Michael Grant

On the one hand, nobody who works or goes to school at Abilene High would choose to be in school today, Monday, when Christmas Day is Friday.

On the other hand, in 1954, when the Eagles won the state championship on Saturday, Dec. 18, Monday, Dec. 20, was a school day. But it wasn't just any school day . . .

Monday, Dec. 20, 1954

"Not much reading, writing or arithmetic got done Monday at Abilene High School. Instead the school day was more like a progressive pep rally. Members of the bell team starting ringing the Victory Bell at 8 a.m. and it didn’t stop all day. Assistant principal J.H. Nail said the students 'walked on air' all day Monday.

“ 'We had to pick them off the ceiling every once in a while,' Nail said. 'They had something going all day long.'

"At 4 p.m., members of the Eagle Booster Club, mostly business and professional men in the community, arrived in convertibles to take the team on a parade through downtown. The parade crossed the T&P tracks to North First, then up Cypress and down Pine with the Eagle Booster Club banner and the Victory Bell leading the way.

"In the lead convertible were Eagle tri-captains Twyman Ash, Jim Millerman and John Thomas. A reporter said the players looked uncomfortable with all the attention from the thousands of Abilenians lining the streets. Behind the string of cars came hundreds of AHS students and the Eagle band. Students carried a 'State Champions' banner that stretched almost all the way across the street.

"It was the Eagles’ fourth state championship, to go with titles won in 1923, 1928 and 1931, but this was the first in the more formalized statewide classifications introduced by the University Interscholastic League for the 1951 season. It was different to be from a town whose high school team had emerged champions from a system that more or less insured that only the best teams from all corners of the state moved forward through the playoffs.

"Moser never shrugged, but a typical eyebrows-up quizzical look came to his face when there was a question he couldn’t answer.

"A newspaperman asked him if he thought the Eagles could win the District 1-AAAA championship and get into the playoffs again in 1955. Up went the eyebrows. 'It just depends on how the boys develop,' he said.

"The school, the Eagle Booster Club, and other sponsors hosted a football banquet for the team at the end of every season. For many adults, the banquet was just another obligatory event to attend. The 1954 banquet was different. Moser and the Eagles for a second time presented Abilene High principal Escoe Webb the District 1-AAAA championship trophy, and then the state Class AAAA championship trophy, Abilene High’s first since 1931.

"In turn, the Eagle Booster Club presented gifts to the coaches: checks, ranging from $1,500 for the varsity coaches to $400 for B Team assistants like Tommy Morris, who was only a couple of years out of Abilene Christian College. It didn’t sound like much, but $400 put a big grin on the faces of assistants like Morris, whose annual salary was $3,500.

"The Booster Club had a gift for the head coach as well. Moser was presented the keys to a new 1954 Buick."

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments

Abilene High won a Texas state football championship last night, beating two-time defending state champion Katy High, 28-17, at the Alamodome in San Antonio. I listened to the game on the radio, just like I listened in 1954 when Abilene beat Houston's Austin High, 14-7, in Houston. Only in 2009, I listened to an audio feed over the Internet that could be heard globally by anyone with an Internet connection. With the Internet, there is no more local news.

How does it feel, in the locker room, or on the ride home, after winning a state championship? According to H.P. Hawkins, it's something you never forget . . .

Dec. 18, 1954, Abilene 14, Houston Stephen F. Austin 7

"That morning, at 11 a.m. before the 2 p.m. kickoff, the Eagles had gathered in their hotel for their pre-game meal of dry roast beef, a dry baked potato and dry toast. Now, as state champions, they ate what they wanted in a private room in a restaurant.

"It was all our teammates and coaches alone in one room together,” Hawkins said. “There was a feeling of happiness, of closeness, and of accomplishment that I will never forget.” Twyman Ash had in his possession the game ball. In the locker room he had approached Moser with it. 'Coach,' Ash said, 'you take it.'

" 'No, sir,' said Moser. 'You boys earned it.' So Ash, who had three catches in the winning drive, carried the ball home. At 7:30, the Eagles boarded their chartered Martin 202 for the flight back to Abilene. Waiting for them at the airport that night was a crowd of 3,000 people.

"The crowd started building about 8 p.m. when radio stations said the team plane was due about 9:30 p.m. The crowd overflowed the airport lobby area onto the tarmac and grassy areas around the terminal building. It was cold, but nobody cared.

"The crowd got to cheer twice. A shout went up as an airliner’s lights appeared, on approach. The plane landed and taxied back to the terminal and the crowd roared. But it was a plane chartered by Eagle fans for the Houston trip who nevertheless hugely enjoyed their reception.

"The team plane appeared several minutes later and the crowd roared again as the twin-engine aircraft parked and this time deplaned the players down stairs in the tail of the Martin 202. The players were reserved but all smiles as they waited to collect duffle bags containing their pads, helmets and cleats from the plane’s baggage hold."

Dec. 17, 1955, Abilene 33, Tyler 13

"Milstead, approached after the game by a young Tyler fan wanting an autograph, told the boy he should go get Abilene players to sign instead. 'Everybody on that team was great,' Milstead said, 'simply great.' He said the Lions 'could play Abilene every day in the week and never beat ‘em.'

“ 'They hit hard and never let up,' said Trimble, the Tyler end. 'They’d knock you down, and when you got back up, knock you down again. It was tough.'

"In the Eagle locker room, senior co-captains Caudle and Colwell were blubbering into their coach’s shoulder. They and the other seniors were the first class to play all three years under Moser. 'Coach, I can’t play any more,' said Caudle, a starter on both offense and defense for both the 1954 and ’55 champions, and a two-way all-district selection as a senior. 'Sure you can, son,' Moser said. 'You’ve got college games ahead.'

"But that’s not what Caudle had meant. He couldn’t be an Eagle any more, part of a team that had won 23 straight games and a second state championship. It was a feeling of achievement and of belonging that might be part of this black and gold gang for a long while, with junior players like Gregory, Jimmy Carpenter, Stuart Peake and Rufus King in the room. It was not an easy thing for an 18-year-old to leave behind."

Dec. 22, 1956, Abilene 14, Corpus Christi Ray 0

"At the end of the game Hayseed Stephens was jumping up and down on his crutches. Line coach Hank Watkins, who had a nickname for just about everybody, came up and hugged 'Old Poker Face,' his name for Jimmy Carpenter. 'Hate to lose you, Jim,' Watkins said. 'Hate to leave, Coach,' Carpenter said. 'Wish I could play two more years.'

"The players let the coaches strip to their underwear before throwing them in the showers. Teen music issued from the Eagle bus as it rolled out of a silent Memorial Stadium. Stuart Peake on guitar, singing 'Never Felt More Like Singing the Blues,' a Guy Mitchell radio hit. Peake sat in the back of the bus with the seniors: Rufus and Boyd King, Jim Rose, Kenny Schmidt, Charles Bradshaw, Jimmy Carpenter, Glynn Gregory, Bufford Carr, Hubert Jordan, Ervin Bishop, 21 seniors in all.

“ 'The juniors and sophomores sat in the front and talked about next year’s team,' said Moser of the ride home. 'Those young kids are ready to go. John Young came up to me and asked when spring training would start. I told him I didn’t know, and he answered, ‘I wish it was starting Monday’.”

Now it is Sunday morning, Dec. 20, 2009, in Abilene, and Eagle players have that state championship feeling again. Their winning streak stands at 15, they believe in their coach, and there are lots of juniors in the room. Don't know when spring training starts.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments

Abilene High coach Steve Warren had the best quote of the week, best because it is a true statement.

"This has been unbelievable," he told a Friday night pep rally crowd of 4,000 at Shotwell Stadium. "This whole week has been awesome and then some."

Warren spoke with the mind, the experience, and the voice, of a professional athlete. When you sift through the stories in the week before a championship game, whether it's the Super Bowl, the BCS championship, the World Series, the College World Series, or prep championships like Abilene vs. Katy, it's a common theme: getting to the championship game is the real story.

I first became aware of this in writing about major league baseball. Players, managers and coaches kept saying the World Series is important, but it's important like a really good sauce on an entrée, the best gravy you ever had on (choosing a Texas measure of superlatives) a chicken-fried steak. The league championship is the chicken-fried steak. Win the National League or the American League pennant, you have won what really counts. It was a championship that took months, not one week. As Steve Warren said, it is a week to savor. There is nothing not to remember about this week. It's all good. Next week, well, someone will have won, and someone will have lost.

Based on their speed, defense, skill players, and penchant for getting better as the game goes on, I pick Abilene, by a score of 35-14. Whatever that score turns out to be, this week has been 100-to-nothing, for both sides.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments

In Abilene High history, state championship games have had a way of taking on a life of their own, which may be true of all state championship games. Excerpts from "Warbirds" follow.

Dec. 18, 1954

"The juggernaut from Abilene was favored to beat Stephen F. Austin by three touchdowns in the state championship game at Houston.

"Instead, with 5:49 remaining in the game, the Mustangs on fourth down lined up at the Abilene six-yard line to kick a field goal that would put them ahead of the Eagles, 10-7.

"No one in Houston was surprised. Maybe they were having heart attacks, but they weren’t surprised.

"While Abilene was pounding two playoff foes by a cumulative score of 107-0, Stephen F. Austin in bi-district barely squeaked past Galveston Ball, 21-20. In the semifinals, the Mustangs faced a Corpus Christi Miller team that had beaten them soundly, 25-6, in the third game of the season. The Mustangs won, again by 21-20.

"It was the team that wouldn’t quit. Just to get into the playoffs, in the last game of the regular season the Mustangs had to beat the defending Class AAAA champions, Houston Lamar. And they did, 16-14.

"If these nail-biters were hard on the Mustangs’ fans, it was hell on the 3,000 fans that had followed the Eagles to Houston’s 20,000-seat Public Schools Stadium . . ."

Dec. 17, 1955

"During the week in the statewide media, Abilene was established as a one-touchdown favorite over Tyler, and the feeling was that it would be something like 21-14, based on the Eagles’ power to score. Moser himself felt that way. For several weeks he had been telling his coaches (but no one else) that the 1955 Eagles were the best offensive team he ever saw.

“ 'If we can hold them to two touchdowns,' Moser told the Eagle Booster Club, 'we’ll win, I believe.'

"Abilene, in West Central Texas, and Tyler, way over in East Texas, had never met on a football field. They had some mutual adversaries in Waco, Wichita Falls and Dallas Highland Park, but their meeting at Amon Carter Stadium for the 1955 state championship would be their first.

"Having won the Love Field coin toss, Abilene, as the home team, got to pick its jerseys. Moser told his team leader, quarterback David Bourland, that new white jerseys had arrived. Bourland quickly voted in favor of the old gold jerseys. The belly series depended on deception, particularly on the part of the quarterback, and Bourland had become very good at it. He always liked to wear the gold jerseys, because the ball was too easy to see against the white.

"Abilene and Tyler both had 12 straight victories against no defeats. In the playoffs, Tyler first defeated Corpus Christi Miller, 22-7, then Baytown, 20-0. Abilene had averaged 39 points a game, Tyler 29. The Eagles had surrendered 10 fewer points than the Lions, 77 to 87. Against their lone common opponent in 1955, Abilene had beaten Highland Park, 34-0, in the season opener; Tyler beat the Scotties, 33-13, in their next-to-last district game. Abilene’s scouts, Blacky Blackburn and Wally Bullington, told Moser the Lions were a great team. Moser told the Eagles they would have to do 'everything right' to win.

"The Lions were big and fast. Center Jim Davis and tackle Billy Sims both weighed 200 pounds and both were all-state candidates, as was 186-pound halfback Joe Leggette, who had 980 yards rushing. But the star of the team, and probably the best all-around high school football player of the 1955 season, was 6-2, 190-pound quarterback Charles Milstead.

“ 'Another Walt Fondren,' Jack Holden wrote, 'a Doyle Traylor,' comparing Milstead to star Southwest Conference quarterbacks of the era. Tyler ran the same belly option offense as Abilene, and Milstead’s ability to run or pass gave the Tyler system a dangerous extra option.

"Members of Abilene’s state championship teams of 1923, 1928, 1931 and 1954 were special guests at the Friday pep rally. The team left for Fort Worth on the Eagle Bus right after the pep rally and headquartered at the Texas Hotel. More than 5,000 Abilenians made the 140-mile trip the next day, including almost 1,000 on a special Texas & Pacific train. The Victory Bell went in a truck and the 100-plus members of the Eagle Marching Band went in buses. After about 8 a.m., two-lane U.S. 80 was lined up with cars going east, through Baird, Cisco, Eastland and Ranger, streaming black and gold crepe decorations, headed for Fort Worth. About the same number of fans came from Tyler. Crowd estimates at kickoff went as high as 30,000 in the 37,000-seat stadium, meaning as many as 20,000 people from Fort Worth and other parts of the state came to the game. It promised to be a big game between two powerhouse teams, maybe even a classic. It turned out to be a classic, all right, one that had fans shaking their heads that afternoon and 45 years later."

Dec. 22, 1956

"The Eagles rolled into Austin on Friday, Dec. 21, with two streaks and a record on the line.

"Their streak of consecutive games won stood at 36. They were playing to become only the third high school team in Texas to win three straight state championships, after Waco (1925-26-27) and Amarillo (1934-35-36). And by winning, the Eagles would become the school with the most state championships – six – in Texas schoolboy history.

"Twenty of 23 Texas sports writers picked Abilene to beat Ray, which was in a state title game for the first time. The margins ranged from one point to 'no doubt.' Amarillo’s Putt Powell thought it was reasonable to suppose the Eagles would score more touchdowns than Ray made first downs. . . . "

The final score was 14-0, and the game became memorable for a play sequence in the first quarter that involved what is called a "14-point turnaround." Back to the book:

"The Texan offense came to the line breathing fire. In five plays they had gained the Eagle 19 and looked like a team that could beat the Eagle defense. Then end Stuart Peake broke through and hit quarterback Arthur McCallum. The ball came loose and bounced all the way back to the 44 before McCallum could fall on it. Unperturbed, McCallum threw to end Sonny Davis at the Abilene 21. He threw again to Davis, this time to the Eagle 4. Abilene was very much a team in trouble. McCallum kept on a quarterback sneak to the 2. Sub halfback Bart Shirley rammed to the one. McCallum tried another sneak and was piled up at the one-foot line.

"On fourth down, the two teams massed at the goalline, Abilene in its gap-8 defense. The center Christian snapped the ball, the lines charged, and suddenly the ball was in the air above the tumult, floating free, describing a lazy parabola toward the left end of the Texan line. It landed directly in front of Eagle linebacker Gerald Galbraith, who smothered it at the 3 as fans on both sides screamed. The ball appeared to have simply squirted through McCallum’s hands at the snap.

"The Eagle backs lined up in the end zone. Gregory improved things somewhat with a three-yard dive to the 6 In the huddle, Galbraith looked at right tackle Boyd King. 'I asked old Boyd if he could take that old boy out (tackle Walter Beck),' Galbraith said. 'Sure, run that old 4-play,' King told him.

"Galbraith called it: '4 Straightaway, on Set, on Set.' The Eagles in their gold jerseys, standing in their end zone, broke the huddle with a clap of hands, trotted to the line of scrimmage at the 6, fell into the hands-on-knees 'ready' stance. 'Down,' Galbraith called, with the downward inflection. The team dropped into its three-point stance. 'Set,' Galbraith yelled, but without time for the rising, anticipatory inflection, because the Eagles had charged. Galbraith took the snap from Jim Rose, pivoted right, handed to Carpenter going by, and going by so fast that Galbraith barely got the ball to him. Boyd King got position on Walter Beck, just like his coach had taught him, and knocked Beck outside. Jordan blocked Floyd Brown inside.

"Carpenter, all 153 fleet pounds of him, hit the hole in a flash and burst into the clear on the other side. A Ray halfback came up. Carpenter spun to the outside, flaring slightly toward the right sideline, and in a couple of strides was in high gear. It was a footrace with the Ray safety that Carpenter won easily, 94 yards to the end zone. His teammates sprinted all the way down the field after him, and after Gregory’s kick, Abilene led, 7-0.

"Men who have played football, for the rest of their lives may refer to a particular kind of traumatic event as 'a 14-point turnaround.' A team is on the goalline, about to score, when something happens – an interception runback, or a fumble and a 94-yard run. Not only has the team lost its seven points, the other team has scored seven, more or less in the same breath. It is a terrific 'what if' shock, and it had happened to the Ray Texans . . ."

"The 14-point turnaround works both ways. After Carpenter’s run, the energized Eagles took control of the game . . . "

Saturday's game between Abilene and Katy will have acquired some sort of signature that will be remembered 50 years from now. What will it be?

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments

Somewhere in the mid-20th century, there stands a cultural watershed, a technological Continental Divide, beyond which people in general, but young people specifically, started moving indoors for their entertainment.

I wouldn’t be so bold as to say it was that Friday night in Abilene when “Blackboard Jungle” and “Rock Around the Clock” came to the Paramount Theater, but I would think that event was somewhere in the vicinity, because it was totally non-local. The main physical feature of the Divide is the ability to separate oneself from locality, and the galvanizing force of “Rock Around the Clock” made it an arrow pointing young people down the yellow brick road of media toward radio, and then television, and then the Internet, whose arrival in the 1990s really sealed the deal. Many young people today spend far more time in the Internet distance than they do in their locality, a troubling social reality that has become the subject of books.

I may be a year off about this, but I believe that television arrived in Abilene the same year Chuck Moser did: 1953. Both had an immediate effect, but I am sure that Abilenians between the ages of 10 and 20, who today are in their 60s and 70s, when they think about the ‘50s, remember more about Moser and the Abilene Eagles than they do television. Famous people on television were, and are, a dime a dozen. Famous people locally are, well, REALLY famous.

By Christmas of 1954, Moser and the Eagles were not only famous locally, but they were putting Abilene on the map, and it’s hard to generate much more community appeal than that. The Eagles created not only a football, but a social, dynasty. Pete Shotwell, a legendary coach whose retirement after the 1952 Eagle season brought about Moser’s hiring, was given a new job in the Abilene schools. From my book, “Warbirds:”

“Abilene had experienced significant growth during and after World War II, and there were more elementary schools and two junior highs with a third planned to open in 1955, plus a black elementary school and a black high school, Woodson High. But there was no centralized physical education system. To Abilene school administrators, Shotwell, or ‘Shot,’ as he was affectionately known, made a proposal to create a new administrative position that would oversee physical education and health education in the growing Abilene schools system.

