Bud Dashiell’s Solo LPs, Part 3: “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today”

UPDATE (5/14/08): Great news for Bud Dashiell fans! This LP (and the studio LP “Bud Dashiell & The Kinsmen” discussed in Part 1 of this post) is now available for preview and purchase on iTunes and Amazon.com. The live Kinsmen LP discussed in Part 2 is not currently available, but I’ll keep you posted if that changes.

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Part 3 of “Bud Dashiell’s Solo LPs.” For Part 1, click HERE.

The landscape of popular music changed dramatically during the final two years that Bud & Travis were back together. Even the year they chose to reunite was pivotal. In 1963, folk music went prime time with the launch of ABC-TV’s Hootenanny! show, but it was also the year that the mighty Weavers — one of the most influential of all folk groups — finally called it quits.

Of course, Bud & Travis had never referred to themselves solely as “folk singers.” Travis had even gently protested that classification at their heralded 1960 live concert in Santa Monica:

“One of the things that is frequently said of Bud and myself is that we’re folksingers…I guess if we sing, and we’re folk…it fits. But we like to do anything that we like. We don’t like to…just stay on one kind of material, but anything that pleases us.”

But no matter what they performed from their vast and varied repertoire, they did it acoustically, which became somewhat of a hindrance on the pop scene after The Beatles crossed the pond in 1964 with their Rickenbackers and Hofners, and “plugged-in” was suddenly “in.” So when B&T disbanded for good in 1965 — the year Dylan went electric — the two returned to solo club dates, where an artist with an acoustic guitar and a song could still find an appreciative audience. Edmonson headed back to the Southwest, and Dashiell remained on in Los Angeles.

Bud Dashiell’s I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today (W/WS-1731)

The times really had changed by 1968, when Dashiell released his final solo album, I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today (W/WS-1731). Instead of the record shipping out alongside LPs by The Kingston Trio (who disbanded in 1967) and The Chad Mitchell Trio (drawing a last breath as Denver, Boise & Johnson), it was marketed alongside Dashiell’s new Warner label mates The Beau Brummels, Harpers Bizarre, The Tokens and — in perhaps the most obvious evidence of a new musical day — The Grateful Dead.

Warner’s top folk franchise Peter, Paul & Mary were still touring, but even they had gone partly electric on 1967’s Album 1700 (on the satirical “I Dig Rock ‘n Roll Music” among others), and were in the final months of their own Act I.

But Dashiell knew his mind, what he enjoyed and what he wanted to do musically. He’d retained his artistic integrity, and — like Edmonson — was an intelligent man with a good sense of humor and strong opinions. Following popular tastes of the day had never been a big factor for either man, and Dashiell’s liner notes reflected those qualities:

“Who is speaking for the people who don’t get glassy-eyed and snap their fingers and say ‘yeeaahhh, baby’ when one of the paisley crowd drops some obscure verbal hallucination? So many noisemakers have been telling the American people to ‘listen’ that the American people really have started to listen. There are a lot of noncompartmentalized people who like to listen, and I like to talk to them.”

Singers speak through the language of song, and this LP offered up ten tracks for listeners to chew on. The variety is good, with one number from his B&T days, a couple blues chestnuts, three foreign language tunes (two in French from the late, great Gilbert Bécaud) and three songs from younger composers (Randy Newman, Jesse Colin Young and Gordon Lightfoot). Dashiell’s version of “Seasons in the Sun” (with a very tasty guitar intro reminiscent of B&T’s “Raspberries, Strawberries”) predated the schmaltzy Terry Jacks version by six years, but both of them learned it — as Bob Shane used to say in concert — off an old Kingston Trio album (1963’s A Time to Think).

Here’s the songlist as it appeared on the LP:

Side One:

1. I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today (Randy Newman)
2. Et Maintenant (What Now My Love) (Sigman-Delanoe-Becaud)
3. Black Coffee (Webster-Burke)
4. Vereda Tropical (Gonzolo-Curiel)
5. Better Than Anything (Wheat-Loughborough)

Side Two:

1. Seasons in the Sun (Brel-McKuen)
2. Lullaby (Jesse Colin Young)
3. Au Revoir (Gilbert-Becaud)
4. Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
5. Baltimore Oriole (Webster-Carmichael)

As with parts 1 & 2 of this essay, I’d like to offer audio of a few tracks since they are currently unavailable anywhere. Just click on the arrow/triangle in each individual “player” to hear the full-length tune. You won’t even have to leave the page.

First up is the title track, Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today.”

Next is a song that Bud first sang with Travis on ...In Person, a live LP recorded in 1964 at the Cellar Door in Washington D.C. The co-author of the song was with them on stage that night, since David “Buck” Wheat, late of the Kingston Trio and Whiskeyhill Singers, had recently joined the duo as bassist and Arranger Extraordinaire. The song? “Better than Anything.” So here is Bud’s solo version, sans Buck and Travis:

Third, a nylon string tour-de-force by Dashiell on Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain.”

The lovely “Lullaby” is a Jesse Colin Young tune, but Bud makes it own with a gently spoken intro to his own daughters.

Following the release of I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today, Dashiell continued to perform and teach guitar in Westwood through the early 1980s, when he suffered a seizure which severly affected the right side of his body. Less than a month later, Edmonson had a similar stroke, which incapacitated his left side.

Oliver Hassard Dashiell — who was born on September 28, 1929 (amazingly on the very same day as Edmonson) — died on June 2, 1989. Because of his distinguished service as a Battery Commander in the Korean War, he was buried in the Los Angeles National Military Cemetery, which borders the 405 freeway just north of Wilshire Boulevard. He was survived by his wife Mary and his two daughters.

Here’s Bud with a last word, once again from the …Gonna Rain liner notes:

“Right now, I’m an itinerant, a journeyman, a communicator, who wants to do things not because they are in vogue (I’ve been there) but because I am ready to talk of what I think, where I’m at, and how I feel a closeness to ideas like love, children, and my life.”

And with that, I say “Au Revoir” to Bud Dashiell.

- craig hodgkins

Bud Dashiell’s Solo LPs, Part 2: Bud and the Kinsmen “Live”

Part 2 of “Bud Dashiell’s Solo LPs.” For Part 1, click HERE.

The studio album Bud Dashiell and the Kinsmen (W/WS-1429) was the final Warner Brothers LP of 1961, and the live follow-up — Bud Dashiell and the Kinsmen Play Everybody’s Hits (W/WS-1432) — was very nearly the first for 1962. Only Instant Party by the Everly Brothers (W/WS-1430) and Connie by Connie Stevens (W/WS-1431) kept the two Kinsmen LPs from being released back-to-back.

