geography lesson along the way.

Driving through a Philadelphia ghetto he stops long enough to remind us (bummer) that neighborhoods in our cities brew death, that in World War II the odds of being killed were one in fifty and that in New York City alone there is (and this was the late 80s) one murder every four hours.

“This is a neighborhood (Philadelphia) where clearly you could be murdered for a pack of cigarettes—a fact that was not lost on me as I searched nervously for a way back onto the freeway. By the time I found it, I wasn’t whistling through my teeth so much as singing through my sphincter.

Pointing the little Chevette north to New England, checking the calendar, Bryson reflects on the fact that it’s Columbus Day.

“Columbus has always seemed to me an odd choice of hero for a country that celebrates success as America does because he was such a dismal failure. Consider the facts: he made four long voyages to the Americas, but never once realized that he wasn’t in Asia and never found anything worthwhile. Every other explorer was coming back with exciting new products like potatoes and tobacco and nylon stockings, all Columbus found to bring home were some puzzled-looking Indians—and he thought they were Japanese. (“Come on, you guys, let’s see a little sumo.”)

Upon entering the West he observes the populace change and then offers up one of those Brysonesque history lessons.

“The people in the towns along the way stop wearing baseball caps and shuffling along with that amiable dopiness characteristic of the Midwest and instead start wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots, walking with a lope and looking vaguely suspicious and squinty, as if they think they might have to shoot you in a minute.

“People in the West like to shoot things. When they first got to the West they shot buffalo. Once there were 70 million buffalo on the plains and then the people of the West started blasting away at them. By 1895, there were only 800 buffalo left, mostly in zoos and touring Wild West shows. With no buffalo left to kill, Westerners started shooting Indians. Between 1850 and 1890 they reduced the number of Indians in America from two million to 90,000.

“Nowadays, thank goodness, both have made a recovery. Today there are 30,000 buffalo and 300,000 Indians, and of course you are not allowed to shoot either, so all Westerners have left to shoot at are road signs and each other, both of which they do rather a lot. There you have a capsule history of the West.”

At a local restaurant in Sundance, Utah, Bryson encounters a US subculture!

“The Shriners, if you are not familiar with them, are a social organization composed of middle-aged men of a certain disposition and mentality—the sort of men who like to give each other hotfoots and pinch the bottoms of passing waitresses. They seem to get drunk a lot and drop water balloons out of hotel windows. Their idea of advanced wit is to stick a cupped hand under their armpits and make farting noises. You can always tell a Shriner because he’s wearing a red fez and his socks don’t match. Ostensibly, Shriners get together to raise money for charities. This probably is what they tell their wives. However, here’s an interesting fact that may help you put this claim into perspective. In 1984, according to Harper’s Magazine, the amount of money raised by Shriners was$17.4 million; of this sum, the amount they donated to charities was $182,000. In short, what Shriners do is get together and be a******s.”

After a peek or two up the gigantic nostrils of our presidents at Mount Rushmore our host takes a look at the rest of South Dakota.

“I drove on and on across South Dakota. God, what a flat and empty state. You can’t believe how remote and lonely it feels out in the endless fields of yellow grass. It is like the world’s first drive-through a sensory deprivation chamber. The car started making choking noises, and the thought of breaking down out here filled me with disquiet. I was in part of the world where you could drive hundreds of miles in any direction before you found civilization, or at least met another person who didn’t like accordion music.”

Almost home now.

“It was wonderful to be back in the Midwest, with its rolling fields and rich black earth. . . I passed back into Iowa (his home). As if on cue, the sun emerged from the clouds. A swift band of golden light swept over the fields and made everything instantly warm and spring like. Every farm looked tidy and fruitful. Every little town looked clean and friendly. I drove spellbound, unable to get over how striking the landscape was. There was nothing much to it, just rolling fields, but the red barns, the chocolate soil. I felt as if I had never seen it before. I had no idea Iowa could be so beautiful.”

So along this acerbic highway of his there are times when a soft spot (for his native land) shines through. Here Bryson returns to his boyhood home and to the warmth of his mother’s kitchen. “I opened the back door, dropped my bags and called out those four most all-American words: “Hi, Mom, I’m Home!” he says, finishing the thought with—It was good to be home.

After turning the book’s last page (having made this trip myself a time or two) I wanted to cry out to my author, “Bill, this is exactly HOW I feel about this lost continent of ours. Nothing’s perfect, not even America. And if indeed we are the land of the free shouldn’t we feel free to enjoy a laugh or two at ourselves, knowing all the while that this USA of ours is a pretty damned fine place to call home.

