Primitive Past-Times

My generation, the boomers, may be the last to have experienced, almost exclusively, pre-video game fun. We lived in a pre-grand theft auto paradise and didn't know it. Most of our toys required no batteries or electronic power source of any kind. True, there were somre you could plug in, like an electric train set, and others that were battery powered. But when your allowance is fifteen cents a week, you can't be wasting it on packages of D batteries every other day For the most part our stuff had no internal power source; they had to be fueled by our imaginations.

Our toys connected us with previous generations of kids stretching back before recorded history. It was a rite of passage to play baseball in an empty lot, or spend a couple hours with your forefingers locked in a Chinese finger puzzle.

What my dad did as a kid, I did.
He read comics; I read comics.
He played marbles; I played marbles.
He lived through the Depression and fought in World War II; I played with my slinky.

On the news, did you ever see a bunch of third world kids standing around in the middle of a vacant patch of desert with nothing better to do except throw rocks at each other? That was us, except we had yo-yos and paddle balls.

(My favorite toys were the building toys. Legos prepared me, presumably, for a life of masonry while Lincoln Logs gave me an appreciation for early American architecture if not Abraham Lincoln, and erector sets, well, I'm not sure what I got out of playing with these things. Still, they were sort of fun in a self-baffling kind of way.)

Sometime in the late 1950's and early 1960's there was an explosion of non-electronic kid gadgetry. The hula hoop, the slinky, and silly putty hit the scene. They were what I would call one minute wonders. Take them off the shelf, play with them for a bit, and then on to something else.

Hey look. I can use this ball of silly putty to get Beetle Bailey's face right off the Sunday funnies. I can stretch it and twist it and... Okay. I'm done now.

Times were simpler then.

The strangest non-electronic toy of all was the Etch-A-Sketch. It didn't help you draw a single wick. It actually got in the way of drawing! I wasted the better part of a weekend madly twisting the knobs of an Etch-A-Sketch and ended up with a squiggly looking happy face. Still, Ohio Art sold a ton of these things.

Safety requirements were limited to common sense. You shouldn't swallow Silly Putty nor eat the potato that, for a day and a half, promonaded as Mr. Potato Head. And just to prove that safety was a complete non-consideration, one day in early July my mom brought home a set of "Jarts." Also known as lawn darts, a "jart" was essentially a twelve inch, stainless steel mini-javelin. You played a game similar to horseshoes, tossing them into a hoop set out on the ground. Well, that's what the instructions said to do. Us kids figured out a few other uses for them and soon there was a rush on the emergency rooms across the tri-county area.

The Era of Non-Video Game fun came to an abrupt end in 1980 when Atari released the third version of its video game system. True, the games consisted of pretty much the same concept: manipulating an on screen dot to a series of electronic beeps and squeaks. In many ways most Atari games resembled a more annoying version of the Etch-A-Sketch. But their popularity was undeniable.

Today when I shop I can sometimes see, behind the wires, the plastic and the whiz-bang technology, toys from my past. Interestingly enough the Kootie game is still around as is Mr. Potato Head (sans potato, if that makes sense.). And yes, you can still discover a plastic egg of Silly Putty.

When I see these artifacts from my kidhood, I suddenly realize what we have lost.
As it turns out, not really all that much

Prisoner of Now

Every year my parents rented a cabin in the woods "to get away from it all." At first we went to Ohio state parks. Then, as they grew bolder, we went to West Virginia, Tennessee, and, lastly, Michigan. It was always a big deal. We'd leave in the early morning before dawn, have breakfast along the way, and arrive in the early afternoon.

The cabins we rented were a crappier version of what we had at home. Everything was smaller, smellier, and more primitive. I imagine that was part of the charm, but for me, by then a serious television addict, it was a major crimp in my lifestyle. Absolutely no TV for a solid week. My only sources of entertainment were hillbilly radio and whatever comics I brought with me.

During most of my kidhood, I was super glued to the tube. I lived for my daily doses of what early television did best: situation comedies. I watched Hazel, I Married Joan, It's About Time, Car 54 Where Are You, and I'm Dickens, He's Fenster. I was one of the few true fans of Love On A Rooftop. And I think I may have seen every single episode of Gilligan's Island as it was being broadcast. I could never buy into an hour long drama, such as Bonanza. Hoss, Little Joe, Hop Sing. Trouble on the Ponderosa? Who cared, really. I wanted to be married to Samantha and be seeing Jeanie on the side.