Perhaps Warner was concerned that Dashiell would patch things up sooner than later with former partner Travis Edmonson, and wanted to milk the act for everything they could, or that Bud had always intended the trio to last only so long. Suffice to say that very few groups signed to a major label — even in the era of 2-3 LPs a year by even the top acts — have released two records so closely together.*

Surprisingly, these nearly simultaneous releases took place amidst a group personnel change. C. Carson Parks tells the story this way (in the discography section of his website):

“One night, totally unexpected by me, Bud came into The Ice House and told me I was fired. I gathered my wits together, spoke privately to Bernie, saying ‘we joined as a unit; we can leave as a unit!’ Bernie said something in the nature of: ‘I have a wife and kids, etc,’ so I once again went with his plan.”

Ever resilient, Parks partnered with his younger brother, Van Dyke Parks (yes, that Van Dyke Parks), and they both soon gravitated to the Greenwood County Singers — a group built on the New Christy Minstrels “folk chorus” model — who eventually recorded four LPs for Kapp. It was as part of that group that he met Gaile Foote, with whom he formed the duo Carson and Gaile. Although the two didn’t hit it big, it was for THAT act that Parks penned “Something Stupid,” which became a huge hit for Frank and Nancy Sinatra. So you never know where getting fired will lead you.

Left to right, the “new” Kinsmen are Bud, Bernie and Everit. Bud’s dog must have stayed home.

Meanwhile, back at the Kinsmen, Everit Herter stepped in to the spot vacated by Parks. Herter’s lone recording experience was on a solo 45 rpm single for Capitol Records in 1960, “Don’t Get Serious”/”Boys Were Made For Girls” (Capitol 4383), and it was he who joined Dashiell and Armstrong on the stage of Glendale College on December 1, 1961 to record what would become the Kinsmen’s sophomore LP.

A live album close on the heels of a studio recording debut presented a problem. The group was too new to have arranged another full album of tunes (the vinyl was still wet on the first LP), so the playlist needed to come from somewhere else. This issue was solved in clever fashion. To quote the liner notes:

“When the Glendale gig was set up, it was decided that Bud and The Kinsmen would perform exclusively the hits of their compeers. Tuning their guitars to their most melodic, they set upon the hit parade of folk music.”

No hits of your own? Just sing everybody else’s! So here’s the “Folk Music Hit Parade,” and the artists (per the LP) associated with each:

Side One:

1. Marianne (The Easy Riders)
2. The Whistling Gypsy (The Limeliters)
3. Scarlet Ribbons (Harry Belafonte)
4. Michael (The Highwaymen)
5. I Almost Lost My Mind (Pat Boone)
6. Matilda (Harry Belafonte)

Side Two:

1. Jamaica Farewell (Harry Belafonte)
2. Tom Dooley (Kingston Trio)
3. Shenandoah (Burl Ives)
4. Goodnight Irene (The Weavers)
5. Greenfields (The Brothers Four)
6. Guadalajara (Tito Guizar)

Performing songs made famous by certain acts didn’t, however, limit the boys to doing them with similar arrangements. For example, what passes for “Tom Dooley” on the back cover is actually a parody of the Kingston Trio hit. Then again, by 1962, even the Kingston Trio (now with John Stewart) was taking their biggest hit a lot lighter in concert. Of course, “Tom Dooley” had been low hanging fruit (and thus, “ripe” for parody) for all sorts of folk groups of the era, perhaps most notoriously by The Coachmen on their Subways of Boston LP (HIFI R-420), wherein they took off “Tom Dooley” and “MTA” in one satirical song. But I digress.

The other numbers on Everybody’s Hits are a potpourri. Most are well-polished, but a couple have the feel of a first chart read-through. Since it was a live album, the Dashiell wit is greatly in evidence. Herter proved himself more than adequate in this area (Maybe this is why he was drafted into the act?), and handled a good number of the song introductions and stage patter as well.

Adding to the musicality of the evening (though unmentioned in the liner notes…typical for the day) were percussionist Chico Guerrero and long-time Bud & Travis accompanist Carlos Gonzales.

So — finally — here are a few choice album cuts in glorious mono, highlighting examples of Bud’s humor as much as possible, starting with his introduction of the various ensemble members:

Here’s their silly send-up of “Tom Dooley.” Note how Bud pronounces “stabbed” as “stobbed,” the way it is written in some older transcriptions:

The next cut on the LP is “The Whistling Gypsy.” If you listen quick, you can hear Bud accidentally start his intro of “Tom Dooley” (”Throughout history…”) before he catches himself:

The group took a straight on approach to a few tunes, such as their rendition of “Greenfields.”

Here’s a fun song with a fun intro, Belafonte’s “Matilda”

Finally, the Kinsmen’s version of “Guadalajara,” a number which appeared on the Bud & Travis album Naturally the previous year. If there is any disconnect here, it is hearing Bud say that the song is “the kind of stuff that WE really dig…” since it’s pretty obvious that Bernie and Everit had very little connection to Spanish language numbers. Maybe it was just wishful thinking…

Speaking of wishful thinking…in 1963, to the delight of Bud & Travis fans everywhere, the two reunited, and the Kinsmen recorded no more, with Armstrong going on to become a program director on radio and Herter a photographer (if you know more details about either man, I’d love to hear from you). But that doesn’t mean they didn’t appear on another Warner album. In fact, Bud Dashiell and The Kinsmen were featured on Warner’s 1963 release Hoot Tonight! (W/WS-1512), which also heralded Lynn Gold, The Gateway Singers, The Phoenix Singers and the arrival of one of my personal favorites, The Modern Folk Quartet.

Warner’s Hoot Tonight!, one of the better compilations to be released during the folk era.

Besides marking the first LP appearance of the MFQ, this album is interesting for a few reasons. First, although it pretends to be a “live” LP, it’s actually a compilation with an announcer and crowd noise/applause added to it. Second, each featured artist gets two tracks, and the The Kinsmen’s are from different albums: “Wars of Germany” is a Bud solo from the debut album, and “Greenfields” is from the “live” LP. Third, only Bud is listed on the cover, though “The Kinsmen” made the list on the back. And finally, Warner’s biggest folk act — Peter, Paul & Mary — don’t even make an appearance, probably because they didn’t need the exposure.

Next: Bud Dashiell’s only true “solo” LP, I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today. Click HERE for Part 3.

- craig hodgkins

*Maybe only Ricky Nelson and his parents, with three consecutive LPs to end 1957 for Imperial Records, top the Kinsmen in this regard. The three LPs were Ricky (LP-9048), the ultra-rare Ozzie & Harriet (LP-9049) and Ricky Nelson (LP-9050).

