Brother, WTF Art Thou?

Today, I invite you to read a eulogy. No need to feel sad, nobody you know and the in memoriam is deliberately humorous. As Chris Knopf has pointed out, nonprofessional writing includes many examples.

The day after the 4^th of July celebration, my middle brother Glen was killed in a fire. His house burned. Emergency medical services arrived and attempted resuscitation before, during, and after transport. As big and as strong as he was, he didn’t make it. Our hope he died of smoke inhalation and not the fire itself may have some foundation.

Glen’s granddaughter, Paris, is our heroine. Once again she stepped up and made ‘the arrangements’, as the phrase goes.

In the inevitable remembrances, she hadn’t heard some of the childhood mischief stirred up by Glen, so I jotted notes, which became the eulogy outstandingly read by our youngest brother Ray.

— Leigh

 

Glen, in Memoriam

by Leigh Lundin, read by Ray Lundin

 

Visitors today face an urn they will refer to as Glen. That’s wrong. There’s no way a talented mortician could pack Glen’s personality into an urn. His ego alone would require a container the size of a school bus. He wasn’t merely bigger than life, he might be bigger than death.

Let’s view Glen from the outside inward. No doubt he hopes we mention his dazzling good looks, and indeed we begin with his Sartorial Splendor.

A Friend of Fashion

Between Haight-Ashbury and Greenwich Village¹

‘Sartorial’ is not a word we Hoosiers often use, a derivative from Mrs. Lord’s Latin class referring to exquisite tailoring and fine clothes.

Unlike most men, Glen liked pink shirts, not every day or every week, but occasionally. Women loved it, but some males frowned upon the practice. Whispered rumors floated of an unlearned gomer or two upbraiding his choice of shirts once, but never ever twice. Challenging a muscular 6’3 guy with steel-blue eyes was not one of life’s smartest choices. Besides, if a man didn’t have enough XY testosterone to overpower a pink shirt, he ain’t much of a man.

When Glen started factory work as in industrial electrician, he initially tucked his long hippie hair under a ball cap, but that didn’t last long. Shortly after he let his hair out, a half dozen guys cornered him. Glen sneered and moved in on them. “Only six of you?” He soon became a legend.

I’m here to tell you pink shirts were a mild evolution, a compromise of sorts. In recent years, the 1959 song ‘Pink Shoe Laces’ appeared in the television series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, in video games, and last year became a Tik Tok sensation. The song’s hero wears tan shoes with pink shoelaces, a polka dot vest and man, oh man, a big panama with a purple hat band. That dude was nothing compared to Glen.

For a couple of centuries, highlights of farmers’ hues were chicken egg écru and cow patty puce. The brightest of colors in our palette consisted of God’s sky blue and DeKalb yellow. If you don’t know DeKalb yellow, ask the grownup farm kid next to you. You were never a six-year-old swimming in a bin of shelled corn.

Genetic foods chemists at Monsanto and ConAgra brought us new colors of day-glo green, luminescent lime, and iridescent indigo, but they hadn’t met the likes of Glen. Ninety-nine percent of the time, Glen wore work boots and slim jeans with a JC Penney shirt for a touch of class. But once in a while, he would erupt in a Peter Max explosion of color.

About the 6^th grade, peacock blue became a fad. Our Aunt Rachel made the mistake of giving Glen a blinding turquoise snap-brim cap to cover his white-blond hair. Uh-oh. Aunt Rae, artist, author, and professor, was a part of New York’s fashion world, but she didn’t anticipate what she started.

Our parents were surprisingly tolerant when Glen began wearing mismatched socks. He found a tie-dyed pink T-shirt and weird knee-length shorts in chartreuse, yes, that bizarre alien planet neon yellow-green. He stuck a tiny American flag on his snap-brim cap. Looking at him required welding goggles. As we strolled through the Garden of Gethsemane, we boys denied knowing him. “My brother? Nope, no way, never seen him before.”

So you see, a simple pink shirt is quite a mild departure. But we’re not done.

The Grand Necktie Ban

Private schools and a few public ones require neckties. Oddly, one educational institution in America banned neckties, tiny Arlington High School. The blame– or credit– goes to a high school sophomore, Glen.

