Irma Johnson

Sue Ane Langdon, where are you now? The almond shaped eyes, somewhat like those of a Chinese woman, the turned up nose, the cheery intensity that complemented her squeaky voice of feminine innocence and yet of seductive ways: irresistible to the quick and maybe even the dead of the opposite sex. These were some of the assets of the actress Miss Langdon. When the sexual revolution raised its banner happily in 1967 with the film "A Guide For The Married Man", who led the charge with her dimpled smile and swaying derriere as Walter Matthau's character began his libidinal meltdown in the brave new world of infidelity as comedy?  It was Sue, of course. When several years earlier Andy Griffith was casting about for a steady girlfriend for his character, the widower  Sheriff Andy Taylor in his self-titled iconic show, Sue Ane was the perfect choice, or so it seemed for several episodes. Sincere, friendly, blonde, young, good and kind: she was of a genre of ideal American womanhood that nestled in that precarious ledge between prudery and a straining-at-the-leash lasciviousness that a changing America recognized as the complicated new locale for those whom the male populace riveted its attention on and craved.  A good woman did not leap into bed in 1962 and it wasn't even implied as part of a character's life. Still, her vivacity trumped any guarantee of virginity. The term, a "family show" was almost a redundant phrase back then and Griffith's show especially did not countenance any sort of promiscuity. Still, beauty was not to be subverted like orthodox Muslim women in their disguises/tents or the extreme sartorial bashfulness of our grandmothers of the Victorian age.

When did dancing the horizontal rhumba become a blase event or at least a common one in the lives of unmarried men and women, as characters on television increasingly divulge? Filmgoers have long since become accustomed to the sophisticated and daring levels of scenes expressing violence and less and less implicit stories of sex. But now the last citadel of modesty, television is being besieged to drop any pretense of it.  Nudity in fact, common on European channels for a long time, is coming to America's airwaves and not just on cable t.v.

But what was Sue Ane's true gift to us?  She was an artist who would have thrived in any age, but her transitional role of Irma Johnson was a kind of final hand holding by Langdon's character for the shy and those a bit frightened about cheating as a lighthearted adventure. How could it be so bad when Irma's earnestness and friendly, guileless ways signaled neither danger nor damnation? If it felt good, so the mantra of the '60s assured us, it was good. Half a century later, a click of the computer mouse brings a near instantaneous roar of a lion of lust in the forms of any imaginable (or unimaginable) image of carnality, bestiality or in short, imagination-starving visions of deadliness: prideful displays offering no joy but mind altering and addicting excitement. Hefner and his disciples (four generations since the '54 "maiden"cover of "Playboy" with Marilyn Monroe gracing it)  still chase the dream of adolescent consequence-free fornication. Pornography stuffs many a pocketbook and we let it seep further and further into our mainstream culture with each passing decade. The match was struck long before Sue Ane's gyrations and to rail against adultery or promiscuity is perhaps akin to scolding hungry men who rob a bakery. Still, self-control is invariably left with no champions in mass culture and advertising. Is the legalization of abortion unrelated to these sea changes in mores in the period described? I think not. Demanding certain things, certain outcomes, like the satiety of all our animal needs when and where we desire and on our terms, well this may appeal irresistibly to the normal human inclination to control one's environment, but it does nothing to address another human longing: to nurture and to preserve the race. Marriage, commitment and children: these entities have been devalued as the afore mentioned ones have been raised up and embraced by an increasingly troubled and restless nation. Few consciously shout out militantly for libertine causes, but the constant cynical and glib denigration of traditional values and religious convictions in the media is a huge concern for this blogger. A renaissance of decency awaits combative strides by younger and stronger cultural warriors for whom these verities are like wondrous discoveries that their natural idealism can empower. I'll cheer them on.   

Afghanistan

Crashing bores bring throbbing pain

Some sleeping boors dig noise inane.

You look for spring but fall is all: both calendar and decline's gall.

Ask a friend of days of yore

And know reprising's seen a chore.

Folks have moved on and you are stuck

Unspoken words: "schmuck, outta luck."

You fondle shreds of rotting lace

And hold your buddy's guts in place.

Medic solemn nods the lie

So all of you will not die.

While love you knew you can't erase

As graceful end's a chance embrace.

Pray for hearts you'd see again

And shut the door on wicked men

Who feign devotion to the "real"

While loving your soul's upturned keel.

Could they sink your link to Him

With black guffaws while cursing vim?

The choice is ours, to walk or kneel

And haters lose when lovers heal.  

Vinnie K.

He was a very quiet man.  His mildness fooled the impatient and less than observant into not noticing him or at least into discounting his significance in even a small gathering. He looked, listened and seemed to pass no judgment.  Either greeting you or bidding farewell, he shook your hand firmly and wished you and yours well and wasted no energy on charm, flattery or niceties that distracted from a certain unvarnished truthfulness that somehow did not hurt.

