Teahouse of the August Moon - Stories from the Attic

In our great attic clean-out, we came across several boxes full of keep-sakes - old photos and such. From those, I have mined some blog stories. Here's one based on some photos from the "College Days" box.

When I graduated from ACU, U.S. military involvement in Viet Nam was escalating dramatically. Enrolling in graduate school seemed a better choice at the time than enrolling in the military, so I signed up for a course called "Technical Problems of the Theater" which involved co-directing the Spring theater production. Shortly after enrolling, Kennedy exempted all married men from the draft, and I was working full time by then, so the graduate studies were short-lived, but the show must go on.

The production was Teahouse of the August Moon, John Patrick's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning Broadway play; in 1956 it was made into a movie starring Marlon Brando, Glen Ford, Eddie Albert and Paul Ford.

If you are not familiar with the story, it is a gentle satire of U.S. military/civilian relations and the drive to Americanize the world. One year after World War II, Captain Fisby is sent to the village of Tobiki in Okinawa with orders to teach the people democracy. The first step of Plan B is to build a school -- but the wily Okinawans know what they really want.

They teach him about their culture and traditions, often counter to his expectations, and persuade him to build something they really want instead: a teahouse. Fisby, of course, succumbs to the laid-back island life - as do all the subsequent officers sent to find out what is going on with Plan B. Finally the Big Brass, Col. Purdy shows up, the truth comes out and the teahouse is ordered destroyed.

Immediately afterwards, Col. Purdy learns that the Pentagon thinks Teahouse Pacification is a wonderful idea, and a delegation is on the way to celebrate the success of a teahouse that no longer exists. The day is saved, of course, because the sly Okinawans had only pretended to destroy the teahouse. "Oh no, Boss. Only hide teahouse. We put it back quick."

Gary Ady, the other guy in the first picture (the woman is Jacqueline Taylor - the Assistant Director) directed the play for his Master's thesis. He cast the show, coordinated the interpretation of lines, composition, "stage business" and movements of the actors. My role was Technical Director; I designed the sets and the visual impact of the show, created the lighting scheme, chose props and costumes, and designed the backdrops. I had a wonderful crew to help carry all this out.

One of the props was a jeep. A real jeep. There was a kid on campus. Lynn Mullings, who had a vintage military type jeep and we talked him into loaning it to us for about 3 weeks. Not only that, he let us paint it Army color. We scientifically established that the stage was strong enough to support a jeep by looking into the sub-space through an access panel and saying, "Looks pretty stout. What do you think?" "Yea, let's do it." So we took out about 6 rows of seats, built a shaky ramp and fearless Lynn drove his jeep up onto the stage.

It's the part about "Oh no, Boss. Only hide teahouse. We put it back quick" that still gives me goosebumps. Lewis Fulks, the Director of ACU Theater at the time, required a model of all the sets and scenes; that's what Gary, Jacqueline and I are looking at in the picture - a model of the stage with the teahouse set. The vertical panels were free-standing, decorated with large white Styrofoam designs and gold reflective foil. The canopy was fabric, a rich red that draped over horizontal rods.

When it came time to "put it back quick," Sakini, the interpreter-scoundrel Okinawan in the play,  gave directions and the villagers scurried out with the vertical panels, the mats, tables, flowers, tea pots and cups, and when all was back in place, he clapped his hands and the canopy, previously hidden in the fly-loft, floated down and settled gracefully on the set. It got applause every time it happened.

May I, ahem, unabashedly quote from Patrick Bennet, Abilene Reporter News Amusements Editor's review: "Robert Anderson's sets, players and effects all joined smoothly to produce the fine product for which Lewis Fulks' shows are noted. Flawless."

There was another quote - from the play, itself. We repeated it often as we worked to put the show together:

"Pain make man think.

Thought make man wise.

Wisdom make life endurable."