Dad had inherited a collection of wide and colorful ties from the 1940s that he hadn’t bothered to discard. Enter Glen. His offbeat imagination took in the array of hues and patterns, and a lads’ revolution in fashion was born. He wore one of Dad’s ties to school.

He tied it correctly with an ordinary collared shirt, but the fact any student voluntarily wore a necktie startled fellow students. The impact was doubled because of the tie’s wide and blazing effect.

The next day Glen wore a hand-painted tie with equally blinding patterns. Other kids raided their fathers’ closets. Initially, they wore neckties as intended, and then one or two students wore them with T-shirts. Others including a girl or two belted ties around their waists. A handful of boys wore two and three at a time. Soon, a majority of students were experimenting with wild throatwear.

Most fads descend through the ranks, but Glen’s fashion moved up to the 11^th and then the 12^th grades. One boy wore a white T-shirt printed with a bow tie and a day or so later wore it with a standard tie – that is, a necktie over a T-shirt with a printed bow tie. Cravats caught on and ascots became a fad with seniors. During class breaks, the halls of higher learning swam with fluttering neckwear of silks and satins.

Unfortunately, Arlington’s principal possessed all the humor of a bad-tempered musk ox with jock itch. For this narrative, we’ll refer to him as Mr Ox. He realized his bloody school was out of control and Mr Ox didn’t like losing control. Worse than that, this was an insurrection, a rebellion against authority. Surely they were mocking him, and that damn Glen was behind this latest assault on his nervous stomach. Principal Ox would put an end to this nonsense. Imagine, daring to wear unauthorized menswear to school! If he could rule girls’ skirts too short, he sure as hell could deal with malefactors flaunting neckerchief disrespect.

So like a peptic walrus with a toothache, he shot out a memo, posted it on the board, informed teachers and coaches, and announced it over the intercom:

Neckties will henceforth be banned. (signed) —
The Honorable Grand and Respected Principal Richard J Ox.

Neckties! That’ll teach them!

The 1966 AHS yearbook featured a number of photos of the necktie craze, but sadly, not one of that style-setting sensation, Glen Lundin.

The Wild and the Woolly

If you spotted a guy communing with wild creatures, it probably wasn’t Noah or St. Francis or, if you recall local literature, not even Balser Brent. Glen forged an affinity with animals large and small.

When he was a child, Glen was crushed he didn’t have an entry in the Morristown Soapbox Derby Day Pet Parade. Mom trundled out to the garden and captured a garter snake for Glen to carry in the procession. There among doggies and kitties and budgies, Glen proudly carried his snake. Later that day he released his ‘pet’ back in the garden.

That summer, he caught a turtle in the ford at Greenfield Riley Park and named it Churchie after a character in the Pogo comic strip, the same cartoon that inspired the name Albert for our alligator. Churchie lived with Glen more than thirty years before shuffling off this mortal coil.

The farm hospital otherwise known as the ranchhouse kitchen, patched up wild rabbits, squirrels, and odds and ends of other creatures. When a cow entered labor in an excruciating breech birth, Glen knelt and soothed the girl, talking softly as the vet figured out how to extract the stuck calf. Both survived and thereafter adopted Glen as their human father figure.

Glen facing off against fierce man-eating cat.

Glen gathered feral cats and, ignoring deep scratches on his forearms, coaxed them quietly until they relaxed. He could be abrasive with people, but he had a Doctor Doolittle way of communicating with creatures of the Earth.

But that ain’t nuthin compared to his most awesome feat. Glen could step into his back yard and raise his hands skyward. Moments later, a hummingbird, and then two and three and four, would alight upon his outstretched fingers. Not many wonders can top handfuls of smitten hummingbirds.

Glen versus Trees

Glen could be intimidating but women, infants, and small animals loved him. Unfortunately, he had a problem with trees.

For instance, Glen and Leigh built a treehouse in a huge maple. Glen kept comic books and an alarm clock there. One afternoon, he lounged under the tree reading a comic when the alarm went off. Unwisely, he ignored it.