“It would give him official authority over a program he had already helped create, elementary school football. Football, in uniform, was played as a strictly recreational program in all the city schools. By 1950, boys as young as fourth grade in Abilene could start playing organized football, in city school leagues, that played to championships and awarded championship trophies and jacket patches.”

I was in 6th grade when Abilene won the 1954 state championship. I was also a second-year player on the feared Central Elementary Wildcats. In seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, I played for the South Junior High Coyotes. By ninth grade, we played road games as far away as San Angelo, and we had cheerleaders, bands and pep rallies. The three Abilene junior highs played to a city championship, which South – ahem – won my ninth grade year. We beat the North Junior Broncos, 27-15, after trailing, 15-0, at Fair Park Stadium – same place the Eagles played – before a crowd of 4,000 people.

This was youth – and community – involvement that I am not sure the 2009 social network can support. Someone in Abilene would have to write that story. One thing: fame has not changed much, except to become more influential in young lives. One hears horrifying stories of six-year-old girls talking their parents into spending $2,000 for Hannah Montana concert tickets. Kids still are whelmed by fame up-close. Abilene kids this week are seeing quite a fuss over the team playing for a state championship in San Antonio on Saturday. It’s totally possible that Eagle football in 2009 can still pry kids away from cyberspace for a little while.

It’s the same, and it’s different. In the 1950s, fans would send telegrams to the Eagle teams, wherever the championship was being played, for the players to read before the game. This afternoon, on Facebook, I discovered the “Abilene Eagles 2009 Support Group,” to “show a collective support for the Warbirds to be victorious over Katy High School.” When I found the group, two hours ago, the membership was 1,401. Just now, it was 1,749. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments

Yes, I know, this blog is turning into "Abilene Eagle Week." It is also, I am sure, Abilene Eagle Week in far-flung parts of the globe, wherever live Abilenians who were there in the 1950s, following their team into state championship games, and, 53 years after Abilene's 1956 championship, the last of three consecutive, are enjoying the hell out of being there again.

But I wonder, 53 years from now (I hope it is not that long), if the Eagles are in a state championship game again, if the young Abilenians of today will attach to it in the same way I and my peers are feeling today. I wonder if it is culturally possible.

I keep going back to my book, "Warbirds," as these questions arise, because the book is a history of that 1950s era, gleaned from information compiled in long hours of research. I wrote the book because most (all but about six, actually) of the details of the Eagles' 49-game winning streak had been forgotten. Of course, as I did the work, I found that not only details of the games had been forgotten, but details of living in Abilene, Texas, in the 1950s. Example (from the book):

"To people with only a general attentiveness to history, the 1950s have receded into memory as a quiet time, a period of Eisenhower-era tranquility. The tumultuous 1960s by contrast certainly did what they could to enhance that memory.

"In fact, the 1950s were themselves tumultuous with change. The media and consumer driven world of the late 20th century could trace its roots directly to events of the 1950s. The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author David Halberstam saw so much happening in the 1950s that he wrote a complete book, titled, simply, 'The ‘50s.'

"It is true that at the time, in Abilene, much of that change occurred with the force of a pebble dropping unheard into a distant pond, such as the unanimous Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, that ended the 'separate but equal' doctrine of educational facilities for whites and blacks. That ripple would not reach Abilene for another decade.

"Other changes, like television, advertising, and longer, sleeker cars, were more apparent. But there was one change that more or less blew the others away. It occurred on a Friday night in April, at the Paramount Theater downtown. Friday night was the traditional movie night for high school and junior high students. Admission was a quarter, Milk Duds were a nickel, cokes and popcorn a dime. Each teen group had its chosen area, its turf, in which to sit in the large theater, built in the popular fashion that suggested an ornate outdoor playhouse under a dark blue sky. In the sky were 'stars,' and across it moved floodlight-generated 'clouds.' It could get noisy, and ushers with their flashlights were on constant patrol.

"The movie this Friday night was 'Blackboard Jungle,' starring Glenn Ford and Anne Francis. Also in the cast were two young actors, Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier. None of the kids in the theater knew anything about the movie; they were there because it was Friday night. First there was the black-and-white newsreel, then the cartoon, then the curtain fell in preamble to the feature. The effect was to set up anticipation, and in fact the crowd became quiet. There were two or three moments of relative calm. Then:

'One two three o’clock four o’clock ROCK!
'Five six seven o’clock eight o’clock ROCK!
'Nine ten eleven o’clock twelve o’clock ROCK!
'We’re gonna ROCK around the CLOCK tonight!'

"It was music, very loud and urgent, and it thundered on into its first verse – 'When the clock strikes one, join me hon' – but the kids in the Paramount Theater sat rock-still, stunned, staring at the rising curtain, transfixed by the energy blasting at them from Bill Haley and the Comets.

"These young people knew there was something happening to music out there somewhere. They could catch snatches of it on local stations KRBC and KWKC, but they had better luck if they searched for stations in New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Nashville, that came in sometimes with remarkable clarity through a still-uncluttered sky. This was high-energy music that came from people with exotic names like Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, and it didn’t sound at all like what they were accustomed to hearing from Gisele MacKenzie, Mitch Miller, Les Baxter, Perry Como, Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney.

"They were intrigued by the new music, but it had come from somewhere else far away across the sky. Now they sat in their very own Paramount, with its big speakers and this high-speed music rocketing at them, and for several seconds they were frozen by it. Then they reacted. They jumped up and yelled and the cooler ones got into the aisles and danced in frenzy. It was a before-and-after moment that no one there would ever forget.

"The title of the song was 'Rock Around the Clock,' and it came to Abilene and all the other cities as a nice example of cross-media marketing. The recording industry’s principal marketing outlet was radio. Listeners who heard a song on the radio might then go buy it at a record store.

"But there were only 24 hours available in a day, and not many radio stations. In 1955, Abilene had only two, meaning there were only 48 music marketing hours available in any given day. Worse, the stations used much of their time to broadcast soap operas, news, and shows like 'Farm Roundup,' 'Mixing Bowl,' and 'Arthur Godfrey.' Their music playlists leaned to proven artists and songs like 'Hard to Get,' 'The Yellow Rose of Texas,' and 'Love is a Many Splendored Thing.' It would be years before enough radio stations existed to develop what came to be called 'narrowcasting.' In 1955, on KRBC and KWKC, you took what you got, in a very mixed bag.

"So 'Rock Around the Clock' rode a movie into town, and the results were instructive to future students of cross-media marketing. 'Rock Around the Clock' became the first example of this new music to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Magazine rating charts, and it did so very quickly, reaching No. 1 in June.

"The movie was electrifying, too, about gangs in schools not only challenging, but intimidating and literally attacking authority. The teacher, Richard Dadier, played by Glenn Ford, wins in the end, the punk Vic Morrow is hauled away, and Sidney Poitier (a black kid!) leaves the bad guys and becomes a good one. The movie was so controversial that many communities would not allow it to be shown, including, of all places, Memphis, Tennessee.

"But Abilene did, and kids who came out of the Paramount that night weren’t the same kids who went in. They came out in possession of a new kind of music, and they knew a new word: 'daddio.' It was the first night in Abilene of a new extension of culture that would become a culture unto itself. It can only be imagined what the parents thought on Saturday morning, encountering this change for the first time. Parents were one thing. Chuck Moser was something else. Daddio? Not in a hundred years would the Eagle players have uttered this word within earshot of their coach. But it was out there. Many new things were out there."

Many new things were out there. Hmpf. How little we knew. And that's where we will continue this story tomorrow night . . .

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments

Five years ago, I published "Warbirds – How They Played the Game" – a history of Abilene High's 49-game winning streak from 1954-57. Three of those games were for state championships, in 1954-55-56, and the Eagles won all three.

Little did I realize at the time, that if the Eagles made it to another state championship game, it would enable me, and all Abilenians living in Abilene in the 1950s, to go back and feel the experience again. Now that has happened. The 2009 Eagles meet the Katy Tigers on Saturday for the Texas 5A state championship. I can go back and read my own book, not as a history, but as an experience in the here-and-now.

For example, I know what the Katy fans feel like this week. They are going for their third straight state championship. As a result, they have a certain confidence this week that it can be done, just as Abilenians in December of 1956 had that certain confidence. Hell, by 1956, the Eagles had become so good that we enjoyed something MORE than confidence. It was after the 1955 state championship game, when Abilene trounced Tyler, 33-13, that Waco High coach Carl Price said, "Abilene's state champions of this year are 30 points better than the 1954 champions. If they improve another 30 points next year, they might as well get in the Southwest Conference."

That quote is in my book, and the Eagles of 1956 turned out to BE that good. It became pointless to talk about how good the first team was. Instead, people began to wonder if Abilene's second team might finish third in District 2-AAAA, behind San Angelo and of course the Eagles' first team.

I also wrote about what it felt like, in Abilene, the week before the 1954 championship game, against Stephen F. Austin High School of Houston. There was confidence – the Eagles had a very good team – but there was also apprehension, of this new playoffs territory, playing teams outside the well-known environment of West Texas. There were legends lurking out there, legends like Hunter Enis, quarterback for Fort Worth Poly, whom the Eagles were to meet in the semifinals. In the book, I wrote:

" 'Hunter Enis' was a name to be feared, even more than the name 'Wahoo McDaniel,' because Enis was a quarterback and a bona fide star.

"Everybody in Texas who cared about high school football knew who Hunter Enis was. He was big and athletic and so good a passer that his school, the Fort Worth Poly Parrots, ran something called the 'spread formation.' Nobody in West Texas had ever heard of the 'spread formation,' in which ends and backs lined up from sideline to sideline and then ran downfield to catch passes from the strong, deadly arm of Hunter Enis.

"All week, Abilenians read the newspaper and wondered: 'We can stop Fort Worth Poly, but can we stop Hunter Enis?' They were the kinds of thoughts that could bedevil fans of upstart teams suddenly plunged into the rarified atmosphere of the state semifinals. Only three other teams left. And boy, they must have been awfully good to get here.

"And Poly was there because of Hunter Enis, who was so skilled that in college, at Texas Christian, he would make all-Southwest Conference and eventually play quarterback in the National Football League. Enis had passed for 1,111 yards and it didn’t matter that Poly had been beaten badly, 34-0, by San Angelo, or that the Parrots had lost three other games. Those were early in the season.

"The game was in Fort Worth, at 20,000-seat Farrington Field, the biggest stadium in which any of the Abilene Eagles had ever played. Around 2,500 Eagle students and fans made the trip and of course the Victory Bell was there. Thousands more listened on the radio at home, anxious to see if the Eagles could survive Hunter Enis and get into a state championship game for the first time since 1931 . . ."

The 1954 Eagles survived. They beat Poly, 46-0. Hunter Enis finished nine-for-20 for 99 yards with three interceptions, and Poly collected only 15 yards rushing and 10 first downs. It was a confidence-builder. But oh my gosh, now they had to play Houston Austin, whose QB Vince Matthews was supposed to be better than Hunter Enis . . .

That is the kind of excitement that stirs in the minds of Abilenians this week, who can't wait for Saturday, even if Katy has players who can leap tall buildings at a single bound. I saw a picture of a Katy player in the Houston Chronicle today who was roughly the dimensions of DeMarcus Ware.

This is so much fun. Thank you, 2009 Eagles. A lot of people, even a lot of Abilenians, don't give a hoot about football and wonder now, as they did in the 1950s, what the fuss is about. I can only say that if you are an Abilenian who likes football, winning a state championship gets into your blood, and it never goes away.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments

If you watch it long enough, football – the game, played as it should be played – exhibits a remarkable consistency. Whether it's 1954, or 2009, when the best teams are involved, it comes down to making a play.

In Waco, on Saturday, the Klein Bearkats made a couple of plays. With nine seconds left in the game, the Bearkats were on their own seven-yard line, trailing, 29-21. In those nine seconds, with no time-outs, they made it from their seven to the Abilene High one. Going 92 yards in three plays (one a spike to stop the clock) in sudden-death is a stunning example of football's consistency at the playoff level.

Then Abilene made a play – a bigger play – and, with it, won the game that put them into the state championship versus Katy next Saturday. With no time left, a Klein receiver made a catch at the Eagles' 13 and fought toward the end zone. The Eagles made the tackle at the one-yard line, ending the game much the same as an Eagle team 55 years earlier had ended a big game.

In 1954, Abilene was playing Houston's Stephen F. Austin High School, in Houston, for the state championship of Class AAAA. The score was tied, 7-7, and Austin had just missed a short field goal. Abilene got the ball at the 20-yard-line with 5:49 left in the fourth quarter. Coach Chuck Moser was not optimistic. "I didn't think we could score again," he said. "It seemed like everything was turning against us."

Instead, the Eagles, led by quarterback H.P. Hawkins, stormed 79 yards to the Austin one-yard line. It was third down. Hawkins dived straight ahead on a quarterback sneak and crossed the goal line. But then the ball was rolling free. The Mustangs recovered in the end zone. The officials huddled, ruled it a fumble, and awarded the Mustangs the ball at the 20. The Eagle offense came off the field and Hawkins trotted up to Moser.

"I expected him to come out of the game heartbroken, maybe even in tears," Moser said. "I was afraid he'd lose his confidence. But instead he came up to me, put his arm on my shoulder, and said, 'Don't worry, Coach, I'll get a touchdown for you.' "

Here, from my book, "Warbirds – How They Played the Game," is the way the rest of the game went:

"The Eagle defense, playing ferociously, stopped the Mustangs on three downs and Matthews had to punt into the wind. On the crisscross return play, Henry Colwell wound up with the ball at the Eagle 45 and found a lane down the sideline. He ran 55 yards and scored easily with 2:40 remaining in the game.

"Eagle fans erupted as Colwell sprinted toward the end zone, but back upfield, there was a flag. Abilene was called for clipping. In barely a minute, the Eagles had had two touchdowns called back. The referee stepped off the penalty and placed the ball on the ground at the Abilene 31-yard line. If there was to be Eagle tenacity, this was the time for it. One more time, the Eagle offense came back onto the field. On the scoreboard behind the end zone, the clock showed 2:40. A state championship was 69 yards away.

"Eagle left end Twyman Ash, No. 81, during the season had earned a nickname, 'Old Glue Fingers,' because the tall blond senior who was also a starter on the Eagles’ basketball team never dropped a pass. In the championship game, Hawkins had gone to him only once. But now, with the title on the line, Hawkins threw twice to Ash, once for 38 yards and again for 17. After five plays, the Eagles were poised at the Mustang 16, with a little over a minute left on the clock.

"Hawkins called another pass. He took the snap and rolled right. Colwell, split to the right, went down and out. Millerman from his left halfback position went straight down the field between the safeties. Ash followed along behind and found himself open. But Mustang defenders had caught Hawkins. They threw him for a 13-yard loss back to the 29-yard line.

"Now there were 56 seconds left. Ash trotted back to the huddle and told Hawkins he could get open again. “We were trying to split their safeties,” Hawkins said. “We had a split to the right, Twyman on the left and Jim (Millerman) running a flag up the middle to split the safeties.” Hawkins called the same play. On the sideline, sophomore Glynn Gregory was getting ready to try a field goal.

"The Eagles came to the line. Hawkins took the snap and rolled right. Both Colwell and Millerman were covered. Mustang coach Kotrola had dropped one of his defensive ends into secondary coverage, giving him five defenders covering three receivers. 'The first two guys weren’t open,' Hawkins said. Then he saw Ash at the five-yard line. He threw.

"The ball was high, but Ash leaped, arched his back and snared the ball on his fingertips between two defenders. On the sideline, Reporter-News photographer Don Hutcheson caught No. 81 in that fully extended instant that became probably the most reproduced photo in Abilene media history.

"As he came down, Ash had a step on the defenders and hustled five yards into the end zone. There were no flags. The Eagles led, 13-7. On the sideline, the Eagles were jumping up and down. Someone in the excitement came back with an elbow that caught Moser squarely on the brow above his eye, splitting it open. Blood gushed, but Moser quickly found a towel and pressed on the gash as he watched Hawkins kick the extra point to make it 14-7.

"The Victory Bell rang and rang. A drained crowd watched the Eagles kick off and bat away the Mustangs’ last efforts and then it was over. The Abilene Eagles were the Class AAAA state champions . . . . "

Abilene went on to win two more state championships, in 1955 and '56. Now, 53 years later, the Eagles have an opportunity to win another. It remains to be seen if they will. But at Waco, on Saturday, they showed they have the old consistency.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments

Today is Sept. 1, and Americans are starting another grade in school. For me, today is the first day of the 61st grade. I will learn things this year in 61st grade that I didn’t know last year, in 60th grade. I must say, being in 61st grade feels pretty awesome. That is a lot of learning.

To figure out what grade you are starting today, go back to the year you started first grade. For me, that was 1949. Realizing I started school in the first half of the last century is pretty awesome, also. There is no way I could be that old. Then, from your first-grade year, you just count up. I know there is some arithmetic way to do that in two seconds, involving some kind of n+1 formula, but in 60 grades I have never been able to learn it. I still have to do it on a piece of paper. First I list the years: 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, and so on, up to 09. Then, next to 49, I put a 1, then next to 50 a 2, and so on. Sure enough, when I reach 09, the number is 61.

For most Americans, September is the month we begin a new grade, because we were programmed that way. The school year in America traditionally began on the Tuesday after Labor Day. Now, of course, that has all changed. In the San Diego area, some grade-school kids actually started classes on July 27! Others started in August. My own journalism classes at Grossmont College started on Aug. 24. I wasn’t happy about it. I think having to go to school in August (or July!) is un-American and should be investigated.

I think the main thing I learned in 60th grade was that it really is cool, having the imagination of a six-year-old and the experience of a 65-year-old. I had been wondering about that since the 32nd grade, when I was, uh, 37 years old. That year, in 32nd grade, I had already been writing a newspaper column for awhile, and I had the six-year-old imagination all right, but on experience I was shy. I still felt like a kid, not enough accumulation of experience yet, to call it a serious accumulation. I wasn’t yet experienced enough to say in a column, “I can tell you from experience,” and expect anyone to take it seriously. Last year, in 60th grade, I turned 65, and one of the first things I noticed was, when I told someone I could tell them something from experience, 99 percent of them took me seriously.

And that’s the way it worked out. Having the imagination of a six-year-old is really only another way of saying you can think outside the box, and thinking outside the box with the experience of a 65-year-old makes a lot of the stuff out there really dazzling, the kind of stuff I couldn’t possibly have imagined at 37. It must be because there is so much more experience inside the box now, and it is experience that powers, or at least boosts, imagination. I know that at six, I could never have imagined I would have this kind of imagination to look forward to. Now, on the first day of 61st grade, who knows where imagination will take me this year?