My true passion was for Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. At first I was not permitted to watch it. Too frightening, my parents thought. But I changed that. My subtle insistence wore on my mom's nerves to the point where it was easier for her to acquiesce than to punish me. Each week I gazed into the set at the designated hour and watched what amounted to a Rod Serling morality play.

My favorites were what are now considered the classics.

You know, the one where the guy sold his soul to the devil in exchange for looking young forever. But see, he only looked young, on the inside he was still an old guy. Lesson- pay attention to details when you sign a contract with Satan.

And the one where the guy was sure that the book the aliens left behind, How to Serve Mankind, proved they were benevolent. But, see, it was a cook book. Yes, they were serving man, but with a side of fries. Moral: never jump to conclusions and never, ever trust aliens.

And there was that guy who wore the thick glasses and loved to read, but could never find the time. He ended up surviving a nuclear war and having all the time he wanted, but broke his glasses with no optician around so he killed himself. Moral: well, I have no idea what the moral on that episode was. But it did involve nuclear war, so that was cool.

Years later, I made the mistake of watching some episodes of the Twilight Zone on a UHF channel. Even the good episodes were out dated and maudlin. You really can't go home again.

Now when I travel, television is ubiquitous. It's at the airports, at McDonalds, in every hotel room. So, for that matter, is hillbilly radio. You can dial up pretty much anything these days on a number of devices. All the old shows are there in rerun heaven, plus a cornucopia of shows I never saw (I recovered from my television addiction in 1971 while away at college, but that is another blog entry.)

You can go half-way across the world, but you can never really get away from it all anymore. With cellphones, the internet, and cable television we have become trapped in a prison of Now. There is no cabin in Tennessee with only a simple AM radio link to civilization.

Sartre was wrong.
Hell isn't other people.
It's an iPhone and 24-7 cable television.

Down Among the Fundamentalists (Part 4)

The Good
Bob Jones University was a closed community. On campus, protected by a fence, there was a post office, a hospital, a movie studio, the faculty residence, a high school, a grade school and a world class art museum (along with, of course, the university.) That's right, they had a world class "art museum," featuring religious art through the ages. That would be serious religious art. This was no simple hall showing pictures and sculptures, but a well designed display of simply amazing art.

I loved the art museum, the science center, the gymnasium (and pool), the bookstore and the library. Reading a magazine at the library was a somewhat jarring experience. Imagine leafing through a Time or Newsweek Magazine and finding whole pages missing. Winston Smith, call your office. The article and/or the accompanying pictures had been deemed by the resident persnickety librarian to be an affront to common decency and a danger to Christians of all ages.

BJU was also a cultural experience. Because of its conservative standards, avant garde art was simply not part of campus life. What was left, however, were the classics. Shakespeare was all the rage. I saw productions of both The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet. Excellent. True, I had to endure Bob Jones III prancing about the stage as Romeo, but in a strange way the part suited him. Much like the title character, B3 was brash, impulsive and over flowing with tragic possibilities.

The central character in the play is Juliet, who was played by B3's wife. She was wonderful.

The Bad
One of the worst aspects of BJU, outside of racism, was the in your face judgementalism of the administration. I'm sure they thought of it as being uncompromising, taking a stand, or pulling a Luther, if you will. From the pulpit you would hear that Billy Graham was a modernist, C.S. Lewis was a false teacher, Methodists were hopelessly compromised.

And don't even bother bringing up the Pope.

They tossed these invectives around the way a french chef might toss a salad. With style and without thinking. Then they patted themselves on the back for being loyal to the Word of God.

However, demeaning a religion is a double edged sword. And that is especially true when the institution doing the demeaning is at the epicenter of American Fundamentalism.

The Not So Hot
I took a job, working in the college dining hall. The school insisted on having an evening meal together, all two thousand of us. That meant someone had to pick up the two thousand or so plates. And that someone was me. There were eight guys on the crew and throughout the meal we would run around the cavernous hall collecting plates, cups, glasses and dinnerware. By the end of the meal I was covered with splotches of gravy, pudding and whatever the heck the main course was.

I hated busing tables.
But I discovered I loved being part of a crew.

And that's all I have to write about Bob Jones University. Like everything else in life, it was a mixed bag. I met some truly Christian people there, learned discipline, made friends and did some growing up.