Beginning with, during and after a major illness, Vinnie sent me get well cards. His handwriting was atrocious, but the thoughts, expressed through these deeds, now made the aphorism incontrovertible: that these (thoughts, i.e. actions) indeed are what count. Came a birthday or a relapse, and Mr. K. remembered and sometimes included a baseball card or some other small two dimensional memento of sports or of the war years…always a small but powerful token of his caring. He was not my friend, but my father's.  So often did I directly benefit from the love that reflected back on Dad (and then on me).  Once my abominable behavior while a car service driver, directed toward a less than angelic customer, was brought to the attention of the lessors of my vehicle.  Technically not my employers, these "bosses" nonetheless, held the power to deny me a leased automobile based on the apparently reported complaint. As luck would have it, one dispatcher on duty at the time was an old friend of Dad. Yes, he intervened with the powers that were, and my stream of income was uninterrupted thanks to him and especially thanks to Dad's more than cordial relationship with him as well as with nearly everyone he met.

Vinnie died more than fourteen years ago. I remember being surprised and frankly annoyed that his wake was arranged far from his friends and neighbors in our shared hometown. Some of his children had long since moved away to New Jersey and the services were held there. The last evening of the wake found me about seventy miles away with barely enough time to arrive before the final hour. In the gathering dusk with imperfect directions, I raced to pay my final respects. Several wrong turns and other impediments resulted in an arrival several minutes after the chapel's visiting hours had officially ended. The empty room, except for myself and Vinnie's body surrounded by gently glowing lights and candles gave me some comfort. Perhaps I had secretly wanted to be alone with him and this was an unconsciously achieved "success" to be able to say goodbye to him without the formalities and obstacles to genuine grieving that a room full of strangers would have meant (I never knew his family).  The funeral directors inevitably strolled into the room to gently abort my visit and then one of his son's appeared.  He introduced himself thusly and I identified myself, but did not attempt to explain who his father was, rather, what he meant to me.  The imagined beauty of joining hearts with such candid stories seem to always fall flat in my experience. For Mr. K., Jr., I was but a late visitor who regardless of who I was, was now an inconvenience and not a part of his memories.  That was okay.  I had my moment with Vinnie and I thanked him, perhaps too late, but perhaps he heard me.

It's Ryan: Dems Dyin'!

Well, Romney searched long and carefully and the result was a bold move: Paul Ryan. Intelligent, wonky, handsome, feisty Hibernian spirit and the perfect nemesis to the faux intellect of the current Occupier-in-Chief: the 42 year old congressman from Wisconsin is as fresh and welcome as a zephyr along an Alpine hiking trail.  The road will be long and arduous though.  Obama is a cunning demagogue with the social skills needed in a dying culture filled with too many half-educated dullards, malcontents and self-loathing, self-entitled boors, antagonistic Third Worlders and the over educated chattering Liberal elite and not so elite, both with no religion save the unshakable belief in sticking their noses up everyone's rectum to eradicate all kinds of "ills",  real and mostly imagined. These forces, lasciviously licking Obama's rump without a clue about what are this country's finest values and what are the foundations of its true greatness: hard work, individualism, respect for the property, privacy and rights of others, fair play and the abhorrence of class warfare.  Striving for wealth: well earned and saluted as a worthy aspiration as well as an admired accomplishment and not cursing those who have attained it...these facts are crucial to understanding the American character and the reaction to this poison of the current administration in less and less subtly attacking these roots of our society. The assault is horrifically, only dimly understood by a public more and more encouraged to suck on the government's tit with even less understanding of the shriveled and decaying nature of this particular dug.                                                                                                                  

The knives need to come out and they need to stay out.  Barrack Hussein needs to be challenged every time he opens his mouth and no lie should be left unexposed or unanswered.  The mendacity of the organization, with obvious ties to the Prez, that ran an ad in which the death of the wife of a former employee of the corporation run by Romney is clearly (and demonstrably falsely) attributed to Mitt's policies is only one example of the corrupt and thuggish modus operandi of the Obama-Biden campaign.  Romney and Ryan can and must stay the course, i.e. on and along the high road, but every calumny must be addressed and every incompetent, wasteful and injudicious move of the Democrat party needs the light of day, like shining a spotlight on a nest of roaches.  Get out the vote and search tirelessly for fraud in all precincts throughout the land.  It is more than plausible that the present crisis with the hated Obamacare legislation may have not metastasized were it not for the highly suspect election of the piggish jester, Al Franken in Minnesota.  Many of the votes "discovered" in the recount process were cast illegally by convicts.  An informal polling of them revealed a 9 to 1 margin in favor of Franken.  His subsequent vote in the U.S. senate delivered the filibuster proof margin of victory.

Americans may be waking up.  One devoutly prays that this is so.  On so many levels Barrack Hussein has revealed his animus toward the America that grew and prospered very well without him and his father's anti-western ethos.  The communist associations and memberships of his mother and grandparents are simple facts, simply and religiously ignored by the news organizations of this country.  The fact that he was even elected is a grievous wound to our nation, but the outlook for a complete recovery is not at all implausible.  However, we must remember the severity of the mistake we made.  Voting with your crotch, your hope or wish for change, and various other motivations that subvert reason with emotional and willful ignorance (why wasn't this guy vetted?) are habits to disabuse ourselves of, once and for all.  Does anyone except the looniest of the Left's disciples really believe that Obama presented himself as he has performed (or failed to perform)?  A well educated electorate, literate and engaged with attention spans significantly greater than those of hamsters: these are the citizens we dearly cherish, need and in the words of Leigh Hunt's poem "Abou Ben Adhem" about the spiritually wealthy title character: "May his (their) tribe increase."  

In The Driver's Seat

Did you ever try to explain how you feel to a person who doesn't care or cannot understand? One imagines this is a daily occurrence that is experienced by some adolescents and certain of the elderly in numbers disproportionately greater than those of other groups relative to the population as a whole. The alienation of youth and the isolation of the old and infirm: it would seem that a natural alliance of the two might ameliorate some of these travails.  No doubt this occurs in limited and unorganized ways. The sharing of a problem between a grandparent and grandchild is hardly unheard of. The special bond between each begins almost immediately with the "gut" understanding by the senior of life's finiteness, passionately and dramatically revealed by the birth of the granchild just as the start of the sunset of the grandparent's days are perceived.  Cat Stevens' "B" side of his 1967 hit "Matthew and Son" was entitled "Granny" and it told the tale of a shared confidence of these members of "skipped" generations.  All of us it seems, have an unquenchable need to marshall events and our environment in such a way that we understand ourselves to be in control, even if only in some limited way. To "drive the car" or to be in charge is as necessary to one's well being as food and drink; this empowerment or even just an empathetic sharing of its frustration by disaffected parties such as the young and old, can soothe if not heal.

Financial and various decision making powers: these are among the chief tools and/or weaponry of the heads of households.  And these folks, often those between 25 and 65, generally hold sway with the prerogative to say "nay" and more importantly, with the imagined luxury of not needing to ponder with any depth, the humanity and/or the angst of the disempowered older juveniles or of the ancients under their care who cannot or will not articulate swiftly, what are their needs and rights as persons, as they quietly strive to maintain their dignity.  Of course, this is arguably only a problem in the abstract.  A grandmother, a grandfather, an aging uncle, aunt, a great grandparent, a confused teen with an absent parent (or the scion of a prematurely deceased one): all of these are likely to have at least one relative in their lives who is concerned and who endeavors to help. Yet, there is evidence of dysfunctional aspects of these relationships that abound anecdotally, and because the foci of one in his/her prime years are often aimed at one's career, the smallest of one's children or other social networks that are viewed with particular interest because of business and social advancement considerations, opportunities to fail with these two groups, teens and the elderly, are many.  Of course, the extreme situation of having no family at all is no longer a rarity in the America of the 21st century, but let's assume that the "dramatis personae" are present, however meager their resources and numbers may be.

One unfortunate aspect of modern American life is a deemphasis on the past and of the importance of our history, both as a nation and relative to the nuclear family unit.  This impacts senior citizens in obvious ways.  "Old" too often becomes a term associated with "used up" and with places and people of little or no interest or excitement to youthful pursuits.  Ignorance and the lack of understanding about wisdom and experience, the chief and incalculably valuable virtues that those of advanced years possess, are problems that education and a revival of respect for one's elders can, not surprisingly, begin to solve.

The growth, both physically and intellectually of persons in their teens is sometimes viewed, even if only unconsciously, as a threat to certain mature adults in their prime. Their creative endeavors can be discouraged with subversive remarks or a more subtle chiding that seeks to keep the newly blossoming, soon to be grownup in his or her place out of fear or a perverse habit of domination.  These conflicts are as old as man's time on this planet and they are certainly not insurmountable, but the intra-familial struggle is a reflection of the geopolitical problems that have kept nations in varying states of turmoil and they can best be settled with hard work and the understanding that independence and mutually beneficial dependence are the right roads to travel.  Perhaps the surest approach is to assume that all of us are or were once, helpless and unclothed, both literally and in terms of psychic vulnerability.  Treating the stranger, the unattractive, the inarticulate, the deaf, the blind, the infirm or even just the less than pleasant, as thoughtfully as one ought to a struggling adolescent or a depressed oldster, without of course, patronizing or obviously referencing the pain of any of these persons (but determining that listening to what they have to say, is of paramount importance) is arguably one of the best choices to maximize tranquility and help to provide one of the answers to the problem of human existence.  Compassion, love, just spending time with someone, whatever the right word or phrase may be: the ability to truly care is a gift that can start to enable any soul to get into "the driver's seat."  My father taught me these things, largely by example and not pedagogically or in any pontificating way.  It was his greatest gift to me and as Earl Grant reassured us, though while referencing a great romantic relationship, it is "a treasure our hearts can always spend."