Today, already, on the first day of 61st grade, I am learning something. I have been reading papers in my office, turned in by students who were asked to avoid all media – no books, movies, magazines, newspapers, radio, recordings, television or the internet – for 48 hours, then write about the experience. In semesters prior, I could always count on at least a third of the 30-odd students to report being able to escape the media hurricane into calmer waters, where they could reconnect with the analog world of sidewalks, parks, porches, sunshine, clouds, street and planet sounds, and idle conversation with friends. Always, they reported how pleasant it was, even though it was only an interlude, and they could not escape the media world for long, or entirely.

In this batch of papers, I can find only two who report anything about an analog experience, while a few of the others write of their good fortune at being born into a media world, and belonging to what one called “the iPod generation.” “Just look around you,” wrote one, “it’s a beautiful sight.” Am I going to learn, in 61st grade, of evidence that all our children are slowly turning inward toward media, forever?

Labels: Media, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments

For several years – seven or eight – I gave my son Tyler the same birthday present every year. It was a Les Paul CD, adorned with a store-bought, factory-folded green ribbon bow, attached with a strip of Scotch tape.

And for my birthday, Tyler gave the same CD back to me, with the same green bow. It said something about him and me. The gift was the essence of simplicity, in selection and presentation, which men like us prize at gift-giving time. (I also taught him how to use the Sunday comics as gift wrap.) And the gift was something we knew the other wanted: a Les Paul CD.

Today, then, I imagine Tyler and I feel pretty much the same about, for us, the day's most newsworthy event, the death, at age 94, of Les Paul. I heard about it on the (appropriately) car radio, and when I got home, I found "How High the Moon" on YouTube and emailed it to Tyler with no message. The story was front-and-center, with photo, on The New York Times Website, where a day earlier Eunice Kennedy Shriver's death story had appeared.

I say "appropriately," above, because Les Paul was a primary driver behind the music on all my car radios, starting in 1955 when I got my driver's license, and hence, the music fingerprints that I left on Tyler, when he was 4 years old and I would bounce him in my arms as we stood at the turntable and played the old 45s. "Honey Don't." "Blue Suede Shoes." "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man." "Don't Be Cruel."

Les Paul was rarely the artist, but he was the reason, for the formative sound coming from my radio, and so many radios, listened to by teenagers who by 1956 were a new extension of culture that would become a culture unto itself. His artist's career was starting to end in the 1950s, just at the pre-dawn of the rock and roll era. He acknowledged as much in an interview whose date I can't pinpoint, but it may in fact be in the "Chasing Sound" PBS documentary from a couple of years ago. He said as soon as he heard rock and roll, he knew that his recording career was over.

But not his sound. Les Paul invented the solid-body guitar, and he invented multi-track recording. It is that sound, that he created, that drove the new music. When you listen to Les Paul playing at speed, on "How High the Moon," say, you can hear his personal technique, which was dazzling but more jazzy than rock and roll, but you can also hear a rhythm, the same rhythm that Chuck Berry talked about in "Johnny B. Goode:"

"He used to carry his guitar in a gunny sack
"Go sit beneath the tree by the railroad track
"Oh, the engineers would see him sitting in the shade
"Strumming with the rhythm that the drivers made . . . "

Strumming with the rhythm that the drivers made. That's the sound that makes the record producers, in "Chasing Sound," sit forward in their seats, listening again to Les Paul play "How High the Moon." There's a passage in there, that, well . . . when people like Tyler and me, and others who are hooked on rock and roll guitar, are listening to a great song with a great guitar break, and the break is about five seconds away, we'll sit forward and say, "Here it comes." And then we'll back it up to that same point, five seconds to go, so we can feel it coming all over again. It may take five or six of these until we are satisfied.

In 2002, Tyler moved to Nashville, and the green-bow birthday string got broken. I don't remember who wound up in final possession of the CD. I think it was me. Thank God for YouTube. It's not the only, but the best, I think, last gesture of respect to Les Paul to listen to that song today and feel yourself inching forward when the passage starts to come.

Labels: Music, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments

The young Elvis Presley gave the illusion, most clearly in 1957's "Jailhouse Rock," he could move his legs in two directions at the same time, which pretty much says it about Michael Jackson's moonwalk.

Thus, Elvis was the young Michael Jackson's role model. Neither man could sit still, while singing a song, and both men knew how to move it. They knew that moving was part of singing, at least the way they sang. More importantly, they knew, or learned, that's what their fans wanted. He's got a great voice, a powerful, sexy, voice, but an Elvis fan can't watch "Jailhouse Rock" without being moved, powerfully, by how the man is moving. By then, the movements were not spontaneous, but choreographed, and much deeper, sensually, than Elvis might have managed by himself. The movement was that important.

A Michael Jackson fan can't watch "Thriller" without wanting to move like the man, whose moves, if they originated with Elvis, were different from the King's because they were not only choreographed, but tightly choreographed. The step Elvis created was compared to a dead man walking. By Michael Jackson's time, he looked like a robot responding to a remote.

Did Michael take off on Elvis? I think so. Michael was the black Elvis. I have heard several commentators compare Elvis and Michael as being "unique," and I think that is right. The only difference is, Elvis, the King of Rock and Roll, came first. Michael may have liked to be the King of Rock and Roll, but that was already taken. So he became the King of Pop. He couldn't be "Michael the Pelvis," so instead he grabbed his crotch. Elvis had Graceland, Michael had Neverland. He COULD wear outlandish performing outfits, and he wore them a lot better than Elvis could, strapped into his white flight suits. And, of course, Michael married Elvis Presley's daughter.

Their lives - brilliance decaying into the bizarre - and deaths were eerily the same – cardiac arrest bringing down dissipated bodies in the early afternoon, at far too young an age – but Michael's death didn't rock me, the way Elvis's did, because I was an Elvis fan, and only a Michael observer. Fans attach, physically and emotionally, to their stars. In media literacy studies, we call it the "proximity value." There is a direct connection between what the star is doing and how the fan is reacting. That's physical closeness. Emotionally, the fan wants to be like the star. I wish I looked like that. I wish I could sing like that. I wish I could move my legs like that. I wish I was rich and famous like that. I'll buy stuff that will make me feel closer to him.

Michael's fans are shocked today, and every Elvis fan knows how they feel. It was early afternoon in The San Diego Union newsroom when news of Elvis's death arrived, on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 1977. Denise Carabet, an erudite, worldly, brilliant, business world expert and financial writer, came back from lunch with her mouth open a foot. Elvis never had a bigger fan than Denise, or me. Getting out the Wednesday paper that day was an exercise in professionalism for many of us.

Elvis had long since become a blubbery caricature, but he had long since given me what I wanted. I had those 1954-57 years, and when Elvis came back from the Army in 1960 and started singing pop songs and making snoozer movies, I more or less left him behind. It wasn't fair. But fans are rarely fair with their stars. I will take his Sun Studios songs with me to my grave, and when he died at 42, I discovered, angrily, that I had wanted him to live up to that immortality. Not for his sake (though that would have been nice) but for mine.

Labels: Media, Media Literacy, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

This is an excerpt from my 2004 book, "Warbirds – How They Played the Game," a story about how the 1954-57 Abilene High School Eagles became the "Team of the Century" in Texas high school football. The book, in my mind, began as a recreation of forgotten details about the Eagles' 49-game winning streak, but it quickly became a story about how they played the game. That's the only way to understand this excerpt, describing the 1955 Texas Class AAAA state championship game. "Moser" in the first graf is Abilene head coach Chuck Moser.

DECEMBER 17, 1955

During the week in the statewide media, Abilene was established as a one-touchdown favorite over Tyler, and the feeling was that it would be something like 21-14, based on the Eagles’ power to score. Moser himself felt that way. For several weeks he had been telling his coaches (but no one else) that the 1955 Eagles were the best offensive team he ever saw.

“If we can hold them to two touchdowns,” Moser told the Eagle Booster Club, “we’ll win, I believe.”

Abilene, in West Central Texas, and Tyler, way over in East Texas, had never met on a football field. They had some mutual adversaries in Waco, Wichita Falls and Dallas Highland Park, but their meeting at Amon Carter Stadium for the 1955 state championship would be their first.

Having won the Love Field coin toss, Abilene, as the home team, got to pick its jerseys. Moser told his team leader, quarterback David Bourland, that new white jerseys had arrived. Bourland quickly voted in favor of the old gold jerseys. The belly series depended on deception, particularly on the part of the quarterback, and Bourland had become very good at it. He always liked to wear the gold jerseys, because the ball was too easy to see against the white.

Moser had taught his quarterback a trick that made the belly option even more effective. Bourland walked into Moser’s office before the Lubbock game and the coach tossed him a deflated football from off his desk. “Pass it behind your back,” he said, and Bourland did, first right to left and then left to right. “Can you do that with a real ball?” Moser asked. “Sure,” Bourland said. In the game, when Bourland faked to the fullback, he then passed the ball behind his back, from right hand into left or vice-versa depending on the direction of the play, making the ball actually disappear for an instant. It was a very deceptive move. The Eagles’ dark gold jerseys with black numbers helped the illusion. So the Eagles would wear gold and Tyler would wear its white jerseys with shiny blue numbers.

Abilene and Tyler both had 12 straight victories against no defeats. In the playoffs, Tyler first defeated Corpus Christi Miller, 22-7, then Baytown, 20-0. Abilene had averaged 39 points a game, Tyler 29. The Eagles had surrendered 10 fewer points than the Lions, 77 to 87. Against their lone common opponent in 1955, Abilene had beaten Highland Park, 34-0, in the season opener; Tyler beat the Scotties, 33-13, in their next-to-last district game. Abilene’s scouts, Blacky Blackburn and Wally Bullington, told Moser the Lions were a great team. Moser told the Eagles they would have to do “everything right” to win.

The Lions were big and fast. Center Jim Davis and tackle Billy Sims both weighed 200 pounds and both were all-state candidates, as was 186-pound halfback Joe Leggette, who had 980 yards rushing. But the star of the team, and probably the best all-around high school football player of the 1955 season, was 6-2, 190-pound quarterback Charles Milstead.

“Another Walt Fondren,” Jack Holden wrote, “a Doyle Traylor,” comparing Milstead to star Southwest Conference quarterbacks of the era. Tyler ran the same belly option offense as Abilene, and Milstead’s ability to run or pass gave the Tyler system a dangerous extra option.

Members of Abilene’s state championship teams of 1923, 1928, 1931 and 1954 were special guests at the Friday pep rally. The team left for Fort Worth on the Eagle Bus right after the pep rally and headquartered at the Texas Hotel. More than 5,000 Abilenians made the 140-mile trip the next day, including almost 1,000 on a special Texas & Pacific train. The Victory Bell went in a truck and the 100-plus members of the Eagle Marching Band went in buses. After about 8 a.m., two-lane U.S. 80 was lined up with cars going east, through Baird, Cisco, Eastland and Ranger, streaming black and gold crepe decorations, headed for Fort Worth. About the same number of fans came from Tyler. Crowd estimates at kickoff went as high as 30,000 in the 37,000-seat stadium, meaning as many as 20,000 people from Fort Worth and other parts of the state came to the game. It promised to be a big game between two powerhouse teams, maybe even a classic. It turned out to be a classic, all right, one that had fans shaking their heads that afternoon and 45 years later.

In Fort Worth it was a beautiful Texas December afternoon for football, but windy. During warm-ups, the teams had trouble making the football stay on the kicking tee. Moser argued for taking the wind if Abilene won the coin toss. “I was afraid we might bog down and have to kick into that wind,” he said.

But his assistants talked him out of it. When they won the toss, Eagle co-captains Sam Caudle and Henry Colwell chose to receive. Then, disaster. Glynn Gregory had trouble fielding the opening kickoff and slipped on the badly worn turf and went down at the Abilene 5. Immediately five white shirts were around him. Tyler had come to play. “I really thought we were in trouble,” Moser said. So did everyone else. Tyler fans roared, Eagle fans caught their breath. This was a game in which breaks could make the difference.

The Eagles lined up at the 5 in the straight-T. On Moser teams, the quarterback called almost all of the plays. But to start the game, Moser sent the quarterback in with the first three or four plays. Abilene’s first play was a straight-ahead handoff to right halfback Henry Colwell. The line’s rule blocking for the play was also straight ahead. Colwell picked up five yards behind blocks by guard Sam Caudle, tackle Homer Rosenbaum and end Jerry Avery.

The second play had been created for this game. The Eagles never went into a game without some special play or strategy based on scouting reports. This play was designed to exploit the Tyler defensive line’s quickness and ability to penetrate. It also addressed the scouts’ assessment that most of Abilene’s plays should be run to the right side. In the Eagle playbook it was named “Tyler 4 Trap.” It began as the same straight-ahead dive, only to the left side, to Gregory. Bourland took the snap, pivoted left, and handed to Gregory, moving forward. The other backs, Colwell and fullback James Welch, sprinted to the left and the Tyler line and linebackers leaned toward that flow.

But as he took the handoff, Gregory cut sharply to the right. In front of him, left guard Stuart Peake had “pulled.” He had taken one step back and was now streaking across to block Lions’ left defensive tackle Tracy Webb who had in fact been allowed by Rosenbaum to penetrate across the line of scrimmage. Caudle and center Elmo Cure sealed off the inside, Peake hit the tackle square – in the next three minutes, Webb would see enough of Stuart Peake to last him several lifetimes – and the hole at right tackle was wide open. Leggette, rushing up from his defensive back position, almost got to Gregory but Avery cut him off.

Gregory veered outside, got two more blocks, and was off, up the sideline, for 48 yards. He was caught, amazingly, by a linebacker, attesting to Tyler’s team speed, but the Eagles were out of the hole. It was the biggest play of the game. “I know that stunned Tyler,” said Abilene assistant Bob Groseclose. “Those Tyler boys didn’t believe their big linemen could be moved that easily.”

First and 10 on the Tyler 42. Gregory went straight ahead for six yards. On second down, fullback James Welch ripped through the middle, a standard fullback trap play just off the center’s right hip, for 13 yards. Bourland ran the same play again and Welch got 15 more. Eagle blockers Cure, Caudle, Rosenbaum and Peake were chewing up the left side of Tyler’s defensive line and Peake, pulling on every play, was more or less dismembering Tracy Webb.

From the Tyler 8, Bourland faked the trap to Welch and handed to Gregory coming across, who followed yet another Peake block to the 3. Gregory carried again on the straightaway play to the 1, then Welch burst through cleanly on the trap play again for the touchdown.

On either side of the field, people didn’t quite know what to think. After a nerve-rattling start, the Eagles had moved 95 yards in eight plays, all of them rushes inside the tackles, and they did it in three minutes and seven seconds against the unbeaten Tyler Lions, who had allowed only one touchdown in the playoffs and only 87 points all season. On the field, the Lion players were shocked.

“They were twice as good as we thought they were,” said Milstead, a safety on defense. “We had no idea they were so terrific,” said all-state end Mickey Trimble. “They played like they knew they were going to win from the start.”

After a wind-blown kickoff, Tyler had the wind at its back and excellent field position at its 38. Two belly options and a fullback dive netted eight yards. Moser said line coach Hank Watkins “did a tremendous job with our line in setting the strategy to stop Tyler’s option stuff.” Defensive ends Peake and Guy Wells were coached to turn all of Tyler’s option plays inside. “Hank worked with those ends all week and really did a tremendous job,” Moser said.

Milstead punted and Gregory let the ball roll dead at the Eagle 10. Fifteen rushing plays later, the Eagles scored their second touchdown, on a four-yard sweep right by the fullback Welch. Milstead had a shot at him at the 2, but Welch muscled underneath the Tyler star and dived across the goal line just inside the corner flag with 43 seconds left in the first quarter. The key play in the drive came on third and six at the Eagle 14, after Abilene was penalized five yards for moving before the snap. Bourland faked to Welch up the middle, then waited for Gregory, who was circling around to the left, and thrust the ball into his belly. But then the quarterback pulled the ball out again and as defenders veered left toward Gregory Bourland took off around right end. He got a clearing block from Colwell and broke up the sideline for 18 yards and a drive-saving first down.

Tyler all-state center and linebacker Jim Davis thought that second drive broke Tyler’s back. “When they stopped us on our first drive and then they drove 90 yards for their second TD, we never could get going,” Davis said.

The first quarter ended. Abilene was leading, 13-0, and Tyler had run five offensive plays for a net of 11 yards. In the second quarter Colwell made a leaping interception of a Milstead pass at the Tyler 48 and returned it to the 25. Three plays and a penalty later, Abilene faced fourth and 25 from the Tyler 40, out of field goal range. The way his defense was playing, Moser didn’t mind running a play on fourth down from the opponent’s 40. He sent in a play to Bourland.

The Eagles came to the line in a flanker left, with Colwell lined up far outside left end Freddie Green. Bourland took the snap and dropped back. Welch moved to the right to pass block. Three white shirts surprisingly broke through and rushed toward Bourland. The first one reached him and hit him, but at that instant Bourland handed the ball to Gregory who had taken a couple of stutter steps to the left, then circled back and with perfect timing crossed behind Bourland for the handoff.

It was the Statue of Liberty play. Gregory took off to the right, his cleats kicking up chalk dust at the 50 as he turned upfield. The right side of the Eagle line sealed off Tyler defenders, while the left side had brush-blocked their defenders and then sprinted downfield. In front of Gregory was left tackle Rufus King. Gregory galloped across the 40, then the 30, with King five yards in front. At the 20, running at full speed, the 185-pound King hit Milstead with a block that knocked the 6-2, 190-pound Milstead five yards backward and to the ground at the 15. Behind King’s block, Gregory cut back across the field. Of the nine players near him, six wore gold jerseys. Green, racing across in front of Gregory, knocked down one defender who in turn rolled into a second Tyler back. Near the goal line, Colwell set up to screen off the last defender, who wasn’t going to catch Gregory anyway as he strode into the end zone.

The Eagle line of 1955 got downfield to block with a speed and intensity rarely seen at any level of competition on a football field, then or since. “They had terrific blocking,” said Tyler coach Buck Prejean, “by far better than we’ve faced this year.” “They had lots of speed,” said defensive back Joe Leggette, “but their blocking was the difference.” Gregory missed his second PAT in the strong wind and the Eagles took a 19-0 lead to halftime. They hadn’t thrown a pass.