The chronometer shook and shuddered, quavered and wavered, tremored and trembled and traveled across the treehouse floor and out the door. Isaac Newton merely dealt with falling apples. This timepiece literally clocked Glen on his very hard cranium. Glen saw stars.²

After that, parents instructed us to stay out of trees, much like telling dogs not to chase cats and cars. It soon came to pass that Glen and Ray climbed another maple, one so tall we could see miles in the distance. Glen hung from a limb like a sloth. As Ray tried to maneuver past him, he misstepped and trod on Glen’s fingers.

The landing bounce was rough and injured Glen’s arm. It hurt for days, but he didn’t dare tell our parents.

On Sunday, he was still in pain but he soldiered on. And then… after church, when he tried to slam the car door shut, his upper arm went one way and his lower arm another. Glen had managed to break his forearm radius and ulna. No doubt our parents contemplated keeping Shelbyville Major on retainer.

Yes, this is Glen.

PB&J (Paris, Bonnie, and Jesus)

Paris and Bonnie were the great loves of his life. Glen met his future wife at his workplace. During the night shift, obnoxious male workers frightened women crossing the dark parking lot. Glen wasn’t having it. He faced off against the men.

Despite Glen’s reputation, they laughed, saying, “There’re eighteen of us and only one of you. You can’t hope to win.”

Glen said, “You’re right, but in the meantime I’ll hospitalize four or five of you. Who’s first?”

The amazing part is that an absolutely fearless Glen believed it and his utter certainty made others believe, thereby avoiding fights. Soon after, Glen found himself surrounded by ladies at work. I’m not certain who asked whom out, but Glen and Bonnie became a thing and then they became a married thing.

Glen mellowed after taking in his granddaughter, Paris. She was a darling, charming everyone including our parents, her great-grandparents. God love her. Glen found joy attempting to teach her music and grade school Spanish phrases.

⚡⚡⚡   News Flash   ⚡⚡⚡

Just a moment, audience members, one moment please. CNN interrupts this memorial, where we take you outside the Gates of Heaven. In a rare jurisdictional dispute, Charon³ from that place down below is confronting St. Peter as we listen in.

“You take him.”

“No, you take him!”

“No, you…”

“Hey, folks. Keep it down out there. What’s going on?”

“Sorry, Lord, it’s…”

“Glen! We’ve been waiting. Rock on, dude. Did you bring all these hummingbirds?”

This has been a CNN News moment, Hugo Hackenbush reporting.

Blessed Be

My friends, thank you for your patience. May you have fond memories of Glen and please love one another.

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¹     I sketched a couple of hippie days cartoons for Glen, an attempt at an R Crumb tribute.

²    At the description of the alarm clock during the reading, a grandfather clock in the funeral home began striking the quarter hour. Brother Ray paused, glanced at the clock and said, “And that is synchronicity.”

³    Pronounced, as you know, like ‘Karen’.

More than One Way to Creatively Write

A few days ago on the 1st of July, Chris Knopf wrote about writing letters. The essay reminded me of my mother.

Historically, we know many male writers through their books and novels, but only a few women writers. We can, however, study a number of women of yesteryear through their correspondence. My mother, Hillis, followed in that tradition. She was an inveterate letter writer.

And she would write anyone, sometimes asking questions, often asserting a strong opinion. Occasionally a public figure received a note with a schoolteacher rebuke. I imagined the recipient gulping and mumbling, “Yes, ma’am.”

When I graduated high school, I received a congratulatory letter from the state’s governor. In one missive, Mom mentioned in passing I would be graduating, and somebody picked up on it.

She contributed trivia questions to a radio quiz show, and after a while, the show’s host began to reach out to her. On occasion when Mom visited the city, she’d chat with the show’s presenter prior to lunchtime.

Once after bidding him goodbye, Mom steered her kid (me) down the street where she came across a panhandler in front of a coffee shop. The man looked distressed. Mom said, “Let’s go inside and I’ll treat you to lunch.”

“I can’t,” said the derelict. “They won’t let me in.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Won’t they? We shall see about that.”

Uh-oh. My mother was barely five feet tall standing on a phonebook, but Dear God, she was fierce.