Bud Dashiell’s Solo LPs, Part 1: Bud and the Kinsmen

UPDATE (5/14/08): Great news for Bud Dashiell fans! This LP (and Bud’s solo LP “I Think it’s Gonna Rain Today” discussed in Part 3 of this post) is now available for preview and purchase on iTunes and Amazon.com. The live “Kinsmen” LP is not currently offered, but I’ll keep you posted.

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Bud Dashiell and Travis Edmonson are best known as Bud & Travis, the popular folk duo whose superior musicianship and rapid-fire wit wowed live audiences in colleges, clubs and auditoriums from 1958-65. During that span they recorded eight original albums for Liberty Records (plus two “greatest hits” collections), appeared on compilation LP’s, and rounded out their discographies with solo work.

Dashiell’s final album with Travis Edmonson, the timeless Latin Album

The solo stuff came primarily during an 18-month hiatus from performing together. Edmonston produced two albums; Travis On Cue for Horizon Records (recorded live in 1962 at The Troubador) and Travis on His Own (1963) for Reprise. On Cue was later reissued (minus three cuts) by Tradition Records as Travelin’ With Travis.

[Note: Both are currently available on CD, along with the entire B&T and Gateway Singers catalogs (He recorded an LP with them prior to B&T), from travisedmonson.com.* Edmonson has been in poor health, and 100% of the profits from these sales help offset the costs for his care.]

Dashiell recorded two LPs in that same period, recruiting C. Carson Parks and Bernie Armstrong, Jr. for Bud Dashiell and the Kinsmen (1961), and Armstrong and Everit Herter for Bud Dashiell and The Kinsmen Sing Everybody’s Hits (recorded live in December 1961 at Glendale College). After he and Edmonston parted ways for good, he recorded a final solo LP for Warner, I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today (1968).

Unfortunately, Dashiell’s albums are not currently available in any format. So, with the presumed indulgence of the Warner Brothers Records legal team, I’d like to offer an overview of each as well as highlight a few sample cuts.

After splitting from Travis in 1961, Bud hired The Steeltown Two (Carson and Armstrong), whom he had seen perform at The Ice House in Pasadena. The “Two” had met at the University of Miami in the early 1950s, then were reunited in California near the start of the folk boom. Both had recording experience, having joined Terry Gilkyson for two Easy Riders studio albums for Kapp (Rollin’ in 1960 and Remember the Alamo in 1961) while continuing their duo act in the evenings. Their deal with Dashiell was similar. The Steeltown Two would continue to work as a duo, but would become Kinsmen when they joined Dashiell on stage.

The eponymous LP, released by Warner Brothers Records in 1961 as W/WS-1429. I love the “First Edition” designation in the upper left corner. The photo was probably taken in Bud’s den, with (from left) Bernie, Bud and Carson. Don’t know the name of the BIG dog.

The initial Kinsmen album wasn’t a big departure for Dashiell, as each of the twelve selections would have fit easily into a Bud & Travis set. In fact, one (”I Talk to the Trees”) had already been recorded and released as a single by B&T, and another (”Alma Llanera”) was recorded later by the duo for the Latin Album. Parks and Armstrong were clearly present — both instrumentally and vocally — and occasionally sang a few verses of lead, but this is clearly Dashiell’s album. Foreign language numbers dominate the list, and two are Dashiell solos, with Parks and Armstrong completely absent from both tracks.

Side One:

1. Pom Pa Lom
2. Ka-Lu-A
3. Cafe Y Panella
4. Far Side of the Hill
5. Wars of Germany
6. Alma Llanera

Side Two:

1. I Talk to the Trees
2. Meci Bon Dieu
3. She Was Too Good to Me
4. Jean and Dinah (Yankee Gone)
5. Bold Mountain
6. El Preso Numero Nueve

The album was actually the last LP released by Warner in 1961, and sported a testimonial in the form of a reproduced telegram from intellectual comedian Mort Sahl (who had worked a two week stint with the boys that September “for two wonderful weeks in the Tent House Theater in Chicago”).

Of course, it’s what is in the grooves that makes an album. And as promised, here are five full length tracks in glorious mono from Bud Dashiell and the Kinsmen. To listen, just click the arrow on each individual player.

First up, a Calypso…the lead track “Pom Pa Lom.”

Sounds quite a bit like a Bud & Travis arrangement with another vocal stacked in, doesn’t it? Here’s another…the jaunty “Cafe Y Panella.”

Here’s the Kinsmen’s arrangement of “Far Side of the Hill,” which is more up-tempo than the Glenn Yarborough/Limeliters version on their live Tonight: In Person album (RCA Victor LPM/LSP 2272).

To compare the trio with Bud & Travis, listen to both recordings of “Alma Llanero.” The B&T version may be found on Latin Album.

Finally — perhaps the strongest cut on the LP — the driving “Meci Bon Dieu.”

Next: We’ll take a look at — and listen to — Bud Dashiell and the Kinsmen Play Everybody’s Hits. Click HERE for Part 2. Or, click HERE to go straight to Dashiell’s final solo album, I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today, which I examine in Part 3.

- craig hodgkins

*Three B&T CDs are more widely available on sites such as Amazon, Collector’s Choice and Rediscover Music, including The Best of Bud & Travis, fan-favorite Bud & Travis In Concert and their swan song, Latin Album. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Tom Straw’s lovingly thorough Bud & Travis website, which has a wealth of information on both performers.

Some Shameless Cross-Promotion

I haven’t trumpeted, pitched or even mentioned my other website lately (“Wanna Buy a Duck?”), but I recently posted a fun audio recording of comedian Joe Penner’s July 1933 appearance on the Rudy Vallee radio program (the one which helped make him a household name several years before you had a household), and I figured “what the heck?” In case you’re curious (and even if you’re not), that’s Joe in the masthead photo of this blog.

To go there, click HERE. To stay here, don’t do anything.

– craig hodgkins

An Inju-Wii-free Christmas? Nope.

This Christmas, the big family gift was a Wii console. It was a bit of a hassle just getting hold of one, but we did, and it is a huge hit. In addition to the Wii Sports game that comes with it, I also purchased Wii Play on the recommendation of some Best Buy staff members (who I got to know pretty well during my time in line). The three youngest members of the family have also been enjoying Super Mario Galaxy.

After playing (and experimenting) with everything for a few days, I have some observations.

First, the thing rocks. And the Mii’s (the digital people who inhabit Wii world) seem to be a cross between the characters in Veggietales and the old Playskool figurines. But I digress.