“I told David to lay off throwing,” Moser said. “Heck, we could make five yards running our handoffs, so why risk passing? I’ve never seen as fine a blocking line in my life. We’d run a handoff on first down, and then we’d have second down and five to go, or three, or one. That kept the pressure on Tyler the entire game.”

Colwell, who was born in Tyler, scored the Eagles’ fourth touchdown on a one-yard run to climax a 45-yard drive late in the third quarter. Gregory closed out Abilene scoring with a four-yard run two minutes deep into the fourth quarter, and Abilene led, 33-0. In three quarters against Abilene’s first-team defense, Tyler had managed a total of two first downs. And Milstead looked nothing like the Charles Milstead that had led the Lions to 12 straight wins. Moser thought it was because of the pounding Milstead took while he was playing defense.

“We were sticking a helmet in his stomach on those blocks every play,” Moser said, “and that took a lot out of him. I know he didn’t look at all like he did in earlier games.” Specifically, Moser cited Rufus King’s block on Milstead during Gregory’s 40-yard scoring run in the second quarter.

In fact it was Ken Talkington, Tyler’s backup quarterback, who led the Lions to their first touchdown in the fourth quarter. Talkington threw a 33-yard scoring pass to Newell McCallum with 4:32 left in the game, and then Milstead came back to lead a short drive after a fumble recovery that ended with Leggette’s 10-yard TD run with 2:26 remaining. For the game, the Lions finished with 52 yards rushing and 80 passing, on five completions. Gregory had 171 of Abilene’s rushing total of 351. The Eagles tried only two passes, completing neither. “Abilene was brutal,” summarized the Associated Press.

Milstead, approached after the game by a young Tyler fan wanting an autograph, told the boy he should go get Abilene players to sign instead. “Everybody on that team was great,” Milstead said, “simply great.” He said the Lions “could play Abilene every day in the week and never beat ‘em.” “They hit hard and never let up,” said Trimble, the Tyler end. “They’d knock you down, and when you got back up, knock you down again. It was tough.” In the Eagle locker room, senior co-captains Caudle and Colwell were blubbering into their coach’s shoulder. They and the other seniors were the first class to play all three years under Moser.

“Coach, I can’t play any more,” said Caudle, a starter on both offense and defense for both the 1954 and ’55 champions, and a two-way all-district selection as a senior. “Sure you can, son,” Moser said. “You’ve got college games ahead.”

But that’s not what Caudle had meant. He couldn’t be an Eagle any more, part of a team that had won 23 straight games and a second state championship. It was a feeling of achievement and of belonging that might be part of this black and gold gang for a long while, with junior players like Gregory, Jimmy Carpenter, Stuart Peake and Rufus King in the room. It was not an easy thing for an 18-year-old to leave behind.

Culmination

In the days after the Tyler game, Jack Holden of the Reporter-News tried to get a handle on the Eagles’ greatness. “The Eagles’ ultimate success can be traced to several things,” he wrote, “and whether we have them in the right order or not we don’t know:

“1. Superior coaching (and we definitely think this comes first). Moser and his staff had every detail organized to perfection. There was little lost motion. The assistants did a terrific job. Moser gives them credit for doing most of the actual coaching, but it was his organization that made it possible.

“2. An unbeatable attitude by the boys themselves. Almost all the coaches have remarked repeatedly: ‘These kids want to be coached. We’ve never seen any boys as eager to learn.’ The boys studied hard and worked hard. They kept themselves in top condition.

“3. A good foundation in football. Abilene’s junior high coaches and even those in elementary school instilled in the Eagles a love of the game, a desire to learn and taught them good fundamentals. They just needed to be polished in high school.

“4. Teamwork On this team there was no star. All 11 were stars, and they worked as nearly like a unit as possible.

“5. Fine support from the city, the Eagle Booster Club and the students. All these groups went all out for their boys.”

Holden might have added a sixth element: time. Witnesses, coaches and media have routinely used the word “perfect” in describing the Abilene Eagles’ performance in the first half of the 1955 state championship game against Tyler.

Even Chuck Moser said it. “That game was something a coach lives for,” he said the day after the game. “Our first team played a perfect game all the way.”

It was the 23rd victory in the streak, but in history the Tyler game stands out from all the others. It was a culmination of all that had happened since the Friday the 13th meeting at which the Abilene School Board voted to offer Moser the job, and Moser accepted it, and the news was published on Valentine’s Day, 1953. All the mimeographed policies, all the coordination, all the teaching, all the drills, all the decisions, all the chalk talks, all the practices, all the eligibility slips, all the plays in practice, all the plays in the 35 previous games that Moser had coached the Eagles, all of it was practicing to be perfect, and it all came to 24 minutes of fruition in the first half of the 1955 state championship game.

From his first day in his 10-by-10 office in the old Eagles’ Nest on Peach St., Moser taught perfection. All that attention to detail was motivated by Moser’s desire to give his team its best chance to be perfect. That was always the goal, though Moser realized that some percentage of perfection, 75 or 80 percent, would provide his team a great advantage against its opposition. That advantage was obvious in the Tyler game. In the films, there is a glaring difference between the two teams. The Tyler players carried out their assignments, then stopped. The Abilene players carried out their assignments and kept running to the play and then ran back to the huddle.

Watching films of the 1955 Eagles, a person can start to wonder if the Eagles didn’t have 17 or 18 players on the field; 11 at the line of scrimmage, then after the play starts, another seven or eight downfield. A team could not be perfect unless it hustled until the whistle blew. You couldn’t be perfect if you didn’t play perfectly for every second of the game. Moser taught that from the first day of spring training in 1953, and people who were watching understood it immediately.

“We know one thing for sure,” Don Oliver of the Reporter-News wrote during those first spring training days, “win, lose, or draw, they’ll be the hustlingest ball club that has represented Abilene in a long time. Those that don’t hustle won’t play for Chuck Moser very long.”

But it took time to reach even a percentage of perfection, and three years to approach the sort of potential that the Eagles realized at Fort Worth. Expert witnesses to the Tyler game knew they had seen something climactic. Said Waco High School coach Carl Price: “Abilene’s state champions of this year are 30 points better than the 1954 champions. If they improve another 30 points next year, they might as well get in the Southwest Conference.”

“Abilene’s triumph was the most complete victory scored in championship play in 21 years,” wrote Dave Campbell of the Waco News-Tribune. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram was even more definitive: “There was general agreement among the long-time observers that Moser’s 1955 champions were the most powerful in the 35-year history of the Texas Interscholastic League. What made it a great team was the coiled-spring swiftness and the lightning reactions of the linemen, the versatility of the backfield which made every ball carrier a threat, and the tremendous defensive efforts in the clutches.”

Jack Stovall, an Abilenian living in Dallas, sent a telegram to the Reporter-News: “Have started rumor that Abilene High used star players from (Abilene colleges) Hardin-Simmons, McMurry and ACC against Tyler.” He had the right idea, but a weak concept: Abilene might in fact have beaten the collegians he mentioned. Nearer the mark was Hunter Schmidt, who covered the game for the Tyler Telegraph: “I’d give anyone Notre Dame and 14 points against Abilene.”

Labels: Archives, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments

I guess I didn't realize it, but Tom Perini has definitely gone viral. I was so impressed last week when Paula Deen on TV picked him as the king of Texas brisket barbecue, and when he gave her a sample, she kissed him FULL ON THE LIPS.

Then, today, I became aware of the new issue of Saveur magazine ("Savor a World of Authentic Cuisine"), with its cover story, "Twenty-Four Reasons Why We Love Texas."
No. 5: Tom Perini. If you missed my groveling blog about Tom last week, he and I grew up together (I was a year older) in Abilene, Texas, so I can truly say, "I knew him when."

A newer acquaintance, via the blogosphere, is Lisa Fain, a Texas native living in New York City, who does the "Homesick Texan" food blog. She has an essay in the new Saveur, which is how I came to know about the magazine in the first place. She also has at her site a recipe for carnitas, which I tried Sunday, which was the original starting place for this blog, until I looked at Saveur online and saw Tom Perini at No. 5 statewide.

The carnitas came out very nicely and there turned out to be a bonus. The recipe says to let the carnitas brown in its own fat, which has rendered out earlier in the recipe, and to stir the meat frequently so it doesn't stick to the pot. I didn't stir it regularly enough, and then I forgot to stir it at all, so when I came back, the pork was fine, but in the bottom of the pot was a dark layer that the chemists would call a tight lattice of fat, blood and sugar molecules forged by heat into an impenetrable mass.

And so a circle closed. When I was growing up, in Abilene, Texas, alongside Tom Perini, who at the time appeared deceptively ordinary, my grandmother Susie knew two ways to cook meat: well-done and weller-done. I loved the black objects she brought to the table, whether it was meatloaf, pork chops, or pot roast. They may have been chewier than most, but they also provided a unique intensity of meat flavor that I have never forgotten.

So I looked at the mahogany slag in the bottom of my pot after dinner on Sunday and saw opportunity. I turned the heat to medium-low and poured in a cup of water with a couple tablespoons of vinegar, and I let the liquid get steamy, and then I started to scratch at the slag with a spatula, gently scratching and probing, like an archaeologist. My goal was the black gravy that I remember gathered beneath Susie's roasts. It took about 15 minutes, but then I was able to pour a couple of cups of black gravy into a plastic container with the leftover carnitas.

All day yesterday, I was looking forward to dinner. I knew from experience that there was only one satisfactory accompaniment for the black gravy, and that was another Susie specialty, corn bread thangs. The thangs would be a bit of trouble, and hideously caloric, and during the afternoon I considered rice, or potatoes, or white bread, but I knew all the while what the deal was. I put the carnitas and black gravy in a saucepan to warm up, and I made a couple of big thangs, which are only cornmeal, salt and pepper, bound into patties with hot water and fried golden-crispy in oil. A good thang is crispy on the outside, steamy on the inside, and remarkably dense. If you let a corn bread thang get cold, you can drive nails with it. It was this density that the gravy's own flavor density required.

Karen walked past, pinched off a bite of warm, gravy-painted pork from the saucepan, ate it, and exclaimed in a rapturous tone how good it was, and I smiled at this latest evidence that I had married the right woman. But she only wanted a bite. I poured the gravy over the thangs, with some beans and the carnitas on the side. It wasn't a plate you would see a picture of in Saveur, but it sure was good, and totally Texan.

Labels: Roots, Stretch Cooking

Posted by Michael Grant at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments

Whenever an airliner goes down, this time Air France 447, I feel compelled to tell again my experience in an airliner that was about to crash, partly in tribute to those lost, and partly as a kind of balm offered to those who grieve the lost.

My experience began early on the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 28, 1958, when two chartered DC-3 airliners took off from the Abilene, Texas, airport, carrying the Abilene High football team to a playoff game in El Paso, 444 miles to the west. I was 15 years old, a sophomore, on the second DC-3, last seat on the right.

I loved airplanes, and this was my first flight on a big airplane. The DC-3, an historic airplane, was propeller-powered, two engines, capacity 27. I loved to go out to the airport to watch them land and take off. Blue flame shot from the exhausts when the pilot cranked the engines and they caught. I paid attention to every detail of boarding, preparation, taxi and takeoff.

About an hour into the flight, I knew we were approaching Big Spring, 100 miles west of Abilene. I got up from my seat and asked the two guys on the other side of the aisle – one of them was Graham Holland, a big tackle – if I could look out their window at Webb Air Force Base, which I knew was below. I was standing, looking out the window, when, with no sense of time passing, or of anything happening, I found myself spread-eagled on the ceiling of the airplane. My arms and legs were glued flat to the ceiling, and I could not move them. My eyes were frozen open; I could not close them.

Directly below me was the window, and below the window was the ground: brown, West Texas rangeland. The land was rising toward me, quickly, accelerating, and I could not look away. I could not move. In the next instant, with no sense of time passing, or anything having happened, I found myself on the floor of the airplane. On top of me was Graham Holland, and assorted items from trays and overhead bins, including a weird piece of equipment that, loving airplanes, I recognized.

It was a long, square stick, maybe four feet long, red and white with gradation marks painted in black. It was the stick that, at the airport, they lowered into the wing tanks to measure fuel amounts. I thought: this stick belongs on the outside of the airplane. If it's on the outside, that must mean that I am on the outside, which means I must be dead.

But I wasn't. After several silent seconds, we started picking ourselves up. It was very quiet on the DC-3. We realized we were still flying. We found our seats and very soon, on the intercom, came the voice of the pilot, Charles L. Kageler. He told us we had been in a near-collision with another plane, which he believed was a military jet from Webb AFB. He said he had had to drop his airplane suddenly, that we had fallen about a thousand feet, but that we were okay, flying straight and level and climbing back up to altitude.

Also aboard the plane was Abilene Reporter-News sports writer Fred Sanner. His story about the near-miss led the front page in Saturday morning's Reporter-News. Details: Kageler saw the jet (I was looking out the same side of our plane, but didn't see the other plane), cut power to both engines and rolled the 25,000-pound DC-3 hard left, essentially standing the airplane on its left wingtip. We dropped straight down, which was what glued me to the ceiling. He said the other airplane missed us by about 25 feet. I had a huge bump on my head, and my name was in the story. The only other injury was a sprained ankle. The headline: "Tragedy Brushes Close to Eagle Plane."

We flew on to El Paso, played Ysleta High School the next day, beat them, 40-6, and flew back to Abilene without incident. But everyone on board that DC-3 on that Friday had become members of a club. As a member, I knew three things about being on board a plane that is about to crash. One, the ground really does come up to get you. Two, your life does pass before your eyes. I was only 15, so there wasn't much on the reel, but I saw it all. Three, there was no panic, no terror, on the airplane. No one made a sound, during or after the event.

I am glad to know that, when I read about flights like Air France 447. I have evidence from a plunging airliner to suggest that the brain is a logical instrument and wants to put patterns on all the data it receives. But on the DC-3, data was coming too fast, and didn't make any sense when compared to all known data. There literally was not time to understand, to be afraid, or to experience terror. I wonder also if the brain doesn't have emergency circuits to protect itself, and its host, from panic, or terror, by triggering distractions like your life passing before your eyes. In those seconds, you either get out of it, or you don't. I got out of it. Another few seconds, we would have hit. Either way, I am spared the indignity of terror.

In January, when US Air Capt. Chesley Sullenberger landed his airliner in the Hudson River, passengers reported a quiet calm all the way down. I would attribute that to brains searching for a pattern. How much time elapsed between the beginning and the end of the event on Flight 447? Impossible to say, but possible to believe, believe me, that it was over before anybody knew.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments

It's always fun to see a kid you have known since grade school get kissed full on the lips by Paula Deen on national television, and knowing he deserved it.

I am speaking about Tom Perini, of Abilene and Buffalo Gap, Texas. I have a black and white photo from the summer of 1955, showing a contingent of Abilene boys sitting on a diving board at Camp Rio Vista, Texas, down by Kerrville. Tom Perini and I are in the photo. I was 13, he was 12.

Tom has been in the cooking and restaurant business for 30-odd years. He is the proprietor of the Perini Ranch Steakhouse in Buffalo Gap, author of "Texas Cowboy Cooking," and a caterer of Texas-style barbecue whose business has taken him nation-wide. On the morning of 9/11, Tom and his crew were setting up on the White House lawn to do barbecue for the President and members of Congress later in the day. After what happened that day, Tom said it took him two harrowing weeks to get him, his crew and his equipment back to Abilene. It is an interesting story.

But not as interesting, this morning, anyway, as getting smacked a good one by Paula Deen. I wasn't expecting it; you can call it true serendipity. I was channel surfing Thursday night and got in right at the top of the hour for Paula Deen's one-hour tour of places offering signature versions of southern barbecue. She went to Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama and Texas, looking for just the right places to represent the particular style of barbecue for which each locale is noted.

In Texas, she said, it was brisket. There are probably 20,000 places in Texas she could have chosen to get her point across that nobody does brisket barbecue like Texans. Who did she choose? Tom Perini. God, I was proud. He came on-screen, wearing his familiar blue long-sleeved shirt and straw cowboy hat and I felt like Pavarotti's brother, sitting in the audience at the Met. He showed her the raw brisket, showed her how to season it, and put it in a portable pit cooker. Twenty hours later (10 seconds, in television time), he took out the brisket, sliced off a piece, and handed it to Paula. She ate it, moved in on Tom, and kissed him FULL ON THE LIPS.

The other experts on the show gave Paula that first bite, and they only got hugs or pats in return. Tom got the full Paula. I would like to say it was his personality, and he has a great personality. But Southerners and barbecue are like dogs and food. I don't care how affectionate the dog may appear, with him it is food first and people second. With Southerners, it is barbecue first and personality second. Tom earned his kiss the hard way, making perhaps the best case ever for Texas brisket as the king of barbecue.

The Food Network Website says the show is scheduled to air again at 6 p.m. Sunday, May 31. Tom's cookbook is available at amazon.com. There is one recipe in there, Jessica's Favorite Green Chile Hominy, on page 148, that is worth the price of the book. If you gave Paula a bite of that, you probably couldn't show the reaction on TV.

Labels: Cooking, Friends, Roots, Stretch Cooking

Posted by Michael Grant at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments

Life is totally complicated, and trying to understand it takes a lot of work. At unexpected moments during that work, you might be looking at something and suddenly everything will "line up." This is a story, published Thursday, Jan. 10, 1990, about one of those moments that, for me, arrived on the evening of Jan. 8.

Looking at the moon Tuesday night, I felt a sudden awareness of betrayal. Oh, the moon was innocent, pretty as ever in its full phase and unusually high in the sky for the 8 p.m. hour. It seemed to be in the company of a star or bright planet that had appeared to keep its relative position (a finger’s width to the south) since nightfall. They might have been two different stars, of course, but that would not be the romantic notion.

Through the years, I put a lot of stock in that moon to do my romancing for me. Most people have. For reasons of their own – and every human on the planet comes as a complete set of reasons of his or her own – people don’t trust themselves to get the job done.

A few people admit that, but it takes enormous courage. You confess your fears – be yourself in other words – and take your chances. Most people won’t go that far. They don’t want to take a chance; they want to get the girl. So even if they could, they won’t present themselves directly. They send what lovers have in common: the moon, the stars, the sky, the sun, the clouds, rain, the ocean, music, champagne, roses and Baby Ruths. It seems very romantic, but romance with the moon as intermediary is mostly an exercise in managing fear.