Monday Meanderings - 8.26.2013

Normally, August 15 is the "tipping point" for super hot days in these parts. On average (and I stress average) temperatures begin to decline after that date. It appeared that this year that would really be the case; on August 14 it was 107 degrees. On August 15, high temperature was 97 degrees, and it remained below 100... until Thursday, August 22.  However, the forecast for the coming weeks is very promising, temperature-wise. Now, if we could get some moisture into the equation.

The other day at Silver's Gym, a very, very short woman got on the treadmill next to me. I don't think she was actually a dwarf, but she was certainly in that range, height-wise. There is a TV monitor on each treadmill, but it is way up on top of the frame. She was trying to reach the controls, and just as I thought I should offer to help, she maxed out the incline button, which raised the bed of the platform high enough to make the adjustment she wanted, then she set the belt back to level and took off. Clever.

Driving through the central part of California, in an area that produces a large percentage of the nation's crops, we began to see small, round, red objects on the shoulder of the highway. After several miles of this, we decided that they were tomatoes, based on some that had been squashed. Not sure how they got spread along the roadside, but I suspect some grower was pretty hacked off when he got to market and found the gate on his produce hauler was ajar.

I have long been aware that even if you click on the  Southwest Airlines "check-in" screen exactly 24 hours before your flight, your chances of getting an "A" boarding pass are slim. I was pretty sure that all the "A"s were going to Business Elite, etc. Sure enough, while waiting to board in San Jose, they made an announcement that you could purchase an A1 to A15 pass for a mere $40 each. Very tempting when you are looking at a full flight with very high number "B" passes in hand.  I thought I should announce to the crowd "If we all pass on that offer, we will all get bumped up 15 positions in line."

We are used to seeing seagulls on the beach. They feed in the surf, swoop out over the breakers and catch the sea breezes, soaring overhead. We were not, however, used to seeing seagulls perched on tree limbs, because of course, there are no trees on the beach we are most familiar with. Very surprised to see them roosting outside our balcony.

Carmel-by-the-Sea

On previous trips to California, Barb and I  had passed near the ocean-side community of Carmel-by-the-Sea. On our excursion down scenic CA-1 last Thanksgiving, we even turned off the highway and made a quick drive through the town itself. Drive through is about all you can do; parking is all but impossible. More about that later.

Carmel-by-the-Sea - or in it's less pretentious, un-hyphenated form, Carmel - has a long-established history as an art colony, dating from the beginning of the 19th century. The long list of artists, poets, writers and movie stars that influenced the look and feel of the town over the last century is impressive, but if you ask today, the celeb that comes to mind is probably Clint Eastwood, based on his one term as mayor of the town  back in the late '80's.

The village itself takes up just a bit more than a square mile; in that space dwell 3,722 residents, and on any given summer day there are twice that many tourists looking for a place to park. Smallish houses are tightly packed on a steep hillside - "a village in a forest overlooking a white sand beach." One major street, Ocean Avenue, runs from CA-1 down to the beach, crossing twelve or so streets in the process. Galleries, restaurants, coffee shops and retailers of all types line Ocean Avenue, offering high-priced goods to an affluent clientele. It felt like Aspen by the Sea.

Some of the things that set Carmel apart:

• There are no house numbers or street addresses. Our hotel was located on "Junipero, between 5th & 6th." Consequently, there is no home mail delivery. Overnight services use "geophysical" addresses, like ""Monte Verde 4SW of 8th." That would be a building on the west side of Monte Verde Street four properties south of the 8th Ave intersection.
• Street signs are limited to a single post about 3 feet tall, located on varying corners of the intersection. Not every intersection has a post.
• High heels are prohibited. Really. There is an ordnance prohibiting wearing high heels without a permit.
• There is no public transportation in the village. And since there are limited parking opportunities, walking is the preferred method of transportation. Bicycles are frowned upon, as well. Almost all on-street parking, if you can find it, is limited to 2 hours.
• Parking tickets are a major source of income for the village.
• Carmel-by-the-Sea is an exceptionally dog-friendly city. Almost all restaurants that offer outside dining allow dogs in those areas and a few have special "doggie menus." Many retailers allow dogs to accompany their owners in their stores and many have treats available. Water bowls and dog biscuits can also be found in front of many stores.
• Dogs are not permitted, even on leash, in Devendorf Park. Really.