She took him by the elbow and ushered him inside. Immediately the staff said, “He has no money to pay. He has to leave.”

The cheeky waiter was fortunate Mom didn’t haul off and slap him in the kneecap. Mom pretended not to hear him.

“Young man, you will bring us salad, ham and turkey sandwiches, and coffee, thank you.”

Across the restaurant, spoons and forks hung in mid-air. Cups suspended before reaching the lip. All eyes turned on a server facing off against a munchkin who looked like she could devour him for lunch.

“But ma’am…” The waiter saw a steely flicker in Mom’s eyes that couldn’t be broached, a glint suggesting his continued good health might come into question. “Y-Yes ma’am. W-Will you be having dessert?”

Postal Cards versus Post Cards

As proficient as she was catching the ears of movers and shakers, Hillis was locally known for her postal cards. Postal cards and post cards are different. Postal cards refer to official US Postal Service cards, typically manilla-colored rectangles with no illustration other than guides for the address. They come pre-stamped, postage paid. Post cards, aka picture postcards, are common commercial cards, often a bit larger than postal cards. They require separately purchased postage.

One other thing– The Post Office offered for sale official USPS uncut ‘penny postal cards’. Firms could buy sheets of cards, print their message, promotion, or advertisement on the backs, and then cut them to size.

 

 

Project Manager

Mom didn’t so much have hobbies, but rather projects. Hobbies are done for sheer enjoyment, the journey not the destination. Projects have a goal, a destination.

Dad was well aware of Mom’s projects, so when he came across hundreds of sheets of postal cards to be discarded, he asked for them. The printing on the back was no longer accurate, but the postage on the cards was still valid.

Dad presented them to Mom and she was gleeful. Sheet by sheet, she laid them face down on her work table. She rolled adhesive over their backs, and then fitted sheets of white paper over the preprinted card backs, and finally, with a paper cutter snipped them to size. Mom now had many hundreds of official, paid postal cards or, as Dad might say, a week’s supply.

Then Came the Fun

Mom’s handwriting was compact and efficient, if not particularly feminine. She could pack three quarters of Shakespeare ’s Hamlet on the back of a newly minted card, flip it over and sideways, and fill the left half of the face of the card. It turns out as long as she left three inches on the right for an address, she could do whatever the hell she wanted with the rest of the card. Mother could do things with cards no one thought possible.

The local postmaster admitted he enjoyed reading Mom’s cards. Mom pretended offense. Although privately pleased, she gently reminded the man he shouldn’t read private mail.

The Queen of Cards

Mother made special cards for children in hospitals. Using her famous blue-black ink, she’d start lettering a message along the edge of a card, writing a note to the child in a spiral, requiring the victim, er, recipient to turn and turn the card to read the note.

Sometimes, she’d purchase stickers or clip tiny pictures from magazines to decorate her cards. Occasionally she’d integrate pictures into the message itself. She experimented with lemon-juice invisible ink, but her most innovative cards bore no written message at all.

A child who might be hospitalized for sometime might receive an envelope from Mom containing needle, thread, and a brief note, instructing the recipient to retain the needle and thread. Every few days thereafter, a postal card would arrive with no writing other than tiny numbers and dots in the message area. Yep, Mom’s get-well postal card was a connect-the-dots picture puzzle solved with needle and thread.

 

 

T’was a sad day many years later, when Mother used her last card. By then, I was an adult. (Stop sniggering!) By then, many around the country and especially our counties had benefitted from Mom’s postal cards. That last card marked the end of a writing legacy.

In for a Penny, In for a Pounding

If nothing else, check out the video at the bottom of the page. It’s worth the trip.

What, you want an engraved invitation?

You’re a guy standing against a wall, wishing you could quietly leave the party. Hours ago, the needle of your Reject-O-Meter™ fuel gauge bottomed against the Empty peg so hard it wrapped around the pin.

A bevy of girls floats by. Their queen bee in the impossibly tiniest dress pauses before you and holds out her hand. “No excuse you can’t phone.” She drops something into your palm and stretches up to your ear . “Here’s a dollar to pay for the first call.” Giggling, she and her cortège disappear into the crowd.