It would be funny if it weren’t also sad. Those who were doing their first romancing in the 1950s will remember the late, great Tommy Edwards, singing “Please Mr. Sun.” It sounded romantic at the time, but here was a man scared out of his mind. He begged brooks, wind, raindrops, rainbows and moonbeams, among others, to do his romancing for him, with Mr. Sun watching to see they all did. Some of us did Tommy one better. We took all his stuff, and the song, and sent it along as our personal John Alden. It’s amazing, the binding power we give to simple songs. I doubt that my high school girlfriend and I will ever speak again, but neither of us is likely to hear (I am blushing now) “Susie Darlin’” without feeling emotion for days and nights of long ago.

Chris Isaak, singing in the late 1980s, more or less put his finger on it: “Strange, what desire makes foolish people do.” It makes them bay at the moon for one thing. That night, head thrown back, face turned up to the moon, I was a person very much in the baying position. It was the same position foolish people everywhere assume, beaming the most heartfelt romantic thoughts at the moon as if it were a satellite that would bounce them back, across miles and darkness, into the heart of the intended, who would hear, and stop eating, or wake up, or push herself out of the arms of another man, who had naturally brought roses and champagne.

I turned around and looked at my shadow on the driveway and laughed. Then I stared at the moon again and for the first time saw it simply staring back, powerless to commune with anyone but me. I was the betrayer. And the betrayed was time, amounting to years and decades, time on both sides, lost to foolishness, left for fools to measure, in remembered melodies and spent corks and crumbled petals, by the forgiving light of the moon.

For the moment I was angry. But it was a beautiful night, clear and warm and unexacting. The moon moved on, just out of Orion’s reach. I stayed out awhile, wondering how beauty is shared, among fearless lovers.

The next morning I went out to start the car to take my son to school. It was 6:15, and the moon was just setting, in the north-northwest, in the same place the sun would set if it were June, near the solstice. The moon was as gold as a setting sun, and puddled the same way at the horizon. I watched it until it was gone, thinking how romantic it was, or maybe just very personal, that the moon should set at the dawn of this particular day.

Labels: Archives, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments

The archive below was published on May 17, 1983, when Tyler was six years old. Tomorrow, May 23, he will be 33. Still too young . . .

We had the house together, he and I. For lunch he had a hotdog. I had cold pizza. On his hotdog he had ketchup and pickle relish. You start to wonder from where these tastes arise.

The ketchup was Heinz, which he believes is too runny. "I'll be glad when we get some Del Monte ketchup," he said. I had put on two hotdogs, thinking he would be hungry after his game. His team won, 28-27, its first victory of the season. This is "tee-ball," where the hitters hit the ball off a rubber tee and the defenses are, well, forgetful.

He played catcher and had four hits. He has a nice stroke, he's a good thrower, and he catches all right, but he does not yet appreciate the concept of turning the glove over for low throws and ground balls.

He didn't want the other hotdog. "For lunch," he reminded me, "I always have only one hotdog, or sometimes one and a half." So I ate the other hotdog, with mustard.

"You have a big appetite," he said. "Let's go sit in the swing," I said. "That's a good idea," he said. "You can read me two stories."

He went by his room and picked out two books. I hoped they were not "Fish is Fish," or "How Engines Talk." He met me at the swing, and Terry the Pup jumped up also. The afternoon was warm, almost hot. But the canopy took the bright edge off, and at the back a little breeze wandered in. It was every bit of all right.

"Read this one first," he said and handed me "The Pumpkin Smasher." "And read this one second." This one – "Mouse and Tim" – he showed to me, but did not hand over. "The Pumpkin Smasher" is preschooler stuff. Every Hallowe'en Eve, someone smashes all the pumpkins in town. It gets so bad that the mayor is thinking about calling off Hallowe'en.

But a couple of kids have a plan. They paint a boulder to look like a pumpkin. Sure enough, the pumpkin-smasher – it turns out to be a witch – tries to smash this pumpkin. Then she gives up and flies away, saying she will never come back to this town again.

This book I handed back, and he handed me "Mouse and Tim," which is better. In fact it is terrific, if you have never read it. The trick is, both boy and mouse give points of view, the mouse in italics. Reading it aloud, toward the end, when Tim is going to let Mouse go, you have to stop every little while to let your sob reflex relax. More is going on than boy frees mouse.

"That's a great story," I said at the end. He didn't say anything. We rocked in the heat and watched the summer bugs dip and dart. I tried to see the afternoon through his eyes, and I almost could, having been there once. The view, I think, doesn't change. Sharing it with him was special.

We could have spent the afternoon, but I had things to do in the kitchen. Company was coming. "Well," I said. "I have things to do."

"No," he said. He rolled onto my lap and wiggled his cheek into my chest and pinned me with his arms.

I would not have had to move a muscle to get to heaven. Someday I will have to let him go, but now I clung to him, clung to the day, and the hour, and the minute, and the pressure of it squeezed free a drop that rolled down my cheek and plopped on the brown bill of his baseball cap.

I was not at this point just going to get up without a good excuse. After awhile I said, "Want to listen to the little records?"

"Yeah!" he said. The little records are 45s of mine, nearly all 1950s rock and roll, that he and I have been listening to for years. He likes it, and I tell him it is better stuff than hits the charts today. Some of these I am taping for a friend. I figured I could do that and other stuff too. He sat on the couch, and I loped between stereo and kitchen.

I was at the stereo when he said, "Dad, do you think I will die in the 20th . . . the 20th . . ."

"The 20th century?" I said. "Naw. I sure hope not." I told him that the 21st century would start in the year 2001, 18 years from now. "You will be 25," I said. "You'll just be getting started. And I will be, uh, 58. I think it will be exciting, living at the turn of a century."

He was not distracted. "I hope I die before you do," he said.

"Why?" I said.

"If you died before I did, I would be sad," he said. Psychologists say such statements are normal because the kid at that age sees the parent as hero. I trust it is also normal for the parent, hearing it, to feel mighty heroic.

"Now wait a minute," I said, and went over and leaned down in his face. "What about me? If you died before me, I would be sad. Ever think about that?"

"Well," he said, "we could just die on the same day."

"No," I said. "You will always be too young." And he always will.

Labels: Family, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments

Can animals talk?

Sure they can. The most famous talking animal in the world reigns over an international entertainment empire worth billions. He dresses up and strolls the grounds of his entertainment fantasylands from California to France and we happily pay $65 (last time I checked) a head, including kiddies, so the kiddies can find him and run up to him and tell him all their secrets while the parents stand to one side and smile as happily as if their children were talking to the President of the United States. We even try to get a word in edgewise, and at the end we always say, “Thanks, Mickey.”

Believe in talking animals? I cried watching “The Lion King.” People buy insurance from a company whose spokesman is a gecko. But my favorite talking animal is – still is – Hobbes, the charming, witty, erudite tiger in the old comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes.”

And it is Hobbes who tells the secret of our affection, and our need, for talking animals. Hobbes, of course, is Calvin’s sidekick. Calvin is about seven years old and lives almost every moment of his life outside the box, in his imagination. It is in our imagination that animals can talk. Calvin and Hobbes can be having the grandest time, and then one of Calvin’s parents comes into the room. When the parent is there, Hobbes is a stuffed animal propped up against a chair. The parent at that moment is inside the box, and Hobbes can only live where imagination lives.

Imagination is so important to us all. Inside a box is no way at all to live. All you can see are the insides of the box. I was in the 32nd grade when I learned I was in the 32nd grade. An adult is living way too boxy a life when he doesn’t know what grade he is in. Wouldn’t you know, the day I learned that I was in 32nd grade (gosh, that was 25 years ago) was a day I was at Disneyland. We were standing in Main Street, looking up the street at the Fantasyland castle. I had seen the castle before, on earlier Disneyland days, and I was sure its spires soared with all the majesty of the finest castles of Europe and other romantic lands.

But this day, workmen were sprucing up the castle with new paint and other maintenance, and they had scaffolding up. I knew the dimensions of scaffolding, and looking at it now, it looked like a grid of known dimensions overlaid on Snow White’s castle.

And the castle was incredibly small. The grid to me represented a known box – data – and inside the box, the soaring castle was no bigger than a two-story house.

In that instant, I learned something of vital importance that I had not known before, and in that same instant I realized that happened all the time. I had learned things that year that I did not know the year before, and I would learn things next year that I did not know now. I was, and ever would be, in a grade in school. That day at Disneyland, I figured out that I was in 32nd grade. Now I am in 56th. My God, I have learned a lot since then. Just last Sunday, I learned one of the most beautiful lessons of my life, and so now I know much more about love than I did in the first 55 grades.

What I learned at Disneyland, staring at the amazing shrunken castle, was the importance to me of imagination. I was six years old once and, like Calvin and Hobbes, lived life freely, every day, outside the box. Then I started to school, and I started acquiring data. It was data I had to have – two plus two and so forth – but it was also data that overlaid my imagination and started to contradict it.

Staring at the castle, I knew that I never wanted to lose that imagination. In that moment, I learned that the perfect life would be to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the wisdom of a 65-year-old. At the time, I had to settle for keeping the imagination and my, what a difference that has made.

But I would have to wait to acquire the wisdom of a 65-year-old. Now, in 56th grade, I am drawing perilously close to that goal, but a goal it still is, which must be why I feel so damn happy this morning. Great God Almighty, I am outside the box.

Labels: Archives, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments

You wouldn't ordinarily go to a newspaper's letters to the editor column if you were looking for a multimedia work of art, but one showed up this morning in The New York Times. From the headline – "In the Old Balducci's, a Hollywood Sighting" – to the writer's signature – Michael Tilson Thomas – the presentation was distinguished. It was a unique story, with provenance, sentiment, surprise, erudition, humor, whimsy, affection, correct writing, and stunningly illustrated – yes, a letter to the editor with an illustration – and, for complete enjoyment, requesting of the reader a degree of cultural awareness.

Balducci's was a Manhattan gourmet food shop, founded by an Italian immigrant in 1946, expanding from a single shop into a chain. Last week, its corporate owners (since 1999) shut down Balducci's Manhattan locations. Michael Tilson Thomas was one of thousands of New Yorkers, in New York and around the world, who read the news "with regret." At the end of the letter, Thomas is identified as the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and artistic director of the New World Symphony.

In his letter, Thomas recalled a Christmas Eve morning in the 1980s when he went to Balducci's for some Christmas dinner fixings. It was early, before opening time, "but if you were there a few minutes early and they knew you, there was never any problem." In the deserted store, Thomas saw a woman, in fur coat and hat and oversized sunglasses. Thomas artfully describes how he recognized her – Greta Garbo – and honored her space when she recognized his recognition. She resumed her conversation with a Balducci's meat man.

Then, Thomas wrote, "At a certain moment, she turned toward me and said, 'It must be a fine old bird to make strong soup for a sick friend – at least five pounds!' " She got her chicken, paid, and left the store. When he got home, Thomas said he called his parents and told them he had had "an ultimate Jewish show business experience! I saw Garbo buy a chicken!" And then, with understatement and class, Thomas simply signed off: "I'll always be grateful to Balducci's for fresh food and lasting memories."

Above the letter and below the headline was the illustration, by Louise Fili and Jessica Hische: a caricature of Garbo, in an art nouveau style, one eye and famously arched brow, and a brush of hair, and in cursive script these words: "I vant to buy a chicken." Perfect. You can see it, with the entire letter, here.

It blew me away. Maybe I am overeager in a search for signs that newspapers should not, cannot, be abandoned. The new argument says don't worry about newspapers, it's not newspapers, but journalism, that must be preserved. Of course that is correct. The true battle for the future of the democracy is to move journalism online at as high a professional level as it has enjoyed in newspapers. But what about the future of casually turning a page and, in the midst of the journalism, discovering a short letter that has been recognized as a work of art, and presented in that way? You cannot link to discoveries, of art or anything else unique.

And the complete enjoyment of this art depended not on anything new or searchable, but on the individual reader's awareness that Greta Garbo was sensitive about her space, and she knew her chickens. It does in fact take a fine old bird – at least five pounds – to make a strong soup. I am beginning to think it's that reader awareness that I am really going to miss, after newspapers are gone. I wonder if that has become part of the editors' thinking, at least those who treated us to this art, in The New York Times.

Labels: Food, Media Literacy, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments

Until this afternoon in January, 1991, I had been studying the concept of "taking back power" for three years, but still only understood it academically. Then the 727, taking off, put it on the ground for me.

A cold front had just passed through Dallas, bringing the usual winds howling from the north. The overcast was giving way to blue sky as our flight taxied from the Delta terminal over to the west runways.

Ahead of us was a Delta 727, hurrying along, probably late, like we were. Without pause he took the runway and began his takeoff roll. I lost sight of him as we maneuvered on the taxiway, but when we turned to enter the runway, I saw him again.

He had just lifted off, climbing sharply through 200 feet, presenting to us a topmost profile of white fuselage and silver wings.

He was flying sideways; that is, the fuselage was skewed two or three ticks to the right of its direction of travel. It is not unusual for airplanes, particularly small ones, to fly sideways. They call it “crabbing,” when a pilot, to fly straight, has to steer right or left into the wind.

But this was different, this glimpse of a 727, 200 feet off the ground, flying sideways at takeoff. Here was a three-engine aircraft, 100 feet long, weighing 115,000 pounds, driven forward by 45,000 pounds of thrust, and the wind had blown it sideways the instant its wheels left the ground. The pilot had to steer left to fly straight. It showed how strong the wind was, and how effective the countering design, a design that joined flexibility with control. It was a triumph of equilibrium.

Then we turned onto the runway, and the 727 was gone, but its image remained. It occurred to me, at that moment, that the ability to fly sideways is the central theme in human happiness.

Those who live in happiness will tell you that it feels a lot like freedom. Personal freedom, like political freedom, consists of the power to make choices. That is, of course, a great power. People who come to experience happiness are amazed when one of its features turns out to be a feeling of great power.

People without choice-making power live in fear. Personally and politically, the remedy is to take back power. It requires courage, but people make that decision all the time, because otherwise life is miserable. They start to take back power that most of them lost, or gave away, as children. It is a wonderful moment in their lives.

What they are gathering is the power to take off. In aviation, the point on the runway where the airplane reaches takeoff power is called “rotation.” The pilot can lift, or rotate, the nose, and the airplane will fly.

Both airplanes and human spirits are safest on the ground, but on the ground, both are out of their element. People have associated flight with spirit since the first recorded human thought. Daedalus invented wings on which Icarus, his son, soared free of the Labyrinth. Daedalus was a prophet of happiness. Unfortunately, Icarus in his exhilaration flew too near the sun, which melted the wax that held his wings, and he fell to his death in the sea.

People reach rotation at their own speed and usually not without professional guidance. It may take years. One day they realize the power is there, and it is as if there is no alternative but to lift the nose and take off. Some people call it commitment, but it also feels very much like surrender. They surrender safety, surrender the ground. It is a feeling of liberation they have known only in their dreams.

The spirit, entering its element, instantly feels equilibrium take hold, and that is the moment at which people understand how great the power of happiness is. The wind will still blow you sideways sometimes, but steering into it, you can fly straight. It is as exhilarating as life should be, as long as you don’t fly too near the sun.

Labels: Archives, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments

If you never heard of Susan Boyle, haven’t heard her story yet, go here and enjoy yourself.

When you come back here, you will know what I mean when I say I am feeling like a 15-year-old sophomore in a Studebaker Lark, sitting at a red light waiting for Simon Cowell to pull alongside in his Corvette.

Somebody – at least two or three people, called “bookers” – knew Susan Boyle could sing like that even as she stood on the stage waiting to start. They must have heard her sing at the local audition, before they invited her to this bigger, televised round of “Britain’s Got Talent.” Of course they kept their mouths shut. On this show, 99 percent of the time, audience and judge reaction is an even bigger appeal to the television audience than the performances themselves. The whole Boyle appearance was geared to the two or three seconds after she started to sing, and the cameras cutting to the judges’ faces.

Not that the rest of us might not feel stunned, and uncomfortable, even if we went to YouTube knowing we were about to see something special. I have been trying to figure out how I feel about myself, grinning so broadly, and patronizingly, at a frumpy spinster putting the media culture in its place. In the end, I find that the world is simply full of these pleasant surprises. A version of the Susan Boyle experience happened to me, and a group of my closest friends, a little over three years ago. On that occasion, it was a beautiful woman taking the stage. She was my wife, at our wedding reception, and, out of the blue, she announced to our guests that she was going to sing to me.

And she did. She faced me, took my hands in hers, and started to sing. “Til There Was You.” Her voice was startlingly clear and beautiful, and a complete surprise. Her beauty and voice shocked me then and instruct me now. Robin Givhan, writing in The Washington Post today, said: “Boyle would not be mesmerizing if she were not an ugly duckling.” Givhan is wrong. My wife was mesmerizing, and she is a knockout. Susan Boyle did not have to be an ugly duckling to create the sensation she did. Most people would be no less shocked – maybe even more shocked – if Paris Hilton had taken the stage and opened her mouth, and we heard Susan Boyle’s voice come out.

The last couple of days, I have watched people coming and going. I have to suppress the urge to go up to each and say, “Can you sing?” I’ll bet some of them really can. I also bet that more than half of them, and more than half of the people I see today and tomorrow and the next day, have something they can really do well, even shockingly well, that I just can’t see. Likewise, as they look at me, they would never see a 15-year-old sophomore sitting in a Studebaker Lark at a stoplight, waiting for Simon Cowell to pull alongside in his Corvette. I am not making this up. I was thinking this when I was 15 years old. Not Simon Cowell, but some cool dude in a big Chevy hardtop would pull alongside at the light, goose his gas a couple of times at my ugly hamster-powered Lark, and get ready for the light to change.

Unbeknownst to him, under my tiny hood I had a dual carb 327, stroked and bored and waiting to blow this guy’s jaw off when the light turned green. That would have been such fun. In my thoughts, I think I’ll name the Lark the Boylemobile, in her honor.

Labels: Media, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments

In my brain exists a neural pathway, created at the instant I got a whiff of Texas privet. Since I was born in March, I would have been two months old. We had privet in the front yard, and its blossoms open in April and May. I imagine I was nestled in somebody's lap on the front porch when it happened. I wonder what I did. I would have hated mashed bananas by then; probably I took the scent of privet as something from the opposite pole of this strange new world, placed there by God as an apology for the banana. So I would have smiled.


I still smile. Every time. Same way. Here is something special about life. When I leaned to sniff these blossoms this morning, I was transported to a specific place in space and time, where it is morning in May, about 10 o'clock, 80 degrees, a hint of breeze. I go to that exact same space, every time. So far we have only two clusters, this and one other, that have bloomed, but the cluster on the left above will pop this week. They only bloom in late April and May, and the rest of the time it's a hedge. So these weeks are dear, and transporting.