So if you have not come to Carmel for the fine dining, or the art galleries, or for that new Baume and Mercier watch, or to walk your dog, you must have come - as we did - for the beach.

Gorgeous white sand and gentle waves. Big Sur to the south - Pebble Beach to the north. Carmel really has one of the premier beaches of California. You may notice, however, that no one is actually in the water. This is northern California, after all, and the water temperature was about 55 degrees. The air temperature was 61.

Our hotel was located at the top of the hill, and since we did have a parking place (something not guaranteed with the reservation), we walked down to the beach, checking out the stores and shops on the way. After chilling at the beach (literally), we discovered that walking down hill is so much easier than walking up hill! And both of us have been walking seriously for exercise for some time! We blamed it on the altitude.

Most of the public parking was along Ocean Avenue, but along both sides of the street, placards announced that all of these places were going away overnight.

Sure enough, during the night we heard numerous car transports moving through the narrow streets, and in the morning, rows of luxury automobiles were parked in numbered spaces, participating in the "Carmel-by-the-Sea Concours on the Avenue" auto show.

 While we were wandering down the Avenue, a parade of Porsches, with police motorcycle escort, arrived, engines revving loudly. We thought we were in the middle of the ROT Rally. Maybe this was the ROC Rally.



Bottom line: if you want to have your morning coffee on the balcony and look through a pine forest at the ocean, I can recommend a place to do just that!

The 25th

Monday Meanderings - 8.19.2013

I have adapted to the idea that when one wants water to come forth from the faucet in a public restroom, one places his hands beneath the faucet and waits for the motion detector to kick in. Same with the soap dispenser. And if you want paper towels with which to dry one's hands, one waves said hands in front of the towel dispenser. Now I have encountered the motion-detector waste basket lid. Want to dispose of the paper towels? Wave them above the container lid. Open Sesame.

I am picturing a scenario where some one walks by the towel dispenser and accidentally dispenses a length of paper towel. Which sets off the waste basket lid. Which triggers the towel dispenser. Which...  So, if you ever walk into a restroom overflowing with paper towels and the waste basket lid going clang, clang, clang, you will know what happened. It could happen.

There is a feature on my Google App that I seldom use; there are "cards" at the bottom that you can swipe into active mode and they will convey some bit of information you may be looking for. About the only thing I ever use this feature for is to check some ball scores, but I noticed the other day a little map captioned "7 minutes to work Light traffic on I-35 N" And there was a little map of my route to Silver's Gym. Another little map said "15 minutes from home. Light traffic on I-35 S." Google is tracking where I go most often (5 or 6 trips a week to Silver's and 2 trips a week to the recording studio) and checking on traffic on those routes! Who needs the NSA? Just check with Google.

Alas! No more peach shakes at Chik-Fil-A. Thank goodness.

 We are seeing astounding displays of a couple of ornamental plants that obviously thrive in dry, hot conditions. One is the Pride of Barbados with unusual orange-red blossoms, tinged with gold, and the other is the Esperanza, a showy bush with yellow, bell-shaped flowers. Most everything else has wilted, but these two continue to delight.

And I leave you with this thought...
"Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize: Oh my God.... I could be eating a slow learner!" - Lynda Montgomery

Old Flames - Stories from the Attic

In our great attic clean-out, we came across several boxes full of keep-sakes -- old photos and such. From those, I have mined some blog stories. 

Among the pictures from my high school days were a few of old girl friends. That's certainly not surprising, since I was a handsome devil back then and a BMOC as well. Well, sort of.  I blogged a couple of years ago about the girl with the unusual name, Amala Knight. You know, the one that caused my mother to think I was corresponding with a motel chain. Here's a picture:

Yes, I know that is the back of her head, but if you go back and read that blog you'll find that Amala is not her real name anyway, and to preserve her privacy, I turned the picture around.