She’s given you a dollar to make a call, but without a number, you wonder how to ring her… Wait, the dollar. You inspect it carefully. Ah, clever girl, extra points for ingenuity. There along the edge are numbers: 201-032-5… On anniversaries decades later, you’ll take out that greenback and gaze at it fondly.

Making Change

You visit the county fair. In the arcade are machines, some antique, some modern, but they have one purpose. For only a couple of dollars, you can drop in a coin and these gadgets will flatten it into a bangle, a pendant, a charm for a charm bracelet.

In other words, you can pay to watch a press ruin your pocket change, rendering them unspendable. Your friends had claimed they’d placed pennies on railroad tracks† to achieve the same effect, but you weren’t sure you believed them.

Meanwhile, the barker’s buddy in the next tooth practices a different art. You give him two banknotes, a $10 bill and a $1 bill, and he folds the tenner, creating a ring for your girlfriend, or a tiny heart, or an origami bird, flower, or beast. When he finishes, you can see $10 peeking through the paper windings.

As you turn away, Mr Fancy-Folder Fingers pockets not the $1 payment, but your ten-spot minus one corner. After he starts folding, he switches your ten dollars and continues with a $1 bill.

Ties that Bind

In the late 1800s, a distant great-something-grandfather put his young wife aboard a train to travel by herself across the great land. He took out a ten-dollar bill, a veritable fortune at the time, and tore it in two. He gave one half to his wife and handed the other to the Pullman porter.

He told the railcar attendant, “Kindly take good care of my wife. She’ll give you the other half on arrival, and I thank you.”

Financial Crimes

These scenes have one thing in common– the commission of a crime. Like that tycoon trope of the magnate lighting cigars with a $5 bill, the vignettes above feature a federal violation of law, specifically Title 18 USC, Chapter 17, §331-333.

The subject is damaging, defacing, debasing, and destroying money. It’s an offense rarely prosecuted, but of the examples mentioned here, only one party might find himself under arrest. Which one do you suppose?

The reason defacing or destroying money is seldom prosecuted is a matter of intent, specifically an intent to commit fraud. Thus the one character in the opening scenes who is vulnerable to prosecution is the origami expert, the guy who switched a ten-dollar note for a one-dollar bill.

Penalties, Fines and Times

The same USC law specifies fines and prison sentences for violating the law. It’s particularly harsh regarding fine metals. Crooks and swindlers have shaved valuable coins since ancient times, much more difficult with e-currency.

type	Bills	Coins	Gold
fine	$100	$100+	$250k
term	6mo	5yr	10yr

I’m not aware of a definitive resolution, but legal experts have debated whether free speech supersedes currency law. In theory, you could dump a basket of bills in the public square and light a match with mainly your spouse and fire marshal to object.

It’s not well believed, but the law applies to legal foreign currency as well. If you foolishly shred a €10 note or run a Canadian coin through a penny press, the same law applies, except you open yourself to loonie ridicule. (Mary and Melodie are presently rolling their eyes.)

^† Riding the Rails

In case the law hasn’t sunken in, consider the laws of physics. Here’s a very expressive video of why you shouldn’t flatten coins on a railroad. Video © Landon’s Animated Wheelhouse.

 

 

 

 

© www.SleuthSayers.org

 

Darkling at Dawn

I was adopted.

No, I don’t mean I was abandoned or orphaned, although strictly speaking, most of us are as parents pass on.

Melayna as Valkyrie

My adoption happened a mere 3-4 years ago. At the time, not only was I supposedly, theoretically adult (adulterated?), but so was Layna. Words like putative, ostensible, and purported might be useful here when talking about grown-uptitude.

Before we met, Melayna told her mother not to expect her to like me, but soon my charm, my wit, and my bountiful modesty won her over.

Frankly, she won my respect and admiration. I’ve mentioned elsewhere she saved a man’s life one stormy night at no small risk to herself.

Convenience Store

While she was pursuing her medical education, she briefly worked the night shift at 7-Eleven north of Orlando’s main airport near the East-West Expressway. I worried about her safety and picked her up one night.