Second, at least with the Wii Sports games, the participant playing field is really level. My four year-old son can hold his own against teens and adults. He swings the “tennis racket” and “baseball bat” pretty well, and even beat the console opponent a couple of times. Last night we had six other family members over, aged eleven to eighty-nine, and everyone played something at least once, and had a good time. It was almost more fun creating personalized Mii’s for everyone, but I digress once again.

Third, I love all the visual warnings to “take a break from Wii’ing,” obviously because of sensitivities that the couch potato youth of the world are going to flab in a lard bucket. My favorite image is a blue line drawing of a Wii controller sitting on a coffee table while curtains hanging inside an open window flap in the breeze. Just what does it signify? That someone sweat so much while boxing that the house smelled like a locker room? That someone became so distraught after losing a match that they jumped?

Finally, unlike hand-held games such as the DS, you can really get a work-out using the controllers and nunchuks. The past three days, I boxed, bowled, played tennis and golf, and took on several teams of legless avatars in baseball. This morning I woke up, and had trouble lifting my arms above my head, so if kids around the world are playing Wii tennis and boxing, my confidence in their ability to maintain svelte, youthful waistlines is restored.

But you do have to be careful. If you don’t stretch beforehand, you may suffer an inju-Wii, just like Mii.

– craig hodgkins

R.I.P. Dan Fogelberg

It won’t be the Same Old Lang Syne without him this New Year’s Eve.

I think any finger-style guitarist or fan of the singer-songwriter era of popular acoustic music feels a little melancholy at the news of his passing today. Dan Fogelberg provided an intelligent and heart-felt soundtrack to many years of friendships, break-ups and every sort of relationship in between. So many great songs, perfect for the times.

It’s a blessing that good music lives on, far beyond our ability to create it.

Here’s a link to his website.

- craig hodgkins

Books: Some Personal (and Influential) Favorites

When I began blogging this past summer, I’d intended to write a fair number of posts about books. For a variety of reasons, I haven’t. The truth is, I love reading books so much that it’s difficult for me to write BRIEFLY about them. Maybe I can’t write briefly about ANYTHING about which I am passionate.

Paging through my book journal recently, I was struck by my reading patterns, specifically, how reading one book by a certain author often generated an avalanche of buying and “catalog catch-up.” I’d read multiple books by the same authors as a boy, including those by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Madeline L’Engle and Walter R. Brooks, but the first multi-work author to appear in my journal (which I began in my late 20s) was John McPhee. The initial book: Encounters with the Archdruid (1971).

My boyhood camping, hiking, backpacking and canoeing experiences with Boy Scout Troop 91 (Napa, CA) gave me a life-long love for wilderness and wide open spaces, and my encounter with Encounters came via the recommendation of a friend who worked at a Nature Company store. I loved McPhee’s “fly on the wall” style, and my next three journal entries reflect that: The Crofter and the Laird, Oranges, and The Pine Barrens, all McPhee titles. Today, a full set of McPhee hardcovers occupy a shelf in my personal library, all first editions except for A Sense of Where You Are and The Headmaster (I’m not made of money, ya know).

Recalling how I began my McPhee collection caused me to consider similar by-products of my reading life. What other collections, interests or occupations of mine began with the reading of a book? Here’s some I traced through my trusty book journal, and a couple of others:

– The fact that I even began a book journal is because of Louis L’Amour’s posthumous memoir, Education of a Wandering Man (1989). I hadn’t read much of his fiction, but thoroughly enjoyed the memoir. I also liked the simplicity of his journal format, pictured facing page 105.

– I determined to one day work in a creative capacity for The Walt Disney Company after receiving (and devouring, page by wonderful page) a first printing of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston’s Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life (1981) for my 21st birthday. More than a decade later (well into my Disney career), I hosted several events with both men, and their signatures in that same book make it doubly prized.

– My interest in 1930s radio and film comedian Joe Penner (the subject of my other blog) can be traced to Ozzie Nelson’s autobiography, Ozzie (1973). Nelson and his wife, Harriet Hilliard Nelson, worked as bandleader and vocalist (respectively) on the very first Joe Penner radio program, The Baker’s Broadcast, beginning in 1933. Nelson’s brief description of Penner and his program piqued my curiosity, and it was all downhill from there.

– My WPA Guide collection (aka The American Guide Series, printed by various publishers from 1937-41) wouldn’t fill a bookcase if not for John Steinbeck, who wrote lovingly of them for two pages in Travels with Charley (1962). Today, I have all 48 state guides in first editions, plus Alaska, Puerto Rico and a fair number of city, regional and special interest guides.

– I’m not certain when I first developed my Wallace Stegner habit, but I do know that, if not for an essay in his Where the Bluebird Sings, and the Lemonade Springs (1992), I wouldn’t have one of the largest George R. Stewart collections around. Stewart was teaching at Berkeley when Stegner was at Stanford, and Stegner’s fond personal remembrance and review of Stewart and his work originally appeared as a forward to a re-issue of GRS’s masterful Names on the Land. Stewart was a unique writer, a career academic comfortable in many genres, including (but not limited to) science fiction, popular fiction, history, biography, as well as onomastics (the study of naming) and toponymy (the study of place names). He is more than worthy of further study, and a post of his own.

– It was a tag-team combination of Stegner and Stewart which led me to collect all twenty-eight volumes in the American Folkways series (published 1941-58 by Duell, Sloan and Pierce) and all eighteen works in the American Trails series (1947-48 by Bobbs Merrill and 1962-77 by McGraw Hill). Stegner’s Mormon Country (1942) is a key volume in the former series, and Stegner’s The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (1964) joins Stewart’s The California Trail: An Epic with Many Heroes (1962) as highlights of the latter.

Now, just so I don’t leave the impression that all I read is non-fiction books by dead guys, the past few years have filled my shelves with new favorites, such as Paul Auster, Alice Sebold, Glen David Gold (waiting VERY impatiently for the follow-up to Carter Beats the Devil!), John Dunning, Ian Mc Ewan, Van Reid, Anne Lamott, Leif Enger (please, sir, may I have another?), Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Kevin Baker, Sara Gruen, Edward Wright, and Joshua Ferris (who simply NAILED the insanity of the Ad business in Then We Came to the End).

I’m still plugging away in non-fictionland, too (or, as John McPhee has called it, “the literature of fact”) with recent reads of Os Guinness, J. R. Moehringer, Tony Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic is a masterpiece), Witold Rybczynski, Kevin Starr, William Goldman, Gary Giddins (when does Bing Crosby, Volume 2 come out?), Simon Winchester, James Swanson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Walter Isaacson, David Brooks and Robert McKee’s Story. Add in my addiction to all things Connelly, Cussler and Hiaasen, and that’s quite a list. No wonder it’s so difficult to keep my own writing projects moving forward.