For a copy of The lost Continent check your library, drop by your local independent bookseller, or purchase in used paperback at Amazon for less than the worst tip Bryson left the most annoying hash house waitress he encountered along his way. Simply click above on the book’s cover.

Shelley: Also Known As Shirley

By Shelley Winters

Hooray for Hollywood!

In this (1980) tell-it-all autobiography Shelley Winters, a genuine Tinsel Towner, takes us back to the days when the starlets had stars in their eyes . . . and in their beds.

We follow Winters (Shirley Shrift) from her dysfunctional Brooklyn childhood—money’s tight, her dad goes to jail on false charges of arson, there’s an early teen pregnancy, and she’s struggling, wrestling with age-old teenage questions.

The answers come through loud and clear in this entertaining and compelling life story and oh, a big no to her doubts regarding her own intelligence (she was very smart) . . . and a bigger “no way” on the ugly duckling worry!

Can we say, Blond Bombshell?

Most of us aren’t old enough to recall the Bombshell years and therein lies the secret and secrets of this page turner. Those who fall a few years shy of Club Octogenarian may remember Winters from her controversial and entertaining TV talk show appearances (Merv Griffin, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, etc.), recalling her as that witty, middle-aged rather “full-figured blond!” Or perhaps—which is the curse of even the great character actors like Winters—think of her as merely the matronly older woman in The Poseidon Adventure.

The fact is that in the early 1940s when Harry Cohn’s (head of Columbia Pictures) Hollywood screen test lured her from the Broadway stage (a chorus line extra, Shelley sang, danced and delivered comedic lines), she was a lovely young war bride, married to Paul Mayer, a handsome U.S. Army pilot.

Then with Paul off to fly missions in Europe Shelley heads west for a battle of her own, the struggle to become a Hollywood studio actor. Albeit a bit ditsy and the diva at times, she’s well armed for the industry fight. Often “acting” the dumb blond to a fare-thee-well, she hones her craft and becomes one very talented (Lee Strasberg and Charles Laughton trained), actress whose stage, TV and film work would bring her well-deserved acclaim.

The woman won two Oscars and The Emmy!

Oscars for supporting roles in The Diary of Ann Frank and later in A Patch of Blue were reinforced by numerous nominations and wins (Oscars, Golden Globes, etc.) for her work with Hollywood’s elite in blockbuster films: Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, Alfie (Michael Caine), Meet Danny Wilson (Frank Sinatra), A Place in the Sun (Elizabeth Taylor) among dozens of others. From time to time she returned to play Broadway and later in life television came calling so many readers will remember Shelley as the grandmother in the sit-com Roseanne.

But this page turner is front-end loaded with tales from those Golden Days in LA. And to her credit there’s never a sense of name dropping in the book. For Shelley, well the names just kept dropping in.

• While swimming laps in her recently rented LA apartment pool she paddles head-first into and almost drowns Cary Grant.

• During a break in the shooting of Knickerbocker Holiday a distraught and drunken Nelson Eddie (well past the years when he sang so famously to Jeannette McDonald) brings new meaning to “Canadian Mountie” by staggering into her costume trailer and crawling into bed with her (which sends a teenaged Shelley grabbing for a robe and dashing to the door).

• At a New Year’s Eve party at movie mogul Sam Spiegel’s house she engages in conversation with Hugh, a tall lanky man wearing an old shiny tuxedo and tennis shoes. Although charming, Winters assumes that Hugh—by his dress—is a set designer. Shelley would soon learn from Ava Gardner—while powdering noses—that the man smitten by and putting the move on Winters that night was in fact Howard Hughes.

• A bedroom comedy/reality show “starring” Burt Lancaster and Marlon Brando ends with Brando dodging a bull rushing Lancaster by hitting the bedroom fire escape–leaving one of his shoes by Shelley’s bed.

• Who knew that when Shelley and Marilyn Monroe roomed together that they made a list of famous men they’d like to sleep with. . .and that Marilyn had Albert Einstein high on her “hit” list? When Shelley tells her how old he is Marilyn says, “Yes, but I hear he’s very healthy!”

• The Sinatra/Winters feud during the shooting of Meet Danny Wilson is classic Hollywood.