Labels: Alta Mira, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments

I have a theory about photos and mirrors. I think people look better to themselves in mirrors than they do in photos.

But then Karen said she couldn’t see any difference. Photo or mirror, she looked the same to herself.

There goes the theory, I thought. Then again, maybe not. Karen is beautiful. She is beautiful in photos, and she is beautiful in the mirror.

I am not beautiful in photos. In fact in photos, with only a few professional exceptions, I think I look drab and jowly.

But in the mirror, I always look pretty darn good, at least after a shower and I have combed my hair. Why is that? I have a theory.

I think what I see in the mirror is the result of a long and selective process. I have been looking at myself in the mirror for almost 60 years. Never once in all that time have I looked in a mirror for any purpose other than making myself look better. I think that is true of practically all people. I have never heard of a person using a mirror to try to make himself or herself look worse. If they hit the street looking like Michael Jackson or Tammy Faye Bakker, that’s their business.

If I hit the street looking like Michael Grant, well, that’s the best I could do. That is why I can get so discouraged when I look at myself in photos.

The difference is, I think, the camera sees me the way the camera sees me, without interpretation. In the mirror, I see me the way I have learned to see me. I have spent almost 60 years looking for good things. At the same time, I have chosen not to see bad things. Your perspective starts to get shaped. I am positive I look better in the mirror than I do on the street. That is because I have saved every little good thing I ever saw about me in the mirror, and eventually a template has emerged. The template has been forced to submit to reality and revisions over time, but the basic geometry still is of a 20-year-old lean-jawed college sophomore looking for something to like. I am looking at a vain portrait of myself, assembled stroke by stroke. A dumb camera can’t do that.

There is something else, and for this I will never have an answer. I am the only human being on earth who knows what I look like in the mirror. No one else can see me that way. When I look at myself in a photo, my left eye is on the right. I am seeing myself as anyone else sees me, with my left on their right.

But when I look at myself in the mirror, my right eye is on the right. When I first discovered that, it was disorienting. I had to devise a test before I could be satisfied. I raised my hand on the side of the eye my right eye was looking at in the mirror. I raised that hand to my face. Then I looked at my hand. It was my right hand. There was the proof: In the mirror, I was looking at myself backward, and I am the only one who can do that.

It reminded me of the funny and interesting results achieved when a person cuts two identical photos of himself down the middle, then puts the right side with the right side, and the left with the left. It’s like looking at two different people.

In the mirror, is the same principle at work? I don’t know, and I have stopped thinking about it for the time being, because a new question arises. Millions of people look at Sean Connery and drool at his good looks. If he is like me, in his mirror he must look even better to himself. But he is the only one who can see it. What would it be like, to be Sean Connery, and be the only one in the world who knows what you really look like? I will ask Karen. She is beautiful, and maybe she will know.

Labels: Archives, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments

Tomorrow is a big day in the San Diego area. A Sonic is opening in Santee, which is an eastern suburb of San Diego.

Better an eastern suburb than El Centro, which before tomorrow has been the closest Sonic to us. There's another one in Anaheim, roughly 100 miles north. It reminds me of the days back in Abilene when we had to drive 100 miles for a six-pack of beer. Then 60. Then 40. Then, finally, two, when the famous hamlet of Impact was incorporated inside the city limits of Abilene, for the sole purpose of selling booze.

The Santee Sonic is like the Impact of San Diego, for those who are addicted to Sonic's line of drive-in goodies. It is a true drive-in, too, window service from carhops wearing roller skates, just like in "American Graffiti."

I am not particularly excited by Sonic's arrival, though there were years in the 1970s when I felt that way about Whataburger, which at that time sold the best hamburger on the planet. But it didn't sell them west of Texas, until outlets opened in Phoenix, then Yuma. That was tantalizingly close, but still over a range of low mountains, down to the desert, and then an hour's drive across the desert to Yuma. I never made the trip. I found a reasonable substitute, in a Burger King Whopper, no mayo, no catsup, extra mustard. But Whoppers are flame broiled, you know, instead of off the griddle, like the Whataburger, so my yearning was real.

Sonic is not a bad joint, for a drive-in. They are second- or third-generation, following on the cruiser joints that started it all in the late 1940s and early '50s, when boys, girls, cars, drivers licenses and hamburgers converged to satisfy the various appetites of late summer evenings when gas was 15 cents a gallon. The Abilene original was the Dairy Delight, then came Mack's, and much later a Sonic appeared, after – for me – cars and cruising and girls in bobbysox had dropped off the appetite list, gas was $1.50 a gallon, and the Sonic hamburger standing alone wasn't really worth it.

Steak fingers, though, are another matter. I will cruise this Santee Sonic at some point, and check out the menu, and if I find steak fingers on it, with cream gravy, fries, and Texas Toast, I will pull into a space and press the call button. If they still have call buttons. It won't be the same, if the drive-ins of today use some GPS technology to know you've pulled in. Bad enough imagining hip-hop booming from 400-watt speakers two cars over. I wonder if Whataburger execs will be watching the Santee Sonic experiment. Maybe, baby. Well, that'll be the day.

Labels: Food, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments

I see in today’s paper that a circle has closed, between Bill Cosby and me.

We both now have won Mark Twain awards. His award is a teense bigger than mine. His is presented by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Mine was presented (in 1990) by the western division of the Associated Press News Executives. But it is a Mark Twain award nevertheless. It weighs a ton, and there is a bust of Mark Twain right there on it.

Bill Cosby won his Mark Twain award for humor, and that is part of the circle closing. I once contributed to his humor, on an evening in 1961 when we both happened to be at the old hungry i, in San Francisco. He was starting his stand-up comedy career, and I was starting at Stanford University. I think my mother and my aunt were there, but I am not sure. I know for a fact that I was wearing slacks and black loafers and white socks.

Cosby spotted the white socks. I was sitting in, like, the second row. For a couple of minutes, he had great fun with those socks, giving the audience some laughs and me something to brag about to this very day. I am almost positive that he asked my mother – which is why I think she was there – if she had knitted me a reindeer sweater, to go with the white socks. But I may be mixing memories, which I am getting better at all the time. I do know that early in his career Cosby was very big on reindeer sweaters.

I got into the humor business myself, eventually. You could even say I was in the humor business at the time. Later, as a newspaper columnist making speeches, I would tell the audiences that I began at Stanford as a pre-med major. Then I flunked freshman chemistry. Then I flunked it again. “I didn’t leave a mark on it, and it didn’t leave a mark on me,” I said. They laughed like crazy.

So as a pre-med major, I made a good student of English, which was the first step toward a newspaper career during which I wrote a humor column for many years. I am trying to write humor right now. I try to write humor all the time. But my Mark Twain award was not for humor. It was for a long feature story I wrote in 1989 about, at age 46, meeting my father for the first time. That was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and I am glad the Associated Press News Executives thought I did it justice.

Bill Cosby, in the newspaper piece today, said Mark Twain inspired him, and he cited several of his favorite Twain pieces, one of which – “How to Cure a Cold” – I would also select. Cosby did not mention my two favorites, which are a special telling of “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” translated into French and then back into English by Twain, and “A Hundred and Ten Tin Whistles,” an account of an evening spent by Twain at the home of Brigham Young. Mark Twain was one funny writer, and he stayed on top of the events, politicians and highly placed low-lifes of his day. I can’t bring myself to imagine how good he might have been as a blogger in 2008-09.

Cosby will receive his Mark Twain award on Oct. 26, at the Kennedy Center, before a live audience. I should try to wangle a second-row ticket, and wear white socks, and see if he remembers.

Labels: Heroes, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments

When I started writing a column for The San Diego Union in 1978, my “hole” was 30 column-inches. When I wrote my last column in 1992, my hole had shrunk to 16 column-inches, and the paper’s pages themselves had shrunk as costs rose and revenues flattened. I took note of that in my goodbye column, saying newspapers were “trimming their newsprint sails, in an effort to stay afloat.”

The San Diego papers THEMSELVES had shrunk. In 1992, Helen Copley killed The Evening Tribune. They called it a “merger” of the Trib and the Union, but it was a mercy killing of an evening paper whose circulation had dipped below 100,000. Remember the first law of media: the media is a business. If the media doesn’t make money, it will go out of business.

So the newspaper media in San Diego was already in trouble in 1992, and that was BEFORE the Internet roared in from space and blew everything up.

It has been at least 10 years since, going out to get the paper one morning, I realized I was going out to pick up a dinosaur. Now the dinosaurs are actually toppling. Yesterday the Union was sold to a type of business called a “private equity firm.” I doubt if any of its principals can cite the First Amendment. The first analysis I read suggested that not the newspaper, but the land it sits on – 13 acres in Mission Valley, across the San Diego River from the Fashion Valley Mall – was the key factor in the sale. I can close my eyes and see a hotel there now. Hell, I don’t even have to close my eyes.

Surveys insist that Americans don’t care about newspapers much anymore, and would not miss them. The San Diegans I have encountered today contradict the statistics. My dentist’s first question to me was, “What will happen to the Union?” Ditto his dental hygienist, who went on for five minutes in support of newspapers as I waited there with my mouth open.

This, I believe, is because when push comes to shove, people back their newspapers, because the newspaper is the repository of a community’s civic, social and institutional memory. People can reconnect to that San Diego memory, going back 81 years, only by going into the newspaper’s files. Only in one place is it all in one place. To lose that would be unthinkable.

If people feel that way, how do you think newspaper people feel? Many of our files are now accessible online. I was one tiny player in the history of the Copley Press in San Diego, but a search for my files from 1983 to 1992 yields 1,384 documents. Multiply that by thousands, and there starts to appear above the building in Mission Valley a spectral congregation of journalists shaking hands and patting backs for a community memory well, if sometimes imperfectly, preserved. No one else could have done it.

Paper was our medium, on which we moved history from the city through the presses and into the streets. That will change, and it will not be easy. I am totally addicted to picking up a newspaper and sitting down with it. But paper is only a medium. Journalism is the message. It will flow on a new river. I just got a Kindle for my birthday, and it feels clumsy and awkward and restrictive, but it also looks like the journalism medium of the near future. It’s journalism, not newspapers, that communities must keep alive.

Labels: Media, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments

Labels: Media, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments

I will admit, I was more excited than the average Abilenian when the city almost two years ago announced plans to “brand” itself, like New York is branded “The Big Apple” and Dallas is “Big D,” the better to draw business and tourism to the city from all points of the globe. Abilene leaders were very excited, willing to commit $107,000 through its “Abilene Branding Partnership” to pay for the brand’s development. I could see the day when my hometown would display its brand in “Conde Nast Traveler,” “Forbes,” and travel sections in The New York Times and International Herald Tribune.

As I say, I was more excited than most. I counted a dozen or so letters to the editor in response to the branding news, most against paying any money to any advertising outfit to create a tomfool brand the city didn’t need. In fact my reaction ran in the opposite direction. I decided to BECOME one of those outfits and was ready to offer the partnership (at a discount) my recommendation for the brand: “Abilene, Texas Style.” But it didn’t work out. You can read all about that in previous blogs on the issue.

A contract was let to some tomfool Tennessee company to develop the brand, and after a year or so it was revealed at a civic gathering at the historic Paramount Theater on Cypress St. downtown. The brand: “Abilene Frontiering.” It was godawful. The letters count went way up. After a few days, the hubbub died down. Since then, things have been pretty quiet. A couple of weeks ago, I started to wonder about it. I was reasonably comfortable that “Abilene Frontiering” was not going to pop up in The Times travel section, so somebody I know wouldn’t be asking me, “You’re from Abilene, aren’t you?” and starting a “frontiering” cross-examination.

But it seemed reasonable that any civic group wanting a brand bad enough to pay $107,000 for “Abilene Frontiering” would find a way to move forward. This week, a new story broke. The brand was farmed out to a local ad agency, that came back with a spare design that shows the word “Abilene” with a blue shooting star across the top. It was a definite improvement over the “Frontiering” logo that was littered with colored stars that looked for all the world like the stars we got on good spelling papers in school.

The story said this new design was intended only for directional signage within the city, to help find visitors where they were going. I was disappointed. From showing visitors the way from Europe and Asia to Abilene, the brand had shrunk to showing visitors the way from South First and Sayles to Shotwell Stadium. The mayor was beside himself. “I think this is going to change the face of the community,” he said. His being the mayor, I take this to mean the city is officially out from underneath “Frontiering,” which couldn’t help but make any community feel better about itself.

Maybe he is right, and that those of us with feeling for Abilene should be satisfied. There is no doubt in my private mind that Abilene is a city that deserves branding, and could rise to it, if it were a good one. But it may be a thing best left unencouraged, in the sense of being careful what you wish for from a project judged satisfactory when it helps people find their way from one side of the city to the other. “At least now we’ve got a logo that can be used for some time that really embodies that Abilene is a special place out there,” said one official. A city name, a blue star, gangbusters.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments

Bob Cluck and I lost a friend yesterday. Paul Harvey, the radio personality, died.

Mr. Harvey did not know that he was our friend, but he was, since the evening in spring of 1961 when he was the featured speaker at the Abilene High "Top 50" banquet. In fact he provided unique content to the friendship that Bob and I had begun in 1955, in seventh grade. We found great humor in insulting each other, gently. The trick then became always having something handy to insult each other about.

These weren't shouted insults, declared out loud, but almost an inside joke. Others might get our humor, but more by inference than intent. Both of us had – still have – low thresholds of mirth, but the mirth was low-key. I think our elders had a lot to do with that. My grandmother was an icon of taciturnity, and her humor was almost the soldier's humor, crafted and honed in the battles of the Great Depression, when she was a widow raising six kids. My uncle Clyde must have studied her closely. Yesterday in a blog, I asked you to look at my blog photo, and note the smile. Clyde smiled exactly like that. But not often. When he did, it was for him the equivalent of jumping up and down on the coffee table.

When Bob and I got to the point where we were going to each other's houses, I found a kindred spirit in his mom, Katherine. She was always composed, never laughed out loud, as most people laugh out loud. When she was really tickled, she would sort of chortle in place, and a look would come into her eyes as if to say forgive me for this outburst. She looked like she could have studied under Jack Benny, or Bob Hope. We formed a bond. I know she was usually glad to see me. I hardly ever walked in the Clucks' door on Grand Ave. that she hadn't just made a lemon icebox pie.

Charlie, Bob's dad, was an insurance executive and by necessity more emotive. Still, he was of a reserved turn of mind. One day, fooling around, Bob and I knocked a hole in the sheetrock of their living room wall. Well, actually, I was the one. I pushed Bob backward harder than I meant to. I thought that was it, for me, in the Cluck household, but Katherine and Charlie, inspecting the hole, found humor in it, as did Bob, heaven knows, who had something he could use on me forever.

When Mr. Harvey came to town in 1961, Bob and I were seniors at Abilene High. I was one of the top 50 graduates, gradewise, and was invited. Bob was not. He has never let me off the hook. Nor I, him. I took to telling people that I taught Bob everything he knows. Bob took to telling people that he knew Mike Grant, who was invited to the banquet and met Paul Harvey. Bob is a greeter at the First Baptist Church in Abilene and I would like to know how many people he told this morning that he knows Mike Grant, arguing, seriously, as a listener might begin to believe, why they don't have a Mike Grant Day in Abilene.

That is Paul Harvey's lifelong contribution to the friendship of just two people in the world he knew. I mourn his loss particularly for that.

Labels: Friends, Heroes, People, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments

I am fortunate to have been battling a cold for the past two – maybe three, now – weeks, because it has focused my attention.

If I had felt fine, I might have missed the story in the media about research advances that could result in curing – or preventing – the common cold. Researchers now have a complete genome map for the rhinovirus that causes a cold. They believe there might be a way to neutralize the genetic strategy the rhinovirus uses to infect cells in the lining of the human nose, where the virus attacks.

I can't see the umptillion-dollar cold remedy industry throwing its entire weight behind this research, but it is immediately useful to me to know that a cold starts in the lining of the nose. In the story, a physician says that while we are waiting for the rhinovirus genome research to go forward, the only real treatment for a common cold is to wash out the nasal passages, drink warm drinks, and get plenty of rest. I know how to drink warm drinks and rest, but I am not up on washing out the nasal passages. And the story offered no guidance.

It did make me think of a new commercial I have seen for Zicam, a cold remedy in which an actress holds a Zicam-loaded cotton swab up to her nostril, not entering it into the void, but just touching it to the edge of the nostril, leaving no confusion about what happens next. A trusted friend then, last week, recommended Zicam, but the store was out. Apparently a lot of people read the same story and saw the same commercial.

We did get a version of Zicam that you spray into the mouth. I can't say if it has worked or not. One day my cold seems to be gone, the next day it is back. Today it is back. I should say the THREAT of it is back. I am not so much battling a cold as I am battling coming down with a cold. Battle is probably the wrong word. Washing out the nasal passages does not conjure a battle image, nor does suggestively touching a nostril with a cotton swab, lest we wretch into our Cheerios. Battle is not a strategy of the remedy industry, which wants a cold to last as long as it can.

And, of course, then, I remember my grandmother Susie. Susie DID battle colds. As a young girl in 1890s Alabama, she learned that a woman's medical mission was to keep the men in the fields. I am awed to having had a direct living link to someone who knew about life in 1890s Alabama, and to be only one more living link away from someone who lived during the Civil War, and how far medicine has come in less than three full human lifetimes.

Actually, I never learned how Susie may have battled colds in the 1890s. From other treatments she practiced, I expect her original cold treatment may have involved a black, tarry substance she swore by. By the time I was born, the remedy community had introduced Vicks Salve, which was brutal enough for her cold treatment standards and had the advantage of avoiding injurious violent resistance by the victim.

Still, it was a battle image: me against her, and her and Vicks against this cold that was keeping this six-year-old man out of the first-grade fields. She layered it on my chest and on top of that placed a cuptowel that she had pre-heated to 500 degrees in the oven. She pulled the covers up under my chin, got a teaspoon, heaped it with Vicks, handed it to me and told me to swallow it.

That is the kind of battle image I almost want to deploy against this cat-and-mouse cold. Almost, but not quite.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments

First of all, you can't put peaches, bing cherries, Trader Joe's whole grain artisanal loaf, butter, cinnamon, and peach schnapps together and somehow manage to screw it up.

At the same time, some original recipes take a little work. In my second attempt at Cobbler Jubilee, for example, I plan to drain the heavy syrup off the bing cherries. This first version came out too wet.