She puzzled me by spending a few minutes buying a hot sandwich, a cold juice, chips, a candy bar, and an apple. I knew her mother had dinner awaiting her at home, but I said nothing.

As I headed toward my car, she swerved toward the dumpsters. There she handed the food she’d bought to a homeless man, a derelict who thanked her by name. He was a man others mistreated, but not Layna. I thanked him for keeping an eye on her.

Melayna as biker chick

Grocery Store

So here’s a girl, my polar opposite in many ways, an Illustrated Woman whose fifty-some tattoos could have inspired another two Ray Bradbury novels. This photo from an earlier article shows one side, but she’s one ruff-tuff creme puff.

When she grocery shops, she enquires what I might need. She’s even careful about date stamps on milk.

On forms that ask for emergency contacts, I list her as number one. If hospitals want to pull the plug, Hell will freeze before she allows that to happen. As Erma Bombeck noted, as we age, the child becomes the parent and the parent the child.

My friend Steve is the same way. His ancient, creaking, blind and deaf dog was like a pet out of a Vincent Price reanimated movie. The line between living and taxidermied became thinner than a microtome slice.

Daddy Tissues

I’m not sure when Melayna began calling me Dad… Daddy. The first time, I wasn’t certain I heard right, but I was flattered.

I skipped the Terrible Twos and dodged the Know-It-All Nines. I didn’t suffer through those fractious teenage years. I missed all that floor-pacing at 2^am wondering where my child was. Arguably I’ve unduly benefited.

Or course when I say we’re opposites, it’s only superficially true. I admire her kindness and consideration. She loves animals. Like my brother, she knows music well beyond her decades.

We share the same twisted sense of humor. Many times, one of us will remark sotto voce. Nobody else gets it, but I catch her eye in the rearview mirror, a quiet joke shared. Her mother thinks we should DNA test to be sure we’re not related.

For her birthday, I tentatively created a tattoo for her. Her mother opposed tats and had made her promise not to increase her art count until mama was long gone. So I showed her mom what I’d created and braced for the firestorm. The conversation went,

“Never, ever! Over my dead body will I allow… Oh, my God, it’s so cute. It’s her! She’ll love it. Yes, okay this once, yes.”

I assigned the Lil Darkling baby vampire copyright to Melayna to share or not as she wishes.

Follow the Bouncing Balls

Melayna came with a couple of hatchlings of her own. Her XY offspring recently adopted an infant. I sketched a cartoon for the happy couple. Before giving it to them, I asked others to critique and comment in an effort to nail the humor. To my dismay, no one got the joke.^† I began to consider adding a caption, when someone sent a draft to the parents… and they got it immediately. They’re the ones who counted. Yay, win!

And me, I’ve leapt from zero kids to a multi-generational great-grand-something. And that’s great-great.

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^† Just in case you have a life outside of texting on your phone, many message apps, sensing the person on the other end is preparing a message, display an indicator of three dots rotating on the screen. For this article, I animated the dots, an advantage my poor test subjects didn’t have.

My First Story

First story I recall telling happened in 1^st Grade. I didn’t plan a tall tale, nor did I intend to entertain anyone, only myself. As mentioned back on Criminal Brief, our teacher, Miss Ruth, who’d been in place since the War of 1812, taught the dangers of gossip and rumors in a Game of Telephone, aka Telegraph aka Game of Whispers.

She paraded us down to the gymnasium, where we took off our shoes. Lining us up alphabetically in a row, she seated us on the floor. Then she explained the plan: Teacher would whisper a short story to Sara Arnett, who would in turn would whisper to Roger Batton beside her, and so on across the row, passing through me, dead center in the middle. Mike Young, seated last, would hear the final iteration. Finally, Sara and he would stand and deliver what they heard, Versions 1.0 and 1.16, so to speak, thus we could grasp how inaccurate rumors were.

The story took a few minutes to reach me, a tale about a wee bonnie bunny on a bicycle. At that moment, lightning struck and Igor babbled in my ear.

I’ve always been a mad scientist. It dawned on me I could run a double experiment. I related a story to Walter Meyers about an ice-skating ducky with an umbrella. Snap. Bunny Version 1.8 ended and Ducky Version 2.0 came to life, moving on and on.