Just this morning my oldest daughter and I were discussing the value of her keeping a book journal, if only so she’ll have some good material for a blog post in about thirty years.

- craig hodgkins

My 15 Minutes of Blog Fame

It’s much sweeter when you don’t see it coming.

A few days ago, while checking on my blog stats, I noticed an incoming referral link I’d not seen before. It was from BookFinder, the largest book meta-search site in the world, one I’d used countless times since it was created ten years ago as a class project by a nineteen year-old student at Cal. I have a link to it in my blogroll.

It seems that Anirvan Chatterjee (the afore-mentioned site founder) had happened across one of my posts while searching for something he actually wanted to find, and he was kind enough to write a brief post in his on-line journal about it and one other post of mine*. He also added three links to my site, one each for the two posts, and one for my “about Craig Hodgkins” page. The journal is on the main page, right beside the site’s search engine information fields, so it’s quite prominent.

Over the next hour or so, other incoming referral links appeared. It seems a kind soul at the Library and Information Services News site spotted the BookFinder journal and added a link to my story. In short order, a prolific blogger in the UK (normblog) linked to (and quoted from) it, and someone at the Amazon Seller Community began a thread about it. Several other folks linked through from Bloglines, del.icio.us and Google Reader.

All this because of a post I wrote more than 4 months ago. Go figure.

Speaking of figures, by the end of the day, visits to my blog had tripled (over my usual average) to more than 600, and Day 2 remained strong. I know visits and page clicks will be back to “normal” levels within a couple of days, but it sure has been fun!

- craig hodgkins

*The two posts were “Books: Frank Fenton and “A Place in the Sun” and “How I Finally Satisfied My Wife with a Lavender Blue Strawberry Choo-Choo Train.”

Exclusive Interview with iCarly’s Jennette McCurdy

The school paper my oldest daughter writes for just ran an interview she conducted with her friend Jennette McCurdy. She did such a good job that I chose her to be Get it Got it Good’s first guest blogger. Here’s the interview, exactly as it ran in The Mariners Christian School Junior High Tide, with absolutely no editorial assistance from Dad (which is probably a good thing).

NOTE (1/17): I’ve received some questions on this, so I thought I’d clarify. Jennette and Emily don’t go to the same school. They became friends a few years ago through ice skating (they’re on the same synchronized team and take lessons together). This interview was for Emily’s school paper.

Jennette McCurdy (interviewee) and Emily Hodgkins (interviewer). The lack of other people in the photo shows just how exclusive this interview was.

Star of New Hit TV Show iCarly Chats with the High Tide

by: Emily Hodgkins

Jennette McCurdy, also known as “Sam” from the new show iCarly in Nick, took time out of her day of shooting to talk to the High Tide about what it’s like to be an actress on a television show.

McCurdy, 15, has been acting since she was about eight. She has starred and guest-starred in a multitude of TV shows and movies, from CSI and Will and Grace to Zoey 101 and Malcolm in the Middle. iCarly is her first permanent television job, and she has enjoyed working with the different actors and actresses. She says her favorite part of acting is “making people laugh. I have also enjoyed working with Miranda Cosgrove (Carly), Nathan Kress (Freddie) and Jerry Trainor (Spencer).”

When the High Tide asked her what her favorite episode was, she responded, “Definetely, iDream of Dance,” the episode where Jennette got to dance in a kilt to bagpipe music. The rest of the interview went as follows:

HT: What was the funniest moment you’ve had on the show?

JM: Actually, there have been quite a few so far. There was an episode where Miranda, Nathan and I were supposed to pull down Jerry’s pants. We were doing a run-through and were going to mime it. But we actually pulled a little too hard and his pants and underwear started to come down. Nobody saw anything, but he was like, “Cover your eyes, children, you’ll be scarred for life!”

HT: What do you do in your free time?

JM: I really like to figure skate, hockey skate, write, cook, and hang out with friends.

HT: What did you do for the premiere of iCarly?

JM: I went over to a friend’s house and watched the episodes on their TV. We played board games, ate pizza, laughed a lot, and, of course, watched the Nick countdown.

HT: Who has been your funniest fan?

JM: Once, when I was in the restroom at Universal Studios, a boy — yes, he was in the girls’ bathroom…no, I don’t know why — and he came up and was like, “Are you the guy from iCarly?” And I said, “I’m not a guy, but, uh, yeah.”

HT: What is it like to see yourself on television?

JM: It’s really wierd. Whenever I see myself in the media anywhere, like on a poster or a magazine, it kind of freaks me out!

Jennette’s website, jennettemccurdy.com, and the show’s website, icarly.com, both have more pictures, videos, and articles to learn more about either Jennette or iCarly.

Hope you enjoyed it!

- craig hodgkins

Books: Frank Fenton and “A Place in the Sun”

Recently, I wrote of locating a book my wife had been seeking for more than twenty years (click HERE to read about our search for Palmer Brown’s Beyond the Pawpaw Trees).

Here’s a (lengthy) tale of my most recent holy grail: Frank Fenton’s 1942 novel, A Place in the Sun.

—

It’s really all Joseph Henry Jackson’s fault.

Joseph Henry Jackson’s Continent’s End (1944). I was too lazy to take a photo of my copy, so I borrowed this one from eBay.

In June of 2002, I picked up Jackson’s Continent’s End: A Collection of California Writing (1944). As a collector of western lit — specifically on my native California — I regularly thumb through anthologies which expose me to writers unknown to me. And Jackson, a long-time critic and book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle, didn’t disappoint. Alongside authors I’d already read and collected (the hugely underrated George R. Stewart as well as Fante, Steinbeck, Corle, Saroyan and Schulberg), were excerpts from Hans Otto Storm’s Count Ten, Royce Brier’s Reach for the Moon and Idwal Jones’ China Boy.

But the excerpt I enjoyed most was a chapter from Frank Fenton’s A Place in the Sun. I’d never heard of it, or Fenton. The only Place in the Sun I knew was the unrelated film of the same title (adapted from Theodore Drieser’s An American Tragedy). So, with the info on it and the other books which piqued my interest, I fired up the computer and hit Bookfinder.

I found everything on my list but Fenton’s work. A Place in the Sun didn’t seem to exist. Anywhere. Not on Bookfinder, ABE or Alibris. Not for $15,000 or in dog-eared paperback. Not even — collectors may shudder — an ex-library copy.