It was an experience.

Down Among the Fundamentalists (Part 3)

I was dropped, literally, in front of the BJU Administration Building on the first day of September 1970. As I waved goodbye to my parents, I saw my little brother Lowell making faces in the back window of my dad's Galaxy 500. That is until my mom turned around and slapped him on the back of the head.

I never felt more alone in my life. I made my way back to my dorm.

My dormitory was named Bib Graves. (FYI: Bibb Graves [April 1, 1873–March 14, 1942] was a Democratic politician and the 38th Governor of Alabama. His first name was David, but he went by "Bibb," probably to remind the voters of Alabama that he was a descendant of Bill Bibb, the first governor of Alabama.) I lived in a room with four other roommates. Yes, there were five of us sharing a narrow eight by twelve nook, bunk beds on one side, a shared desk on the other, and a sink in the corner. I would not be surprised if South Carolina provided more square footage per prisoner at the Allendale Correction Institution.

For the next nine months, while I was a student, I attended mandatory church service every day, and twice on Sunday. During the week there was Chapel. On Saturday there was a morning service. On Sunday there was the regular church service, plus Sunday school, and vespers. I guess that makes three times on Sunday. (I wonder. Since it was mandatory, does it count? You know, in the Big Hereafter. Probably not.)

Say what you want about the Fundamentalists, they take their Bible seriously. And not just any translation. The preferred text of the born again, Bible believing Baptist is the King James version. I found this interesting. The KJV takes work to read. It's not an easy task to study Jeremiah, or Ezra, or even the Gospel of John for that matter. Though Fundamentalists claim to take the Bible literally, that is simply not so. There are definitely figurative passages in the Book. What they mean, I suppose, is that they believe it to be God's word and give great respect to scripture.

A true Fundamentalist would not even be political in the sense that the majority culture would understand. Sure, a fundamentalist may vote conservative, but tax policy and social reform are not his motivating force. What really concerns a Fundamentalist is his relationship with God. It's prayer, not protest.

BJU's rules were omnipresent. The claim was made that every rule on campus could be justified through scripture. Well, that hardly made the situation better. There was a strict dress code. The guys had the wear ties till noon while on campus, and always wear them when off campus. The gals wore dresses when in public view. What they wore when they were out of sight by the general public, I couldn't guess. Reading material was strictly censored. No Mad magazine. Period. And music was limited to classical, semi-classical and serious religious music. Yes, religious music had to be serious. None of that wigged out, non serious gospel music.

And you can forget about listening to Herb Alpert and the brass.

Next: Down Among the Fundamentalists (Part 4) The Good, The Bad and the Not So Hot

Down Among the Fundamentalists (Part 2)

In September 1970, Bob Jones University was in the center of a growing maelstrom. The culture was rapidly changing and adjusting itself. A flood of feminism, anti-war marches, rock and roll music and general hedonism poured from the general culture. Bob Jones University stood against these changes, anchoring itself to the Bible. At that time Bob Jones, Sr, the founder, had been dead for several years. His son, Bob Jones, Jr., was large and in charge. He was president of the place. There was also a Bob Jones III on campus. I'm not sure what his official position was at the time, but I'm fairly certain, given his several talents, nepotism was involved.

Bob Jones College was founded in Panama City, FL, in 1927 by, of course, Bob Jones. Before turning to a career in education, Bob Jones was an itinerant preacher, a contemporary of Billy Sunday. He was a kind of Billy Graham of his day (Graham attended Bob Jones University and would have been the school's superstar had not a disagreement resulted in Graham's excommunication from Fundamentalism.)

What does Bob Jones University stand for? I think the Bob Jones creed pretty much sums up the essentials.

I believe in the inspiration of the Bible (both the Old and the New Testaments);
the creation of man by the direct act of God;
the incarnation and virgin birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ;
His identification as the Son of God;
His vicarious atonement for the sins of mankind by the shedding of His blood on the cross;
the resurrection of His body from the tomb;
His power to save men from sin;
the new birth through the regeneration by the Holy Spirit;
and the gift of eternal life by the grace of God.

The funny thing is, I pretty much believe all of this. I did then and I do now. What I had a hard time dealing with was the harsh attitude of the place, the confining rules, the over all combativeness of the university pulpit, the lack of humility, and, the worst transgression of all, overt racism and bigotry.

Well, I guess nobody's perfect.