And I found a picture of Sandy from San Angelo, but since I know she is active on FaceBook, I'll not post it, either. Sandy and I met when she came to town to visit an Aunt (do you see a pattern here?) and we did have a few actual dates. I even drove to San Angelo once to spend a weekend with her and her family. Alas, it was not meant to be. Sandy went off to UT, and I went to ACU.

My favorite story about Sandy involves J. C. Post, a guy from church and fellow classmate. We both had old beater autos that looked somewhat alike, and one Saturday night J.C. and his date and Sandy and I all ended up at the same movie theater. Not too hard - there was only one theater in town. When we came out, it was pouring rain, so the guys all ran for their cars and drove by the front of the theater to pick up our respective dates.

Sandy, seeing what she thought was my car, ran out and jumped in - with J. C. - and he promptly drove off with her. I was right behind him, and I saw what happened, as did J. C.'s date, so she came and got in my car and we drove off as well. I knew that J.C. was going to the Dairy Delight - that's where everyone congregated after the movies, so after a while I pulled into a drive-in space next to J. C. I was getting worried that Sandy might choose to spend the rest of the evening with J. C., but we managed to get our dates sorted out, and all ended well.

And then there was Madelyn. I honestly don't remember her last name. She moved to town late in my senior year, and a bunch of guys tried to date her. I did get her to agree to go to the Senior Banquet with me, but the weekend before, she was out with someone else and they hit a cow in the road, and she broke her leg. No Banquet for her, no date for me!

What is outstanding about Madelyn is the "Love, Mother" picture. Madelyn had modeled professionally in the big city where she lived previously, and she had a bunch of 8X10 photos made up of modeling sessions that she used to promote her modeling career. She gave me (and every other boy in school, I think) one, and I took mine with me when I left for ACU.

Pin-up pictures were not permitted in the dorms, and I caught some flak early on because of the picture, so I signed it "Love, Mother" and claimed that it was a family portrait. See what you think:

Can you see the family resemblance? The ink has faded in 50+ years - you can just barely make out the "Love, Mother" signature. Since the dorm checker stopped hassling me about the picture being up, I thought I had really pulled something off, until my real mother came to visit my room. She was not amused. By the way, you get to see Madelyn's picture because she handed out dozens of these and sent them to every TV station in the state. No privacy issues here.

But the woman who really pursued me was.... Anita Bryant. Yes, that Anita Bryant, the singer. I told you that I worked for a radio station in Abilene, and I got to interview lots of celebrities, Anita among them. Here's a candid shot of the two of us in the VW bus that was decked out for remote broadcasts.

You can tell from the look on her face that she is just in awe of me. I had that effect on older women. The problem was, not long after, I began dating Barb, but Anita just would not leave me alone! She would write me love notes and send me cards, and of course, Barb would see them. No really. Look:

 And...

Notice the 3-cent stamp. Love was cheap in those days! I finally had to tell Anita that I had found the love of my life, and she was just going to have to deal with it, hard as that may be!

Monday Meanderings - 8.12.2013

Monday Meanderings is on vacation today. Yes. Yes, we are.

Watch for another "Story from the Attic" on Wednesday.

Cleaning house - the books have to go!

 The week of July 4, Barb started The Great Clean Out of 2013 by emptying the attic of all the detritus stored upstairs. Most of that ended up in the trash and the recycling, but a lot of the items have prompted some good stories; there are more of those in the wings.

Next came the kitchen cabinets and the hutch in the dining room. Goodwill was the primary beneficiary of the odd and assorted pots and pans, table cloths, dishes, cups, bowls... you get the picture.

Now it's the bookshelves. Hello, Half-Price Books! When you are avid readers and scholars (well, one of us is) the accumulation of books is an occupational hazard. Mind you, these are not the legacy books that become a permanent part of the family library - these are for the most parts books that we cannot remember acquiring (and some of which we have never read). Trust me, the shelves are not bare.

There is a tradition of book selling in the family. Years ago, I worked for Ralph Sweet at Sweet Publishing Company. Sweet published a variety of books, ranging from commentaries to Sunday School curricula, all aimed at the churches of Christ market place. The big seller was always the VBS material, a new series every year.

For 30 years, until 2007, Abilene Christian held a summer Bible Teacher's Workshop, a source of resources and ideas to teachers and church leaders. Sweet always had several tables of books and materials for sale at these workshops, and for several years, Barb and I manned those tables. We loaded up a U-Haul trailer full of books, VBS kits and assorted teacher materials, dropped the kids off in Breckenridge at the grand parents and spent a week in Abilene at the Workshop. We attended the sales tables by day, and evenings were like a holiday for us; eating out, a dip in the motel pool each evening and air conditioned comfort.

Ralph collected remainder books all year, quantities of books from various Christian publishers that remained unsold and could be purchased by the box. We set them out and sold them for a pittance, but they were very popular, even if we did have to post a sign that said "If we serve you fish, we trust you will not eat the bones." No, really. This was a conservative crowd!

One year Ralph purchased John Allen Chalk's library. Chalk, who had been a speaker for the Herald of Truth and pulpit minister for Highland in Abilene, culled his library (like Barb is doing now) prior to starting law school (unlike Barb). When we put those books out, there was a feeding frenzy, bones or no bones.

Dr. LeMoine Lewis, a professor at ACU, bought the majority of them. He thumbed through the selection rapidly, pulling out books by the stack. Some he put in the "sold" stack, and a few he set aside and had us promise not to sell them while he ran home to check his inventory. We had been in Dr, Lewis' home and we knew that he had several rooms with nothing but books. He had library-style stacks in the center of the rooms, as well as wall-to-wall shelves! After his death, the bulk of his library became the basis of the Lewis Church History Collection at ACU.

I even sold books on Amazon for a time. After Barb retired from teaching, I posted what remained of her teacher books on the Amazon Seller site and earned enough to purchase a couple of iTouches for our use. And a few years back, we traded many of our fiction books at the little bookstore up the street. After Mr. Grape retired and closed his store, Half-Price Books became the only game in town. Based on the number of boxes and bags of books stacked around the house, they are going to be very excited to see Barb coming!

Monday Meanderings - 8.5.2013

Barb and I use an App on our phones to track the books we have read. If you want to add a book to your database, you just scan the ISBN number and it does the rest. The other day she scanned a Phillip Margolin book, a suspense story titled Wild Justice, and this is what got loaded:

Do you think there might be a mistake or three in there somewhere?

Yea! Learning Ally finally got their air conditioner working again this weekend!  I'm sure the Studio is thankful that their readers can be comfortable in the recording booths and keep their clothes on.

Walking for an hour or so on the treadmill is just plain boring. I've tried several methods to deal with the monotony, but what's working at the moment is Pandora. Silver's Gym has WiFi and I created a channel that features Allman Brothers, Stevie Ray, Hendrix, Clapton and the odd and assorted blues musician. Good times!

You can't make this stuff up, folks. Item in the news recently said that a Chinese man named Li tried to smuggle his beloved pet turtle through airport security by putting it in a hamburger container between two buns and a slice of cheese. Oh, my. Where to even begin with this one?

Crow Mystery Solved.

The Texas Department of Public Safety was called in when police found over 200 dead crows near downtown Austin recently, and there was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu. A Bird Pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and, to everyone's relief, confirmed the problem was definitely NOT Avian Flu. The cause of death, rather, appeared to be vehicular impacts.

However, a detailed analysis of the paint particles found on the bird's beaks and claws determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, while only 2% were killed by an impact with an automobile. DPS then hired an Ornithological Behaviorist from A&M to determine if there was a cause for the disproportionate percentages of truck kills versus car kills.

The Ornithological Behaviorist very quickly concluded the cause: when crows eat road kill, they always have a look-out nearby to warn of impending danger. The conclusion was that while all the lookout crows could say "Cah", none could say "Truck."