I’d been shut out on Bookfinder only once before, searching for the elusive But He Doesn’t Know the Territory, Meredith Willson’s wonderful 1959 memoir about the gestation, casting and staging of the Tony Award-winning The Music Man (which I eventually tracked down — signed!). I’m used to not being able to afford many first editions, but not finding a hint of one? Where to look? I remembered Jackson wrote in his brief chapter intro that Fenton had “revers[ed] the common progression, [and] began writing movie scripts and worked up to a novel.” Hmm.

Movie scripts, eh? Off to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

On the usually reliable IMDB, I became confused again. Was he the Frank Fenton who wrote or co-wrote more than forty motion pictures, including The Sky’s the Limit, River of No Return, plus some Saint and Falcon programmers? Or the actor who appeared in more than eighty films, plus The Philadelphia Story on Broadway with Kathryn Hepburn? Were they the same guy? The IMDB lists their credits as one and the same. But how could a guy who died in 1957 (IMDB again) continue to write for film and TV through 1968? I’ve heard about building up a body of work, but that’s a bit over the top.

So I simply Googled “Frank Fenton.” Aside from the IMDB-related stuff (and a bunch of links to the Fenton Art Glass Company), I found a couple of short quotes from A Place in the Sun which intrigued me further, since they were not from the excerpted chapter in Continent’s End. One website attributed a Fenton quote to the book Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946) by author, lawyer and activist Carey McWilliams (Volume 14 of 28 in the “American Folkways” series edited by Erskine Caldwell). I picked up a copy and continued sleuthing.

McWilliams mentions Fenton’s novel several times…even uses pull quotes from A Place in the Sun to introduce two of his chapters. And it turns out that each Place quote I’d read on the Internet is found in the Fenton material quoted in McWilliams book, meaning none of the internet sites had seen a copy of Fenton’s novel either. But McWilliams obviously admired Place, and lists Fenton in some heady company:

“No region in the United States has been more extensively and intensively reported, of recent years, than Southern California…And yet, offhand, I can think of only four novels that suggest what Southern California is really like: The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, Ask the Dust by John Fante, A Place in the Sun by Frank Fenton, and The Boosters by Mark Lee Luther.” (pg. 364)

High praise for a novel which no one seems to have read in more than fifty years except through excerpted second or third hand sources.

Months later, something “Fenton” did turn up on Bookfinder. It wasn’t A Place in the Sun, but his second novel titled What Way My Journey Lies (1946).

Frank Fenton’s second (and presumably, final) novel, What Way My Journey Lies. The inscription reads: “For Gen — A good eschatologist from another of the neo-Hypochondriac schools — Frank Fenton, 6-11-’46.” I’d sure love to know what that means.

I ordered it, hoping to enjoy it and learn more about Fenton. Unfortunately, the publisher (low-ender Duell, Sloan and Pearce) offered almost no author information on the dust wrapper, other than that he’d written Place. It was a very good read, about a WWII veteran returning home to a life filled with changing worldviews and difficult choices. When an inscribed first edition (see above right) showed up on Bookfinder a couple weeks later (for a ridiculously low price), I snapped it up as well.

How desperate was I? I actually bought a German language translation of it (Platz an der Sonne, printed in Switzerland in 1945), a purchase which still makes me laugh, since I read very little German. My Fenton library numbered three volumes, but still no (readable) A Place in the Sun.

Finally, in May of 2004, almost two years after I read the excerpt in Continent’s End, my daily checking of Bookfinder paid off. A bookstore in the Pacific Northwest (no, not Powell’s) listed a stated first edition. I called the store directly, and spoke to the owner, who said she’d just gotten it in that morning. I was unable to keep my tale to myself, and she was genuinely happy for me (maybe she just wanted to get me off the phone), saying “clearly, you deserve this book.”

I couldn’t agree more, especially when it arrived the next day in a bright and colorful (unclipped) linen-like dust wrapper with just a bit of chipping to the head of the spine.

The book itself is a surprisingly hefty wartime volume, but Random House was a major, and large scale paper rationing didn’t begin until after it was printed in 1942. And, come to think of it, the wartime pulp drives of the mid-forties may account for the lack of extant copies.

The long-awaited volume. Yep, it exists, and yep, it’s mine.

A final anxiety was allayed when the story met — and in many ways exceeded — the expectations created by the excerpted chapter. Although Place mirrors Fante’s earlier Ask the Dust in a few ways (each lead character was a writer who’d sold a single story, and each takes a love interest to the ocean at night), it remains unique in many respects. And though I’m not ready to place it alongside Dust or Day of the Locust just yet, it is a fine work, and it just doesn’t make sense that it remains out of print. But I’ll leave that to the publishers.

And what of Fenton himself? A quick glance at the dust wrapper answered one question. Frank Fenton the writer and Frank Fenton the actor were two different men, despite the IMDB listing. Fenton the writer studied journalism at Ohio State, wrote for several magazines (most notably Collier’s), married actress June Martel in 1941, and — to quote the author himself from the rear book flap — “kept writing movies and gradually began eating in better restaurants.” The flap also featured a photo, and Fenton the author looked nothing like Fenton the actor.

It seems certain, then, that the Frank Fenton who wrote A Place in the Sun and What Way My Journey Lies also wrote the screenplays for Station West (1948), Walk Softly, Stranger (1950), The Wings of Eagles (1957), several 1960s teleplays and a whopping 20+ projects with fellow writer Lynn Root. Not surprisingly, Fenton is mentioned as a contemporary friend of both McWilliams and Fante in multiple scholarly studies of the latter author, and in a recent interview, Fante’s son Dan cites Fenton as a source of his father’s early screenwriting work. In Material Dreams, noted California Historian Kevin Starr — attributing McWilliams — also lists Fenton as one of the “Boys in the Back Room” (”writers of the minimalist hardboiled school”) who were habitues of Stanley Rose’s Bookshop/Musso & Franks Grill.

Additional information on Frank Fenton remains hard to find, and I’m still checking around to see what new I can learn. If you know more about him than you’ve read here, please drop an email or post a comment. I’d love to know more.

I’ll close with a few paragraphs from A Place in the Sun (which — trust me — you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else).

Enjoy Fenton’s description of (just) pre-war Los Angeles:

“Down the foothills into the city the air changed. The lingering mist of morning fog was rising and in the fog there was the salt flavor of the sea. Then the shreds of fog melted and the great yellow and white city lay at the mercy of the sun.

He drove down one street after another. It was all beautiful. A million bungalows and mansions of all conceivable architectures; flowers he could not name, and trees he had never seen before. Strange races on the sidewalks: Mexicans, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese.

A strange and wonderful city.