• Then there’s the one about the handsome young ex-Navy seaman Bernie Schwartz. Schwartz, a $75-a-week contract player with Columbia, has been sent to Winters’ apartment (for safekeeping) by relatives who knew an aunt of Shelley’s from the Bronx. Swartz bunks on Shelley’s couch for weeks until he finally lands a bit part playing with Piper Lorie in The Prince Who Was a Thief. On set for the debut, watching her “roommate’s” one moment in the flick, Shelley and the entire set hear the darkly handsome Arab prince utter (in a horrible New York accent) the line that to this day remains Hollywood legend. Pointing beyond the camera the “Prince” says, “Yonda lies Da castle of my Fadda!”  CUT!  End of Schwartz’s career?   No, with the help of Hollywood speech therapists and the suggestion of a name change by Winters, “Prince” Bernie goes on to become none other than Tony Curtis.

But Shelley doesn’t soft peddle the dark days here. Following a postwar divorce, Mayer the pilot/ex-husband, flies home to Chicago for a life of normalcy. Shelley, with little hope, no agent, recently released by Columbia Pictures, stays behind in LA (with her Brooklyn doting parents’ “supervision”) to make the rounds. Auditions lead to rejections that would have chewed up and spit out most aspiring actors.

Yet for Shelley, anticipation (of stardom) becomes more than half the pleasure and it’s her accounts of these tough times where the fun begins for the reader. Anything but shy, she takes us right to the good stuff.  While striving for fame and fortune, the stars come out (and in) at night. There were serious love affairs with John Ireland, Errol Flynn, Marlon Brando and Burt Lancaster.

And Shelley?  Well the woman was sentimental and loyal to a fault. Why, every Christmas Eve she and William Holden met for an annual studio sleepover, a tradition that lasted well into their later years.

Perhaps a few too many swept-off-her-feet (literally) details when “Stars” struck Winters boudoir—-Shelley laboriously ending these encounters (in print) the way the films of the day handled sex—-fireworks exploding and waves crashing on beaches.

But for all the read’s sensational star gazing and grazing there’s an insider’s view here of a very tough business written from the perspective of again, a resilient, driven and talented actress. Along with her on-set viewpoint of how movies are made we sense and feel the dark side of Hollywood—excessive drugs and drinking, actors making bad bedfellows, marriage miseries, newspaper dirt, mental breakdowns as common as head colds, bad contracts signed, incompetent agents hired and fired and despicable studio bosses (by name) read like a David Letterman “Bottom Ten.”

There are several tours as a political activist and then, later when Winters returns to New York, there’s great stuff from Broadway—rows with stage directors, rounds with Norman Mailer, days at the Actors Studio Guild and accounts of her nights on the town.

But the break that would lead to stardom came back in LA with her 1947 performance as a  waitress, the victim of an insane character played by Ronald Colman in George Cukor’s A Double Life. And this career-launch couldn’t have been better timed. From the 1940’s to the mid 1950’s, with television still in its infancy, big production Technicolor films packed America’s lavish air-conditioned theaters. Movies were a billion dollar business and the actors and actresses larger than life—America’s Gods and Goddesses.

Shelley? Well, studios “loaned” big box office actors to competing companies for crazy money and Winters had now become a well paid “very hot commodity!  So on warm summer nights during those golden years the former Miss Shelley Shrift, the Jewish kid from Brooklyn, could cruise down Hollywood and Vine in open convertibles (with an Errol Flynn, Burt Lancaster or John Ireland behind the wheel) passing marquees luring audiences to her blockbuster films: The Great Gatsby with Alan Ladd; Winchester 73 with James Stewart, or Night of the Hunter—with Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish.

In the book’s final chapters Shelley covers her tumultuous marriage to Vittorio Gassman, the famous Italian stage actor who fathers her child. Her detailed account of this love/hate (continents apart, careers apart) relationship is something that readers will no doubt love or hate!

But for all Winters’ creative gifts as an actress, the genius that plays between the pages of her autobiography is (along with the wit and candor) her ability to seamlessly weave compelling anecdotes—one scene after another like a well edited film–into a unique introspective look at post WWII Hollywood.

So, relax, sit back and enjoy the delightful show (and tell), Shelley: Also Known as Shirley will keep fans of the grand old flicks in their seats until the lights come up and the final credits roll.

• For a copy of Shelley: Also Known as Shirley order through your independent bookstore, your library or click above on the book’s cover. You can buy the book (used) on Amazon for about the 1950’s price of a ticket to a Hollywood B movie.