In fairness, times were different then. For a while it did seem as if the world was coming apart, hence the combativeness. And there was still, in 1970, a good chunk of the old south's culture permeating the campus. Yes, it is true. Blacks- African Americans- were not permitted to attend the school, but it wasn't like they were lining up trying to get in. What was truly obnoxious was BJU's claim that the Bible supported their racist policies.

The Bible supports no such thing.

Later, the admission policy was changed. And in 2000, Bob Jones III, then the Chancellor of the University, ended the ban against interracial dating. I saw him do this in a televised interview on a news show. Live. There was even a hint of humility eking through his facial expression. Times change.

Here at the very end of the twentieth century, Bob Jones University was about to enter it.

That September I arrived on campus, a freshly minted graduate from a suburban high school in northeast Ohio. I attended the local United Methodist Church. And I knew several hymns completely by heart.

I had no idea of what I was walking into.

Down Among the Fundamentalists (Part 1)

All my life I have been too passive. Rather than take charge, it's been far easier being a passenger. I've let things happen to me.

I let Bob Jones University happen to me.

No one controls what generation they are born into. It was my luck to be a child of the fifties also known as the Baby Boomers. Or perhaps, given our materialist bent, the Pepsi Generation is a better title. We started out as members of the peanut gallery on the Howdy Doodie Show and by the time we were eighteen we had morphed into what seemed to be a new sub-species of humanity: Homo Funditus Confusus (the totally confused man.) Some of us became long haired hippie dippy freaks with a bong in one hand and a tambourine in the other. A few of us devolved into militant Marxists out to torch every paneled basement in America. Most of us read The Catcher in the Rye and the poetry of ee cummings and through that modest intellectual achievement thought we had discovered the secret of the universe.

We weren't sure what we were supposed to do, but we knew we had to do something.

Rather than follow the well worn and tested truths of previous generations such as working hard, playing safe, keeping your nose clean, trying to make something of yourself, we, the boomers, pretty much scotched those boring ideas and centered our lives around Madison Avenue-like jingles. "Make Love Not War" was our motto. And what passed for philosophy could be written on a Peter Max poster: "You know, man, can't we just, like, love each other, you know?" Note, there's not a three syllable word in that sentence.

Is it even a complete, coherent thought?

My goose was cooked when President Lyndon Johnson, for whatever political and/or psychological reasons, brought the Vietnam War to the United States. There is some controversy about who really got us into a land war in Southeast Asia. Some blame Kennedy, some Eisenhower, some FDR. But Johnson dropped in more than half a million men (less both Bill Clinton and myself.) LBJ took the war to a level where he couldn't back out. If you are looking for the instigator in chief, look no further than LBJ.

Not wanting to go through Congress, Johnson decided to draft boys directly into the fight. Then, to placate everyone he created a system of college draft deferments. Before you could say "protest movement" college campi across the US became havens for anti-war activists.

It was all so predictable, but then overtly idiotic foreign policy is the price we pay for letting academics influence government. These inhabitants of the Ivory Tower seem to be in a perpetual state of war against common sense, their only weapons being newly minted, untested social theories and a superior demure.

Why do we still listen to these guys?

By the spring of 1970, Vietnam rattled onward. No conversation was complete unless one weighed in on the war. By then the evening news had turned against the conflict so every night it seemed there was some new outrage to chew on. I mean, Jeez Louise, it got to the point where you wanted it all to just go away so you could have a normal conversation.

And then Nixon announced incursions into Cambodia. Turns out the North Vietnamese were hiding troops and weapons just across the border knowing they would be safe from America's guns. Nixon's decision to conduct the Vietnam war as if it were a real war rather than a Marxist passion play was simple common sense. Naturally, the intellectual class was enraged. College campuses exploded.

And there were protests at Kent State. A building was burned. Governor Rhodes called in the National Guard. Shots were fired. Students were killed.

My parents watched it all from a small black and white portable television set in their kitchen. That was the moment I got flipped out of the frying pan of Fate. My parents were determined to keep me out of the fray (although sometimes my mom acted as if she wanted me to enlist which, logically, would have placed me dead center IN the fray.)

That's why they wanted me to go to Bob Jones University. They seemed to have things under control down there. It was a no nonsense institution in an era over running with nonsense.