It was not like some Middle-Western city that sinks down roots into some strategic area of earth and goes to work there. This was a lovely makeshift city. Even the trees and plants, he knew, did not belong there. They came, like the people, from far places, some familiar, some exotic, all wanderers of one sort or another, seeking peace or fortune or the last frontier, or a thousand dreams of escape. And all these malcontents had joined in a dreamy effort to create a city of their dreams…

This was a city of heretics. A themeless city with every theme. Chicago, St. Louis and Denver had each been different; each had its own sordidness and strength and fury. Each was lusty and titanic in its own way, joyful and somber in its own way, and each was indubitably American. But not this Los Angeles. It had the air of not belonging to America, though all its motley ways were American. It was a city of refugees from America; it was purely itself in a banishment partly dreamed and partly real. It rested on a crust of earth at the edge of a sea that ended a world.” (pgs. 101-102)

I think I can see it.

Now, if I could only afford first editions of Ask the Dust and The Day of the Locust…

* For an update (January 28, 200 on my Frank Fenton research, click HERE. Don’t worry…everything ends happily.

- craig hodgkins

Postscript: Shortly after I acquired A Place in the Sun, I took it to one of my favorite bookstores — Mystery and Imagination/Bookfellows in Glendale, California — to show owner Malcolm Bell. I’d mentioned it on a previous visit, and though he said he had a copy somewhere, he couldn’t remember ever seeing it in a dust wrapper. I figure that if a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Firsts magazine (and frequent contributor to their “Points” column) hadn’t seen the wrapper, I am fortunate indeed to have actually found one.

Books: Walter Brooks and Freddy the Pig

I’m not certain of when I first read one of Walter Brooks’ “Freddy the Pig” series books, but odds are it was somewhere between fifth and sixth grade. We’d moved to Napa, California the summer before my 5th grade year, and shortly after that, my older brother Chris and I both signed on as volunteer “pages” at the local library, located in the historic Goodman Building downtown (deemed an historic landmark in 1974). When you move a lot, you use landmarks and locations to keep track of the years.

The Goodman Library (courtesy of the Napa County Historical Society), long before Chris and I worked there

It was a great gig. On weekends and after school, I’d re-shelve returned and errant volumes, stock the bookmobile (in the summer…we also went on the road!), read books to groups of children, and present puppet shows. In my more leisurely moments, I explored the nooks and crannies of the turn-of-the-century stone building. Each break time was different. One day, I’d listen to some 12″ 78 rpm spoken word recordings, the next I’d thumb through hundreds of National Geographics. Through it all, I acquired a working knowledge of the Dewey Decimal system which serves me to this day.

But most importantly, working at the Goodman jump-started my nascent love of literature. That summer, I discovered the Greek comedies, Keith Robertson and the wonderfully skewed worlds of Richard Armour and James Thurber. And I ventured for the first time onto the Bean Farm (a family name, not a specific cash crop) in upstate New York, and the anthropomorphic adventures of Freddy the Pig.

The initial “Freddy” book, eventually retitled Freddy Goes to Florida and released with new cover art by Kurt Wiese

I’d never met a character quite like Walter Brooks’ every-pig. Even though he stood (albeit frequently four-legged) at the center of the action (more about that in a minute), he was flawed. He could be cranky, self-centered, sarcastic and less-than-heroic. But he was a literate and loyal friend, and could be amazingly resourceful in tight spots and sticky situations. In short, he was real. Well, as real as a talking pig could be, I guess.

But he wasn’t originally the star of what eventually became a twenty-six volume series.

When Brooks — who had already written several short stories for magazines of the day, including The Saturday Evening Post* and The New Yorker — first penned books one and two (To and Again and More To and Again), Freddy was just along for the ride. Those early works featured the animal members of the Bean farm heading off to (respectively) Florida and the North Pole, facing all sorts of adventures along the way. But like many talented members of ensemble casts (see Annette on The Mickey Mouse Club, Barry McGuire in the New Christy Minstrels, and Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show), Freddy was destined to be first among equals. He finally took center stage in Brooks’ third book, Freddy the Detective, and — after his cameo appearance 3/4 of the way through The Story of Freginald (which immediately followed) — he never looked back.

From To and Again (192 through Freddy and the Dragon (published posthumously in 1958), Brooks (and his publisher, Knopf) delivered nearly a “Freddy” a year. Along the way, the popular pig and his pals made great friends (Mr. Boomschmidt, Mr. Camphor and Uncle Benjamin Bean) fought unique villans (Mr. EHA, Herb Garble, Watson P. Condiment and Simon, the rat) mirrored cultural trends (spaceships, flying saucers and football) and snuck in some valuable life-lessons to a multi-generational fanbase.

Three representative Freddy titles

For later printings, Knopf “Freddy-ized” the series, renaming a few volumes to put the star in the title. For example, To and Again became Freddy Goes to Florida and Wiggins for President became Freddy the Politician.

I would be remiss to omit the major contribution of prolific illustrator Kurt Wiese to the success of the series. Although he didn’t execute the original cover of the first two books, he created the final twenty-four. Then, when the first two books were re-titled, he rectified that situation by creating new covers for those as well. A prolific and highly-sought artist, he illustrated more than 300 books (many with Chinese themes, such as The Story of Ping). He received the Caldecott Honor Book Award twice. He was also an author, penning The Chinese Ink Stick (1929) and others.

Great sales equal great availability, right? Nope. When I attempted to collect the series in the 1980s, I was dismayed to learn that every volume was out-of-print. After looking through bookstores (in those pre-internet days) for more than ten years, I eventually acquired thirteen of the series in original hardcover. A few titles were reprinted in the late 1980s, but even those were not widely distributed.

Today, the complete series is back in print, thanks to Overlook Press, following years of hard campaigning by a dedicated group known as Friends of Freddy, who (which?) still maintain(s) a marvelous website (CLICK HERE) offering more than you could ever hope to know about Freddy, Brooks and the series. They also produce a newsletter and hold annual conventions. Overlook has now reprinted all twenty-six books, and a couple of “compilation” volumes as well. A few years ago, my wife and I proudly purchased and presented a full hardcover set to our daughters’ elementary school library. And the Xbox generation is reading them.

One of the more well-known FoF, children’s literature expert and library director Michael Cart (who wrote jacket blubs for the reissues), features the Freddy series in his fine 1995 volume, What’s So Funny? Wit and Wisdom in American Children’s Literature. He has also contributed a fair amount of content on the FoF site.

You can pick up the Freddy books through my GIGIG store (click HERE), and also through the Friends of Freddy website bookstore. It would probably be nice if you went to their site for purchases, though, since all profits support the FoF organization.