Here's how it went. I got a Rosemary Sourdough loaf and the whole grain loaf at Trader Joe's. I cut the bottom crust off the sourdough and cubed enough to pack into a single layer in the bottom of a lightly buttered three-quart Corningware casserole. As you recall, the goal was to create a peach cobbler with a dumpling-like bottom crust. Having achieved that by baking Dinty Moore Beef Stew on top of take-home sourdough from the Fish Market, I reasoned the same result might be possible with peaches.

I mixed together a 29-ounce can of sliced cling peaches in heavy syrup and a 13-ounce can of bing cherries in heavy syrup (this is the syrup I will omit next time). I added a teaspoon of cinnamon and a couple tablespoons of peach schnapps. My original vision called for Grand Marnier, until I saw the price of Grand Marnier. From the liquor department I walked to the meat cases and saw for the price of one bottle of Grand Marnier, I could buy 12 pounds of hamburger. I knew we had triple sec at home and decided that would work. Then I the liquor cabinet, behind the triple sec, I spotted a bottle of peach schnapps. I have no idea how we came into possession of a bottle peach schnapps, but for a Cobbler Jubilee experiment it was serendipitous, and free.

I poured the fruit mixture into the casserole, instantly wondering if I should have put in a second layer of sourdough. There was a reason, incidentally, for using rosemary sourdough; same reason I added the bing cherries. It would give the cobbler a Tuscan influence. Then when a guest said the cherries gave it a Tuscan influence, I could nod and refer to, also, a hint of rosemary. Guests might also surmise that the name, "Cobbler Jubilee" derived from the bing cherries, which star in the classic dessert, Cherries Jubilee.

The whole grain loaf was dense, slightly sweet, and with a nuttiness provided by the whole grains. I cubed enough to cover the top generously, swirled the cubes in melted butter, and spread them over the top, pressing them down gently into the fruit. I baked it at 350 for 45 minutes.

It smelled great, but it came out too wet. Even after cooling, the bottom crust was soggy, and there was some standing juice. I like my cereal soggy, but not my bottom crust, which had been saturated beyond the desired dumplingness. I tasted the crust while it was still warm, and it was definitely soggy. Our friend Janie, who is a fellow Southerner, dropped in just at that time, and I sent some home with her to share with Roland. That was day before yesterday, and I have not heard from them, so it's not likely they thought it was the best thing they had ever eaten.

I refrigerated it, and yesterday morning heated up a bowlful for breakfast. Not bad. Less syrup next time, and I am toying with the idea of the whole grain on both the top and bottom.

Labels: Cooking, Food, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments

I am hearing from people who think I am the Michael Grant who wrote “Gone,” a popular novel published last summer. Actually I am not that Michael Grant, or the Michael Grant who is a deceased English scholar, a New York crime writer, a heavyweight boxer, a 12th-century baron, a character in the “Manhunt” video game, an Arizona television personality, a Washington Redskins cornerback, or a hockey player.

I do pop up third, among 381,000 results, if you Google “Michael Grant.” That is mainly because I have posted a mess of blogs in the last four years, and every blog I write, when it encounters a search spider in the byways and barrooms of the Web, influences that spider to identify with me. I am the Michael Grant whose Google results tagline reads, “Life is infinitely interesting, as long as you are interested in life.” (Hint to the other 380,997 MGs out there: if you want to move up on the list, write a blog.)

I am the Michael Grant who, among other works, wrote “Michael Grant’s Cookbook.”
In the cookbook is the recipe for peach cobbler that I was blogging about recently. I don’t care which other MG you talk to, none of them will know as much about bottom crust as I do, even though it is only theoretical knowledge. I write about it very warmly, in the cookbook, but I never can get it to come out right, which is to say like a dumpling. Jessie, on the other hand, brought over peach cobbler for dinner the other night. She said she made it from my recipe, and it had a terrific, doughy, bottom crust. Can you see the unfairness here? I heated up the last of it for breakfast yesterday morning, poured a little half-and-half over, and it was like I was back at my grandmother’s table again.

I promised the visitors who have made me No. 3 on the Google returns an experiment with peach cobbler that uses high-quality sourdough to achieve the desirable dumplingness on the bottom. I discovered by accident that Dinty Moore Beef Stew poured over inch-thick slices of sourdough in Corningware and then baked at 325 for 30 minutes produces a terrific dumpling effect. It should work with peach cobbler, but I need to try it first. I haven’t yet, because we have all been glued to the bread-and-water news about the economy. My old cookbook was based on recipes my grandmother used to “stretch things” during and after the Great Depression; wading through the present doom and gloom, it occurs to me to revise the book and publish it as “Stimulus Cooking.”

Of course a recipe, even in experimental form, is only a starting place. Lately I have developed a vision of sourdough on the bottom, a mix of syrupy peaches and bing cherries with a dollop of Grand Marnier inside, and on the top, cubed whole wheat artisan bread I get at Trader Joe’s, swirled in butter, and the whole thing baked at 350 for 25 minutes. I would call it Cobbler Jubilee. Then I might become in the public consciousness “the Michael Grant who invented Cobbler Jubilee.” Or maybe not. I swear, however, I am going to try it this weekend, which is supposed to be rainy and cozy.

Labels: Cooking, Food, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments

I can’t bitch about the weather this week. In my last post, Saturday morning, the weather dreamers had forecast rain and possible thunderstorms. All the thunderstorms in Southern California are “isolated,” so you have to be near that isolation to notice any effect. At noon on Saturday an isolated thunderstorm approached from the southwest and found our house. We had rain, lightning, thunder and hail. I turned the rocker around toward the windows and watched it for almost an hour.

It was not a thunderstorm in the biblical sense. Coincidentally, on Saturday, both my children, Jessie and Tyler, were in San Diego, not at our house, but close enough (Jamul) to share this storm and possibly comment on it. When they were little, we were together on a visit to Abilene when they encountered, and remember, the kind of thunderstorm that I admire. It was summertime, a perfectly still day with stunning humidity. They were at my grandmother’s house, and I was watching my uncle play in a golf tournament.

At about 2:30, north of us, thunderheads shot into the sky as if launched from the earth. By 3, the base of those clouds was black and reached to the ground. I judged I had maybe 15 minutes to get home before it hit. I was a couple of minutes late. Our block was a black box shaking with thunder, lightning, rain and wind when I piled through the screen door onto the porch. I yelled to Jessie and Tyler to come out to the porch and watch. But they were inside, on the floor behind the couch. Trying to crawl UNDER the couch.

By comparison, the storm on Saturday was a polite cough. But still it set a record for me as a Californian. Never in 35 years’ residency here had I been in a storm that lasted an hour. The lightning, all cloud-to-cloud, stayed directly overhead and gave instant thunder. It HAILED. Nothing you would report to the paper. “BB-sized hail pummels La Mesa residence.” The pellets were tiny and jumped in a darting fashion, like ice fleas, as they hit the ground. It was hail, all the same. I have pictures, and I will post them when I get a minute. I am writing this from my office at school.

Jessie and Tyler were here on a sad weekend, after the death of their stepfather. He was a builder, and loved the outdoors, and the avocado groves he brought to life on the slopes below their house. I hope the storm brought significance to his family and their memories and stories of him. I know it was ironic that Jessie and Tyler should be close, all these years after that Abilene afternoon, at the time a storm set a record for me in San Diego.

Labels: Alta Mira, Roots, Sky

Posted by Michael Grant at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments

I have written before – more than once – of my experience on board an airplane that I believed was about to crash. Now comes information that compels me to visit it again, because it is new evidence of an odd thing that happened to me on that airplane.

The new information, now finding its way onto the blogs, is an account by Susan O’Donnell of her experience as a passenger on board U.S. Airways 1549, that ditched in the Hudson River on Jan. 15 after hitting birds on takeoff. But O’Donnell was no ordinary passenger. She is an American Airlines 767 pilot, based in New York, who, after completing her flight sequence, was hitching a ride – they call it “jump-seating” – on 1549 on her way home to South Carolina.

Her account is fascinating in its detail, which is detail only a pilot could provide. She made the presentation to the Allied Pilots Association, which is the pilots’ union for American Airlines, but I read it at a site called PlaneTalking. Here is the excerpt that applies to my experience. It begins shortly after O’Donnell felt thumps shake the aircraft, followed by “a bit of smoke and the stench of burning bird.”

She said: “The passengers were concerned but calm. I couldn't see any part of the aircraft out the window from my aisle seat. Although I didn't hear much that sounded encouraging from the engines, I expected we would have at least partial thrust with which to limp back to LGA. We rolled out of the turn, and I could tell we were not maintaining altitude. Then we heard the PA: ‘This is the Captain. Brace for impact.’

“Obviously we weren't returning to LGA, and I could see enough out the window to realize we'd be landing in the river. The flight attendants began shouting their ‘brace’ litanies and kept it up until touchdown. The descent seemed very controlled, and the sink rate reasonably low. I believed the impact would be violent but survivable, although I did consider the alternative. The passengers remained calm and almost completely quiet. As we approached the water, I braced by folding my arms against the seat back in front of me, then putting my head against my arms. There was a brief hard jolt, a rapid decel and we were stopped . . . .”

Now to go my experience of Nov. 28, 1958, over Big Spring, Texas. I was a member of the Abilene High School football team, flying to El Paso for a playoff game. We were on two planes, both chartered twin-engine DC-3s with 27 seats. About an hour out, without any sense of anything happening, or of time passing, I suddenly found myself glued, spread-eagled, to the ceiling of the aircraft. I could not move my arms or legs or even close my eyes, though I tried to. Directly below me was a window of the aircraft, and below that was the brown West Texas ground. I did not feel I was falling toward it, but that it was rising to meet me. My life passed before my eyes; I was only 15, so there wasn’t much on the reel, but I saw it all.

Again, without any sense of something happening or of time passing, I found myself on the floor of the aircraft. Another player was across me, and other materials, including a long, square stick, like a measuring stick, white with red and black markings. Since I was a nut for airplanes, I knew that this stick was used at the airport to dip into wing tanks to determine fuel levels. For a quick, reflexive second, I thought: this stick is supposed to be outside of the airplane. If it is, then I must be too, which means I must be dead.

But I wasn’t. We picked ourselves up and listened as our pilot, Charles L. Kageler, came on the intercom to explain we had almost been hit by a military jet trainer, taking off from Webb AFB outside Big Spring. Later he told reporters that to avoid the collision, he cut all power to both engines, stood the DC-3 on its left wingtip, and dropped like a rock for 1,000 feet. That was the g-force that glued me to the ceiling. Kageler also said he estimated the jet missed us by 25 feet.

We flew on to El Paso, played the game the next day, won, 45-0, and flew back without incident. But all on board that DC-3 had become members of a club. As a member, I knew three things: one, your life passes before your eyes; two, the ground comes up to get you; and three, there was no panic on that airplane at any time, no yells or screams, only silence throughout and a strange, complete calm.

Which is what O’Donnell described among the passengers on Flight 1549. After my 1958 experience, I formed the conviction that the brain, being a logical instrument, wants to place patterns on all the data it receives, but the data was coming too fast on Nov. 28, 1958, and Jan. 15. And probably on most of the other aircraft, that crash and kill people, which is why I am so interested in new evidence of my old conviction. It means all those people did not suffer the indignity of terror in those last seconds, and that has always been important to me.

Labels: Heroes, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments

In the summer of 1972, as I was working in downtown San Diego, I suddenly sneezed sharply. After the sneeze, I had a weird physical sensation, like a bucket of water had been dropped over my head but the water stayed in the bucket, around my head.

That feeling went away after a couple of minutes, thank God. I did not have to spend the next 40 years adjusting to life with a full bucket of water over my head. But when the bucket went away, it left something behind. There was a ringing in my left ear. As I sit here writing this, the ringing sounds the same as it did in the summer of 1972. Same volume, same tone, a high pitch like you could hear on the radio when you turned the dial a certain way, when radios had dials.

I don't know if I am hearing this sound, or transmitting it. Neither does medical science, which calls the sound "tinnitus," from the Latin tinnere, to ring. Webster's online defines it as "a sensation of noise (as a ringing or roaring) that is caused by a bodily condition (as a disturbance of the auditory nerve or wax in the ear) and typically is of the subjective form which can only be heard by the one affected." I am awfully happy, in terms of having found women who would marry me, that I am afflicted by the subjective form, and not the objective, which other people, horror of horrors, can hear. Can you imagine that, and snoring, too?

The Mayo Clinic offers more information than I ever thought or hoped I would find on the subject and none of it relates to my circumstance, which is sneeze-induced tinnitus. I had a ruptured eardrum, and was present at the birth of rock and roll, and was in the artillery, and had my share of ear wax, but this was all before 1972. My own suspicion is that the sneeze jiggled my stirrup off the anvil (you remember, the ear bones we learned, for some reason, in school) just enough to cause a high-pitched rattle, like a loose muffler on a car going near the speed of light. Are you listening, Einstein?

Does it bother me? I don't know. It has been almost 36 years since the sneeze, and I have forgotten what silence, auditory solitude, the breathing of angels, must sound like. I sleep fine, I use the left ear to listen to people on the telephone, I can hear a hotdog hit the grill from half a mile, so I guess I have gotten used to living with it. It comes up because I wrote a column about it years ago, and a reader, Pam, a fellow sufferer, remembered it and sent me an email wondering what I knew now. I am flattered she asked me, instead of the Mayo Clinic, but I can't give her much more information than they can.

She said hers had gotten worse, and she asked about my concentration for writing or reading. I have no problems there. My problem with reading concentration is the racket my imagination makes as I try to focus on sentences. Pam said she now has new "sounds" in her ears, two or more variations on the original high-pitched sound. She said she had trouble hearing conversations, on TV and in person. Pam, please understand the spirit in which I say this, but regarding TV, you aren't missing much.

"I was hoping to be selected for a tinnitus research project, but was denied for the current study," she said. "I did not meet their requirements since my 'ringing' changes in volume."

So tinnitus elitism rears its ugly head. Pam said she had joined a tinnitus support group. Anyone out there with real experience, for her and the group?

Labels: Geezerville, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 5:38 PM | Permalink | Comments

You can research the reason why Southerners eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day for good luck, and you can find some engaging, interesting symbolism, such as, "the peas swell when they are cooking, just as your luck will swell in the New Year."

As a Southerner, I wouldn't doubt that for a minute, even if it does not exactly make my eyes mist over. But if that is a little more symbolism than you can chew, and you prefer a more realistic connection between the solicitation and the result, listen to this, which is a true statement: When black-eyes acquired their New Year's Day reputation for luck, it was because the Southern people had grown their own black-eyes, in the warm gardens and fields of summer, and then "put them up," or what city folks call "canning," in quart-sized Mason jars.

On New Year's Day, they opened a couple of these jars, heated up the black-eyes, put them on the table, took a mouthful, and in that instant knew without doubt that in the whole year to come they could not possibly do better, or feel even half as good as they did at that moment, even if a plane flew over and dropped a million dollars on the porch. A year is a long time, and if you want luck throughout, you need to aim high on Day One. And that's where the tradition came from. People who have had put-up black-eyes realize this.

Having put-up black-eyes in the urban age is pretty much a case of knowing the right people. Before his death, Cliff Sims and I were high school classmates and then lifelong pals, and when we were pals, he married Carolyn Meredith, whose parents were farmers near Roscoe, Texas. When I would see Cliff and Carolyn, she would load me up with all the quarts I could talk her out of to take back to California. Believe me, those peas were a standard most of us will never realize on New Year's Day.

So we do the next-best thing. What follows is a recipe that works with either fresh or dried black-eyes. The tradition is popular enough to cause Southern California grocers to stock fresh black-eyes in the week before New Year's, and they come out fine, but I think dried are even better. They taste more like country.

1 lb. dried black-eyes
8 slices bacon, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
salt and pepper

Rinse the black-eyes and soak 4 hours in plenty of water to cover.
In a bean pot or dutch oven, put the bacon with water barely to cover. Over medium-high heat, let the water reduce and boil away just until the bacon starts to fry.
Stir in the onion, liberally season with salt and pepper, and cook until softened. During this time, a dark sheen will start to form on the bottom of the pot. This sheen is flavor gold. You actually are scorching things a little. But not too much. When the sheen is a nice mahogany, pour in half a cup of black coffee, or water. Turn heat to medium-low and scrape the bottom of the pot to help the sheen dissolve into the liquid. In high-tone places, this is called "deglazing the pot."
Drain the black-eyes and pour into the pot (If you use fresh, just rinse and dump them in the pot) with just enough water to reach the top of the peas. Turn heat to low, cover, and simmer until the black-eyes are soft, but not mushy. Start checking at an hour.

On New Year's we are going to have our black-eyes with roasted country-style pork ribs, drunken tomatoes, and good bread. Black-eyes freeze nicely, so don't be shy about making a lot. With luck, you can always have too little, but you can never have too much.

Labels: Cooking, Food, Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments

When his eyes fell on Slim Willet's name in my Thanksgiving blog, my old (approaching ancient) Abilene pal Ray Finfer more or less immediately posted a comment saying: "Slim Willet has a CD?"

Well, yes, he does, but that is getting ahead of the story. The CD I was listening to on Thanksgiving morning was loaned to me by another native Abilenian, Jon Standefer, who got it from a thoughtful Texas friend of his. It was home-burned, a compilation, and I have to say I was disappointed when there were like only five cuts on it. One of them, "Toolpusher from Snyder," though, is an all-time favorite and naturally left me wanting more. But there was only "Hadacol Corners," and then "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes," which of course hit the national charts in 1952 when it was covered by the crooner Perry Como.

I actually thought "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes" was inferior, compared to the primary Willet genre, which were songs about the oilpatch. They were vigorously regional (if you didn't know what a stem and a rotary table were, it was no use listening to Slim Willet) and never would make the charts, but you couldn't beat 'em for unique.

So when I saw Ray's comment, I thought, no, Slim Willet doesn't have a CD. But for a couple of years now, every time I say or think the word, "doesn't," I immediately think of Google. So it was more or less automatic that my eyes, reading Ray's comment, told my fingers to Google Slim Willet. There were 3,360 results. One of them is artistdirect.com and, yes, they do have a Slim Willet CD, 30 cuts in all, including all the oilpatch songs "mastered from original vinyl," and available on special order for $16.99. I hope their site doesn't crash in the rush, which is why I'm going to wait awhile to order.