Looking back, I know now that when they pushed Bob Jones University, I should have pushed back. But then, pushing back is not in my nature. I would rather listen to Herb Alpert than attend a Rolling Stones concert. A root beer float seemed far more enjoyable than puffing on a doobey, and as for protests... well, that's simply not my style. The closest I ever came to a war protest was following the bouncing ball on Sing Along With Mitch while his chorus sang Puff the Magic Dragon.

And so I caved.
Bob Jones University it would be.
After all, I would be far away from home in Greenville, South Carolina.
On my own.
Sort of.
That would be cool, right?
I'd have a dorm room and roommates and communal showering.
I mean, how bad could it get?

A Natural History of Elevator Music

I have never heard elevator music while standing in an elevator. Ever. The term is a gigantic misnomer. But whether it’s called easy listening, mood music or lounge music I have a passion for the stuff.

Like most forms of modern music, elevator music has its roots in classical music. Just give a listen to the impressionistic melodies of Debussy and Ravel. Those light, soothing tonalities that you hear have a direct connection to the accessible, laid back harmonies of Henry Mancini. In a sense Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune is the musical grand-mère of Henry Mancini’s Pink Panther.

Well, sort of.

One of my favorite American classical composers, Leroy Anderson, wrote happy, uplifting tunes throughout the twentieth century. His “hits” include songs such as Sleigh Ride, Blue Tango, The Typewriter, Serenata, Belle of the Ball, Bugler's Holiday and Forgotten Dreams. In many ways Anderson could be considered the father of modern easy listening music, if anyone really wanted to be called such a thing.

Anyway, by the time I arrived on the scene in 1952 elevator music was in full flower. With the advent of FM radio, easy listening music became the background score for the Eisenhower administration. In short order orchestrated versions of popular music flooded the airways. Purveyors of this musical art form included such luminaries as Ray Conniff, Percy Faith, Andre Kostelanetz, “Montovani,” and the musicians of the 101 Strings to mention a few.

One of my favorite performers of this period was Fred Warring. Fred was the conductor of a choral group, the Pennsylvanians (was there ever a more humble moniker?) It seems odd today that a choir could gain national recognition without a lead vocal, but the Pennsylvanians were a product of their times. They peaked in popularity in the decade after World War II, the penultimate group effort.

Is it possible that once millions of people sat in front of their radios and listened to the Pennsylvanians vocal interpretation of the Whiffenpoof Song? Hard to believe, but it happened.

Elevator music reached its crescendo with Jackie Gleason and his Orchestra. Gleason had zero musical training. He did, however, have an idea. After watching a Clark Gable movie Gleason noticed that the love scenes were heavily scored. “If Clark Gable needs music,” Gleason figured, “the regular Joe must be desperate!”

Romantic background music for the regular Joes was the raison d’être of Gleason’s musical mission.

Using his clout as an entertainer, Gleason gathered the top jazz musicians of his day and put together his “orchestra.” His contribution to the effort was to provide the vision. In short, he would explain to the musicians what he wanted and leave it to them to figure out the musical stuff.

It must have been a winning formula because throughout the fifties and sixties Gleason produced close to three dozen albums. On the back of one album Gleason is pictured directing his musicians with what appears to be a cigarette.

Perfect.

The sixties put an end to the elevator music era. A combination of rock and roll, bosa nova and country western music rendered the form even more meaningless than it already was. Yet it was a slow death. Peter Nero attempted to breathe life into its dying body with his piano hunt-and-peck versions of the Beatles’ music. Barry Manilow tried valiantly to re-invigorate it with his over the top lyrics and big band-like orchestration. And the Tijuana Brass as well as the Carpenters performed CPR on the corpse. It was all too little, too late. By the end of the seventies elevator music lay dead on the disco dance floor.

And no one cried.

But even though it’s dead, its spirit is still with us.

You can hear the echoes of easy listening in any John Williams score.

You can hear it in every televised Handy Wipe commercial.

You can hear it in the umpteen versions of Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride played endlessly during Christmas.

And what is a Phillip Glass symphony except the same three bars from Montovni’s Moon River endlessly looped?

And if you ever need to listen to Andre Kostelanetz or Percy Faith or Jackie Gleason, just go to your local Goodwill. Head to the back and look in the cardboard box hidden underneath a card table displaying chipped coffee cups. You’ll find all the albums you need, up to and including Herb Alpert’s Going Places.

You see, elevator music is not really dead.
It’s just tucked away.
Forever.