In a nutshell, the books are, to quote the dust jacket of Wiggins for President (part of my hard-sought first edition collection): “All by Walter Brooks. All Funny.”

- craig hodgkins

*Fans of 1960s sitcom television will be interested to note that “Mr. Ed,” which ran for six seasons and starred Allen Young (and the voice of cowboy star Allan “Rocky” Lane as the eponymous horse), was inspired by a series of Post stories by Walter Brooks.

Why I Love My Kids Today

I was just enjoying my morning coffee and checking out my fantasy football lineup (still cautiously optimistic about my title hopes) before the day gets too crazy, when my mind drifted off to thoughts of why I love my kids. There must be a million reasons, but these are the ones which struck me today:

I love Eric (who is 4) because he rarely wakes up cranky, he always runs out to greet me with a hug when I pull into the driveway after work (and he always offers to carry my travel coffee mug into the house). He is an incredible mimic, and has a great sense of humor. He can hit a ball a mile, and throw a spiral across the lawn, but more importantly, he may be the nicest boy on the planet, and he makes me glad to be alive.

I love Erin (who is 10) because she goes at life 100%, because she knows how to be a great friend, and because she always has a good morning and a goodnight hug set aside for me. She loves to laugh, and we laugh a lot at our house. She is a great card player (we haven’t had to “let” her win for years), a naturally gifted and powerful ice skater, and is surprisingly normal for a middle child (I’m one, and I’m not).

I love Emily (who is 13) because she works at stuff that doesn’t come easy (it’s a short list), and because she likes to discuss writing, plot and story structure with me. I admire her desire to learn and know things (she out-reads me 4 books to 1 these days), and how she has become a wonderfully graceful ice skater. I love our tradition of playing every Nancy Drew computer game (by HER Interactive) together, and that she likes to watch DVD episodes of Route 66 and Wild, Wild West (most recently) with her mom and me at night.

On the negative side, none of them are left-handed, so I don’t know what they’re going to do with my three baseball gloves, four guitars, two ukeleles and tenor banjo when I’m gone. But I guess that’ll be their problem, not mine.

I’ll probably have fifty different reasons to love them tomorrow, and I’m thankful for that as well.

- craig hodgkins

Judge Learned Hand and “The Spirit of Liberty”

In light of my recent trip to the historical east with a large group of eighth graders (click HERE), here’s some timeless wisdom from the late Federal Judge Learned Hand. In an excerpt from what has become known as “The Spirit of Liberty” speech, given in Central Park, New York City, on May 21, 1944, he addresses a subject apropos for Veterans Day weekend.

“What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes.

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it… What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.

“What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”

Something to think about.

- craig hodgkins

American History 101.5

Part 5 of “My Life with Eighth Graders.” To read parts 1-4, Click HERE.

After our visit to the Iwo Jima Memorial, we made our way west across the Potomac to Virginia, and the former Custis Estate, now known as Arlington National Cemetery. Our visit was made even more special because four students from our group would take part in the wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The wreath presented on behalf of Mariners Christian School

I’d been to Arlington a few times before, and knew our students would witness a type of ceremony we don’t often see: one involving silent, somber reflection. Most modern public events seem designed to be loud and boisterous, often demanding audience participation. Even sporting events have acquired show elements unheard of twenty years ago. The moment a time-out is called, out come the Jumbotron highlights, T-shirt cannons and slam dunking mascots, each designed to captivate our attention until play is once again underway.

But, fortunately, sane heads continue to prevail at Arlington, where mobs of people shouting “you da man” are not welcome. Perhaps that’s a large part of the beauty of a National Cemetery: it truly is a place where you can pay your respects. If you’ve never witnessed the changing of the guard (volunteer sentinels from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Old Guard) at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, you have missed a ceremony steeped in dignity and honor.

Each student was asked to write an essay about the ceremony prior to the trip. The students selected to represent MCS at the wreath ceremony produced the top four essays.

Following the ceremony, we re-grouped in the Memorial Ampitheater (dedicated on May 15, 1920) to learn more about the history of Arlington and some of the famous men and women interred there.

Headmaster Don Cole addresses the MCS students in the Memorial Ampitheater. Uber chaperone Paul Wolfe holds some student coats in the right foreground, while ace photographer Mitch Vance peers around the stage in the far background, long lens at the ready.

After the Tomb ceremony, we visited several group memorials, such as those dedicated to the crews of the battleship Maine (from WWI) and the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia. We also visited the graves of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Senator Robert Kennedy.

Not far from the Memorial Ampitheater, I snuck away from the group for a moment to snap a photo of Audie Murphy’s gravesite. Murphy was the most decorated American combat soldier from WWII.

A traditional Arlington headstone marks the grave of Major Audie Murphy

Next: More Monuments and Memorials, plus a Ford and a Lincoln. For Part 6, click HERE.

- craig hodgkins

American History 101.4

Part 4 of “My Life Among Eighth Graders.” To read parts 1-3, Click HERE.

Our first full day in Washington D.C. began at The United States Marine Corp War Memorial, more commonly known as the Iwo Jima Memorial. Dedicated to all Marines who have given their lives in battle, the structure recreates perhaps the most famous photograph of World War II; the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi by six service men (see below), three of whom would not survive the later phases of the battle to seize and hold the tiny yet strategic Pacific island.

The raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi, from the opposite angle of the famous photograph. The names and dates of all Marine Corp battles since 1775 are engraved and burnished in gold around the base of the monument.

The massive three dimensional bronze replication of Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize winning photograph took more than three years to cast and assemble even after the sculpting work was completed. It was dedicated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on November 10, 1954.

A tribute from Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz also appears on the base

Our wonderfully passionate guide, Greg St. Jacques of P.A.C.E. Travel, assembled the students to tell the story of the five Marines and a Navy hospital corpsman (Sergeant Michael Strank, Coporal Harlon H. Block, Pfc. Franklin R. Sousley, Pfc. Rene A. Gagnon, Pfc. Ira Hayes, and PhM. 2/c John H. Bradley, USN) who raised the flag that day. He also recommended the book Flags of our Fathers by James Bradley (son of the Navy corpsman) and Ron Powers, which inspired the recent Clint Eastwood film.

Gagnon, Hayes and Bradley survived the battle and returned home, but Strank, Block and Sousley gave their lives during the continued fighting on Iwo Jima.

And yet, all six live on, cast forever in bronze to honor the memory of all fallen Marines.

John Bradley’s face being sculpted by Felix DeWeldon

The likeness of John Bradley cast in bronze

The day had just begun, and we had barely scratched the historically inspiring surface of our nation’s capitol.

Next: Arlington National Cemetery and The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

For Part 5, click HERE

- craig hodgkins