I'm in no hurry. See, I don't have a Slim Willet CD, but I do have the original LP, "Oil Patch Songs," with Slim in oilpatch duds and hard hat, looking down at the camera from the rig floor. I haven't played it in years because I haven't had anything to play it on. The only people with turntables anymore are still churning their own butter. My plan is to order the CD and frame the LP and hang it in the hallway and every time I pass it think about Ray and the boys eating their hearts out.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments

The New York Times had a reporter in Abilene for at least a couple of days last week, writing a story about a couple of Abilene Christian University football players.

It was a terrific opportunity for the city to make the sort of impression envisioned by the Abilene Branding Partnership. But the opportunity went pffft. The reporter, Thayer Evans, came into town and left again, then wrote not one, but two stories, one of them very long, that appeared in last Saturday's Times. Nowhere in either story is there any evidence that Abilene, the kind of city it is, or that it might aspire to be, entered Evans' consciousness, though in both stories there was a natural opening, if the right brand had existed.

Of course there are no guarantees. Even an effective brand couldn't have done anything more than give Abilene its best chance to enter Evans' thinking, as he worked on his stories. As it stood, the city had no chance at all, and free publicity for Abilene in The New York Times, publicity with tangible value, was lost.

I am looking at this loss through a couple of lenses. One, I have been writing newspaper stories for almost four decades, and with every story I was always looking for a good angle, which is one that attracts readers because it provides more than information. If you want an example of the master of the good angle, look at the way Calvin Trillin wrote his story in The New Yorker about Snow's Barbecue, Texas Monthly's choice as the state's No. 1 barbecue joint. The story is one good angle after another, and to me, reading the story was almost as good as eating the barbecue.

The second lens is the brand that I think would be right for Abilene: "Abilene, Texas Style." I have been blogging about that for more than a year, most recently, coincidentally, in the last couple of weeks as the Branding Partnership went public with its brand choice, "Abilene Frontiering," which did not receive a warm response.

Then I opened up Saturday's Times and there were two stories with an Abilene dateline, complete with a photo of Shotwell Stadium, and neither story said a thing about Abilene, except to refer to Abilene Christian University as "an unlikely place on the rolling plains of West Texas," which doesn’t exactly set the imagination ringing like the bells of Notre Dame. There was good stuff Thayer Evans could have said about Abilene, which would have been applicable to the stories he was writing. He just didn't have a trigger. The brand is the trigger.

I was reading the stories a second time when I wondered if I – playing Evans now – might have found something useful to the story in discovering, in signage or in media or on restaurant book matches, that Abilene marketed itself as "Abilene, Texas Style." Even Evans would have heard of Texas Style, which is an old, familiar, even storied, brand: big, best, west, excess, strong, courage, honest, the Alamo, "Giant," oil, cattle, wide open spaces, lone stars, stars at night, friendly, warm, pious, tough, hard-working people as good as their word, deep in the heart of Texas.

Abilene, Texas Style, would be new to him, but he has seen western movies set in Texas towns like Abilene, with wide streets and stores and hotels and barber shops and cafes and saloons and churches and rodeos and stock shows and piety and power and characters and bankers and leaders and plain citizens always going about their business in the background and a sheriff and scalawags and renegades and all of them local representatives of their native Texas Style and proud of the local spin they put on it in a demanding country under a vast West Texas sky.

I don't see how Evans could use any of that in his stories, but the point is, the brand, "Abilene, Texas Style," engaged his thinking. And he keeps thinking. Is there something about Abilene, Texas Style, that gives me an angle? Then he remembers: giving people a second chance always happens in the westerns. And that's what Evans' stories were about: two football players getting a second chance, not in an unlikely place with rolling plains, but in a town that markets itself as doing things Abilene, Texas Style. And that is all he has to say, for the town and its brand to get the publicity. Not a bad angle.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments

It is not a bad idea, whenever a person encounters annoying language, to look in Strunk and White’s timeless writer’s booklet, “The Elements of Style,” for clues why the annoyance occurred. It becomes a very good idea when the annoying language threatens to become official and influence thought without challenge.

That prospect of thought without challenge is what bothers me so about “Abilene Frontiering,” the words proposed to become a commercial “brand” to advertise my hometown.

No way to know how “Elements of Style” co-author E.B. White, the famed 20th-century essayist and author of “Charlotte’s Web,” might react to the word “frontiering.” That opportunity is lost, but in matters of words not to use, White has been helpful to me before. So again I go to “Elements.”

White begins the book’s Chapter Five, “An Approach to Style,” with a shot directly to the heart of the matter.

“Up to this point,” he begins, “the book has been concerned with what is correct, or acceptable, in the use of English. In this final chapter, we approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing. Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind?”

Such style, White says, is “an increment in writing. When we speak of Fitzgerald’s style, we don’t mean his command of the relative pronoun, we mean the sound his words make on paper.”

Since high school, I have taken the sound that words make on paper to be the goal of selecting the right words to say what I mean. Sound implies effect, some action that relates the word to what is actually happening on the ground. White states it this way: “Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such separate entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable.” The beginner seeking style, White says, “should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style – all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.”

I stand the style of “frontiering” against this counsel, and it fails the test. It fails by itself, as a word untouched by style, which is simply annoying. Annoyance turns to alarm when officials propose to use such a word to influence thought about Abilene. The city may lack the style of Paris or Rome, or even San Antonio, but “frontiering” insults the considerable style that Abilene does have. What would be the words that make the right sound on paper for Abilene? Look for a combination that explodes in the mind, or at least ignites, and spreads across the face in a smile, or a glow of pride, Abilene, Texas style.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments

The branding saga in Abilene, Texas, my hometown, has entered a remarkable new phase. For background, I will now re-post two blogs first posted in the summer of 2007, at the time the saga began.

The first blog, posted July 26, 2007:

My hometown, Abilene, Texas, is seeking to establish itself as a brand, to better compete in the state, national, and international, public consciousness for the purpose of attracting business and tourism.

A "brand" is a term, phrase, or symbol that makes a product or service unique in the public consciousness ("Xerox," "Google," "Neiman's"). Examples of branded cities are "The Big Apple," "Big D," "Cowtown," "Vegas," and "L.A." Abilene had an original brand, "The Key City of West Texas," and now uses "The Friendly Frontier." The first has lost its scope, and the second is restrictive and not memorable. "Abilene" is the title of a famous song by George Hamilton IV, which rightly describes Abilene as pretty, but lies about the women there, and does not provide any other information.

Abilene has proven attributes which include location, seasons, civic pride and motivation, existing attractions and opportunities, opportunities for new attractions, savvy, future-oriented municipal, civic and business management, a favorable business climate, affordable cost of living, three universities and affiliations with others, strong traditions but no longer straitlaced, and friendliness. Abilene could truthfully adopt a slogan: "America's Home Town." "Abilene" is also a very pretty name, and easy to remember.

I first learned of Abilene's branding effort a few weeks ago in a story in The Abilene Reporter-News. The Abilene Branding Partnership, a consortium of five civic entities, had called for a Statement of Qualifications from five marketing companies. I have affection for Abilene, and the Reporter-News, where I began my career in 1969, and I have interest in how people feel about Abilene. In researching a book about Abilene history three years ago, I had the opportunity to spend time there on several visits, and talk to Abilenians about the city's present strengths and weaknesses.

Thus was I compelled to stick my branding iron into the fire. Three or four days later, I had an idea. On June 21, I emailed the Abilene Branding Partnership, but I was too late. The June 14 deadline for submitting my Statement of Qualifications had passed. I asked to be considered if the search was reopened, and that was agreed to.

Today, the Reporter-News reported that the consortium has agreed to hire North Star Destination Strategies, out of Nashville, Tennessee, to develop an Abilene brand, and a branding strategy, for a fee in the "low six figures," should the money be found locally and a contract signed. North Star was one of only three companies, out of the 11, responding to Abilene's call for a Statement of Qualifications.

So the deal is done, and I can publish my idea. For a penny less than six figures - $99,999.99 – I would have provided Abilene all rights to a three-word brand that co-opts an already global brand, has four distinct applications and one state of mind, and it offers multiple branding strategies.

It would identify a place.
It would identify a thing.
It would identify an event.
It would identify a product.
It would identify a state of mind.
It would be:

"Abilene, Texas Style"

Published, copyrighted, protected. North Star will earn its money and give Abilene something that works better than "Friendly Frontier." And I will always know "Abilene, Texas Style" was good, and came in in an x-way tie for second place.

The second blog, posted Aug. 15, 2007:

I appreciate Jim McDonald's comment on the branding Abilene blog. He is another member of the Abilene High Class of 1961, which is a damn good group if I do say so. Re the fee for the Abilene brand, I waxed sentimental about those roots and briefly considered setting my fee for "Abilene, Texas Style" at $61,616.161, tacking on the tenth of a cent, like the gas pumps do, to preserve symmetry.

Then I decided against it. My fee is firm, $99.999.99, one cent less than the six figures the Abilene authorities are willing to pay North Star Destinations. That name – "North Star Destination" – pops to mind another possibility for the Abilene brand: "Lone Star Destination."

But you can't do as much with that as Abilene, Texas Style. I know the deal is done, but it is still fun to play with the thing. Right, Jim? On a yellow pad, I doodled everything that Abilene, Texas Style, might go with, in setting Abilene apart in the global mind. "Global" includes Tye, Potosi, Hawley, Hamby, View. Global starts at the front door, and it's as vital that "Abilene, Texas Style" means something in Colorado City, as much as it does in London, Paris or Dallas. Imagine, Dallasites driving 180 miles for a weekend of "Abilene, Texas Style." Getting somebody to leave Dallas for a weekend wouldn't take all that much, actually, but that is a direction for another day.

So I doodled.

Thanksgiving, Abilene, Texas Style
Christmas Parade, Abilene, Texas Style
Fourth of July, Abilene, Texas Style
Easter Sunday, Abilene, Texas Style
Education, Abilene, Texas Style
Football Classic, Abilene, Texas Style
Football playoffs, Abilene, Texas Style
Golf tournament, Abilene, Texas Style
Resort Ranch, Abilene, Texas Style
Weekend getaway, Abilene, Texas Style
Corporate retreat, Abilene, Texas Style
Regional Outlet Mall, Abilene, Texas Style
Filming location, Abilene, Texas Style
Senior prom weekend, Abilene, Texas Style
Culture, Arts, Music, Abilene, Texas Style
Broadway road show, Abilene, Texas Style
Concerts, Abilene, Texas Style
Championship rodeo, Abilene, Texas Style
Livestock shows, Abilene, Texas Style
Horse shows, Abilene, Texas Style
Any kind of celebration, Abilene Texas Style
Barbecue championship, Abilene, Texas Style
Premier, Abilene, Texas Style
Partnership, Abilene, Texas Style
Conventions, Abilene, Texas Style
Drag racing, Abilene, Texas Style
NASCAR, Abilene, Texas Style
Worship, Abilene, Texas Style
Leadership, Abilene, Texas Style
Patriotism, Abilene, Texas Style
Business, Abilene, Texas Style
Caring telethon, Abilene, Texas Style
Historical pageant, Abilene, Texas Style
Lifestyle, Abilene, Texas Style
Pride, Abilene, Texas Style

So there are things that can be done with it. The project has not turned out to be a burning issue in the Abilene community. I've counted about a dozen letters to the editor, some in favor, some opposed, most against paying anybody money to create a brand. There were a couple of offers to do it for free, or have a community contest with the winner receiving not much more than recognition and a few free dinners at participating restaurants.

I would never do it for free, and no one else should, either. I do think six figures to Tennessee thinkers is excessive, but there is a thing called "perceived value," which gives a thing value in the public mind simply by placing a value on it. Branding Abilene is something that will have to have value, both in the public mind and the participators' mind. This is a business deal. A brand should prove to be worth millions of dollars to whatever the branded thing is. To a city like Abilene, it should be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to spend on infrastructure, schools, culture, subsidized water rates, rehabbing the near north side before the wind blows it over. Whoever conceives it, the brand should not be cheap, and it certainly should not be provided free by its creator.

While we're on the subject, does Abilene have a city flag?

Which brings us back to the present day, and the saga's next chapter.

On Wednesday, Abilenian Betty Sims alerted me that North Star Destinations, after 17 months of research and creativity, had revealed its new brand for Abilene at a Tuesday press conference in the historic Paramount Theater.

The brand:

"Abilene Frontiering"

Response was immediate, and furious, and pretty funny. Scores of comments were posted at The Abilene Reporter-News by citizens appalled at the idea of becoming frontieringers. As an Abilenian living in California, I am in total sympathy and will renounce my Perini's club card should this brand go forward. I will give my lettering jacketings to Goodwill. If I saw "Abilene Frontiering" cold, without context, as on a highway billboard, I would think it was an ad for an Abilene travel agency booking tours to Alaska, not for a pretty nice town in West Central Texas.

Of course I remain committed to "Abilene, Texas Style," but the commitment that matters most today is the one against "Abilene Frontiering." For heavening's sake. No comment on the furor from Citying Halling yet.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments

Veterans Day brings far more to me than I can give to it.

In the 1960s, with the Vietnam conflict raging, I prepared for almost three years to become a vet, but then spent all that preparation guarding freedom’s frontier in the kaserns and maneuvers areas of West Germany.

I only did that because I had to. My draft notice arrived on a hot Texas afternoon in August, 1966. The Vietnam thing was far enough along by then to keep college kids in their 20s vigorously trying to cover their butts with what was called the II-S Deferment for students. Graduation in June had taken my cover away, and I was doing my best to get accepted to graduate school when my Local Board decided I would make an excellent soldier, and dropped the letter in the mail.

Instead of the draft, I enlisted for OCS. It seemed like a better use of the time. I took Basic at Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Advanced Individual Training at Ft. Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, and I was graduated from the Artillery Officer Candidate School in June, 1967. At that time, the School was graduating 170 second lieutenants a week, and all but 30 were receiving orders to report to Vietnam. I was one of the 30. Report to Kitzingen, West Germany, my orders read, and I didn’t argue.

I spent almost two years terrifying the Russians with a dinosaur of a device called the Honest John, a huge, barely mobile, truck-launched rocket whose launch blast could be seen from the Moon. Setting them off was great fun, but fire just one of them in anger, and your position would be slivered into atoms by return fire before you could get the truck started.

We fired nine practice rounds a year and spent the rest of the time scrounging sparkplugs (ALL the supplies went to Vietnam), drinking $5-a-liter Chivas Regal, smoking 13-cents-a-pack cigarettes, and licking clean platters of schnitzel and bratwurst. The exchange rate was 4 marks to the dollar. During that time I met a young Southern California woman touring Europe on the cheap. We were married in November, 1968, dress blues, crossed sabers, and all.

My tour was up in June, 1969, we came home, I was discharged at Ft. Dix, N.J., and that was that. I never fired on anyone, and no one ever fired on me. So I am not the stripe of veteran that we honor today. I still embrace the day. There is within me a certain content that I still use, all the time, which would not be there without my experiences of 1966-69. And Veterans Day symbolizes all the physical circumstances of my life today. No way would I live where I do, and do what I do, if that letter hadn’t been there on that hot afternoon. Veterans Day for me commemorates the absolute first day of the rest of my life.

I was lucky, and I used to feel guilty about that. Young men I knew – and older men too, the officers and drill instructors – at Ft. Bliss and Sill, went to Vietnam and became the honored veterans of today, living and dead. Then one afternoon in the 1980s in Washington, D.C., I visited the Vietnam Memorial. It is an astonishing monument, black, and so reflective that it pulls the living day into it. In there was where I could have stood. Out here was where I in fact stood, and guilt could do nothing about how lucky I felt. So I let it go, and nothing changed. I have felt lucky ever since.

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Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

I am starting to feel like Barack Obama's cultural cousin.

When he left the campaign trail to visit his grandmother, who was a key figure in his rearing, I kept thinking about Susie Grant, my grandmother, in whose house I grew up. Today, news comes that Obama has a half-aunt on his father's side, found in circumstances about which he knew nothing, and that development is similar to the half-brothers I never knew, then met twice, and may never see again.

Susie was my mother's mother. She was born in northern Alabama and came with her family to West Texas at the turn of the 20th century, about 1900. There she met and married Roy Grant, who grew up in Pulaski, Tennessee, just across the state line from Susie's home. They grew up 40 miles apart and had to travel clear to Haskell County, Texas, before they would meet.

Susie and Roy had six kids, including my mother, June, who was next-to-youngest. Roy died suddenly in 1929, and Susie raised the six on her own. She was gentle, pious, and remains the toughest individual I ever knew. Was she a racist? I don't want to believe that, but every time she saw a black man on television – one of the few places we saw black people in 1950s Abilene, Texas – she made a face. I suppose it is possible I was reared by a racist, and the people I vote for are just going to have to live with that.

World War II came, and a huge Army training base, Camp Barkeley, was opened a few miles south of Abilene. My father, Don Wayman of Colorado, was sent there to train. He was a wonderful singer, a tenor from the old school, and my mother always said she heard him (at the downtown USO) before she saw him. They were married at Camp Barkeley on Easter Sunday, 1942. I was born on March 6, 1943, by which time my mother and father were divorcing.

My mother and I, and two of her sisters, lived with Susie. They told me my father was dead. There were no photos of him, no letters, no notes, no insignia, no nothing. The only evidence I had of him was me.

In 1989, following an inner pulse, I took steps to find him, and I did. I saw him for the first time on July 27, 1989, in the driveway of his home in Greeley, Colorado. He was happy to see me. He said that on the day after I was born, he snuck into the hospital nursery in Abilene and held me in his arms for 15 minutes. He said my family, particularly Susie, didn't like him. He left Abilene, returned to Greeley, married, taught school, and with his wife Shirley had four sons, my half-brothers. It is an interesting feeling, at age 46, to learn you have four brothers. Circumstances: two of them were in lifelong schizophrenia battles, and a third was gay. In some circles, my political stock must be seriously dwindling.

The weekend was interesting and fundamentally informative on both sides. Don Lee, my dad's oldest son – other than me – said to me: "I'm not the oldest brother anymore." "Sure you are," I said. "I wouldn't know the first thing about being the oldest brother." That is as true on this day as it was on that one.

My father and I remained in touch, but he bonded more with my wife, now my ex, and with my children, than he did with me. That was fine. In our short years of contact, he resolved a lifelong fear of mine, and he told me I removed a weight from his days that he felt was lengthening his life. I went to Greeley twice more, once with my children and the third time at his death. That was in 2002. His sons and I have had no contact since.

Obama and I, and who knows how many others, were spun out of a swirl, created by a century of change, and motion, and mobility of events and of people. Our histories are unconventional. Make of them what you will.

Labels: Roots

Posted by Michael Grant at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments