“His life was gentle ….”
March 25, 2009
GEORGE KELL
I see by the papers that George Kell died yesterday. He was 86 years old. Kell played major league baseball, and played it well, for 15 years. He narrowly beat Ted Williams out of the 1949 American League batting title, and he is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame – based largely on his tenure as the third baseman for the Detroit Tigers. The story about the 1949 batting race is one of the most often repeated episodes in the history of the game. On the last day of the season, the Tigers were playing the Cleveland Indians who inexplicably sent in their prize starter, Bob Feller, as a reliever. With Williams and Kell tied for the title, Tigers manager Red Rolfe suggested a pinch hitter for Kell in the ninth inning, but Kell refused to sit on the bench and win the title by not making an out. As it turned out, the game ended before he had to bat, and he beat Williams .34291 to .34276. Kell was reputedly one of the best contact hitters in the modern era. He was also a man universally admired, both as a baseball player and a baseball broadcaster. People speak of him with affection that a later generation might not have for, say, Alex or Manny Rodriguez. An bit of information in the reports of Kell’s death was that he lived in the same house in Swifton, Ark., from his birth in 1922 until the house burned down in 2001, and then lived – and died – in the house that was built on the same spot. It was an appropriate detail in the biography of a man known for steadiness, dependability. A salesman who used to call at my grandfather’s grocery store told me one day that he figured that I would stay in that store in that town for the rest of my life, as had my father and his father before him. That wasn’t for him, he said, he was going to see the world. I don’t know whatever happened to that man, but I doubt that his death will evoke the kind of sentiment I have seen today in papers around the country, prompted by the passing of a quiet man from Arkansas who never strayed from home.
“Down to the sea in ships”
March 22, 2009
SS UNITED STATES
Travelers driving south on I-195 in Philadelphia might glance to their left and see a sight both thrilling and melancholy – the sepulchral remains of the SS United States, mouldering away at Pier 82. This is the passenger ship that in 1952 crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Britain to New York in three days, 12 hours, 12 minutes – averaging 38 knots. That broke the record held by RMS Queen Mary, which is now a hotel in Long Beach, California. The United States record still stands.
It was sometime around 1952 when my elementary school class took a trip to see the United States in her berth in New York. At that age, I hadn’t been anywhere outside of Totowa but Lavalette, Seaside Heights, and Erskine Lake, so this colossal ship made a lasting impression on me. I would be married with children before I set foot on a ship again. Ignorant and inexperienced as I was, it had never occurred to me that a ship would be that big, or that it would have amenities such as a movie theater
My son, from an early age, has been knowledgeable about passenger ships, and he asked me once, when we had plans to visit Norfolk, if we could visit the United States, which was then lying there in a derelict state. That wasn’t difficult to arrange, as it turned out. I was surprised, though, when we went down to the pier one day and were casually told by a caretaker to go on aboard and look around. Chris and I were the only human beings on the vessel, and we made the most of the freedom, looking into every corner. She had been stripped, but there were a few scattered scraps of her past, and Chris came away with a table linen with the ship’s green-and-white checked pattern, and a menu. One sight we were unprepared for was a coffin – held in reserve, I suppose, in case one of the kitchens had a bad night.
RMS QUEEN MARY
Among the sights was the movie theater, now in tatters, that had enthralled me when I was about the age Chris was when we went to Norfolk. There have been several reports over the years of the ship being sold, sometimes with the exciting insinuation that she might be restored and returned to service. The Norwegian Cruise Line was the most recent buyer with dreams of bringing the historic vessel back to life, but this is hardly the economic climate for such an undertaking, and it will not happen. Lovers of the United States are worried again about the real spectre of the scrap yard. There are organizations that are devoted to preservation of the grand old ship, including the SS United States Foundation and the SS United States Conservancy. Dan McSweeney, vice president of the conservancy, recently wrote about the plight of the United States and his vision of its possible future – including a role as either a floating hotel or a ship devoted to international relief services. McSweeney thinks in terms of a public-private partnership to achieve such a goal, probably a hard sell at this moment in history, but a dream we’re not embarrassed to dream with him.
Dan McSweeney’s column is at this link:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20090305_SOS_for_a_national_treasure.html?referrer=facebook
“Ain’t nobody’s business if I do”
March 8, 2009
As we were leaving the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, Pat and I were discussing whether we would find any video of Bessie Smith on the Internet. A man who had come out before us overheard us and volunteered that there is a clip on YouTube of Bessie Smith singing “St. Louis Blues” in the 1925 film by the same name. Although it seems to have been a critical success, this film is all but lost. The YouTube clip runs a little more than nine minutes, and it gives a sense of the power of Bessie Smith’s performance. Of course, there is a lot of audio available from her recording career.
We were at the George Street Playhouse to see “The Devil’s Music,” a one-act musical show that recounts the life of a woman who was a major star in the 1920s and ’30s but is largely forgotten today. Miche Braden plays the singer and does justice the part. An interesting thing about Bessie Smith is that she led a life of drink and sex and violence that most of us would not condone in the abstract, but it was that very mode of life that fed the blues that she sang. She paid heavily for her recklessness, paid in ways that broke her heart, but somehow she tore out of her sad life a body of work that speaks for many souls who had the blues, too, but neither the voice nor the spirit to make their misery heard and make the rest of us think twice about dismissing them.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xrd9c_bessie-smith-st-louis-blues_music
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