Then I panicked. What if the teacher did a trace-back? Had I just sinned, lied in some way? Surely worse than lying, what if they kicked me out of school? Forever? What if no one hired me, would I skulk on the streets while my classmates ran solar farms and worked at big name companies?

Then Sara and Mike stood. She repeated Story 1.0, after which Michael rattled off Story version 2.16. Poor Miss Ruth looked dumbfounded. With a slightly stunned expression, she mumbled, “I’ve never had this happen before.” Probably wishing she retired half-a-century earlier, she muttered, “Let’s… Let’s go upstairs.”

Without realizing it, I’d just told my first story.

The Flaw of the Draw

In a follow-up to the previous article about Western movies, what does Niels Bohr have in common with Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood?

Western quickdraw gunfights.

To be sure, few human endeavors (okay, male endeavors) are more idiotic than gunfights. I can’t imagine the genius who said, “Okay, boys, arm wrestling is fun and all, but we need more excitement. You and you, set down your beer, go out in the street, and shoot one another.” Then everyone (okay, males) cheered and chortled and ordered a further round of drinks before staggering out in the dusty avenue to burps and bangs, sparks and splatter.

Eventually Mother Nature winnowed the pool of foolish candidates. No doubt a few wives told husbands, “Your choice, Henry: At high noon, you can meet Pete in the street or join me at the train station where I’ll board the 12:05 back to my mother in Ohio.”

Later at the Short Branch Saloon:

“Henry, you yellow jelly-bellied, lily-livered, mutt-butt, rotted snivel-snotted, slimy slug of a coward, what do you mean you ain’t gonna gunfight me?”

“Uh, my wife gave me an ultimatum: show or go.”

“Did she? Listen, Henry, don’t tell no one, but Alma tole me same thing. She said I shoot you, she shoot me where I will live to regret it.”

“Did you mean what you said about jelly-belly?”

“Nah, that was whiskey talking. But the part about your mutt-butt, how does your wife tolerate that ugly saddle sore ass of yours?”

“Good to laugh, Pete. What say we get a drink, maybe invite our ladies like we used to?”

Reactive Advantage

Niels Bohr, Nobel prizewinning physicist, and contemporary and colleague of Albert Einstein, studied quickdraw gunfights. He wanted to know why the man who shot first died… at least in the movies. Bohr hypothesized initiating action takes more time than to react to the same movement.

Researchers call this reactive advantage. If you’ve ever seen a viper versus a cat, rabbit, or mongoose, the serpent rarely wins. The little furry animals are generally far faster than snake strikes.

A few years ago, neuroscientist Andrew Welchman of the University of Birmingham studied Bohr’s experiments. He worked out a simpler experiment and concluded Bohr was on the right track. Although Bohr won every faux gunfight (with toy pistols), there’s a little matter that it takes the brain about ten times longer to launch the reaction than the actual execution.

The Quick and the Dead

As mentioned last time, I very much like the second film of the Eastwood man-with-no-name trilogy, For a Few Dollars More. I felt it portrayed a flaw in the gunfight premise. In the movie, Lee Van Cleef and the bad guy wait for a musical watch chime to run down, after which the shootout begins. I wondered why wait? As the watch plays, why not draw, go bang, and apologize later. “Oops, I thought the music was done. My bad.”

I mean seriously? The bad guy is about to kill you. Why leave anything to chance?

At the risk of affronting my betters, I suggest two problems with Welchman’s and Bohr’s supposition.

1. Perhaps it made little difference, but in their experiments, no one’s life was on line. After their laboratory rundowns, they shook hands and went home for the night. They couldn’t feel the pressure of life or death. Also, many real-life shootouts were alcohol fueled, which could factor in.

2. Returning to For a Few Dollars More, in the beginning, a bad guy flees bounty hunter Van Cleef. He hops on a horse and gallops down the street.

   Van Cleef unhurriedly strolls to his horse and unrolls a small arsenal. He selects a revolver with a long barrel, takes careful aim, and judiciously pulls the trigger.

   Bad guy falls from his horse, but Van Cleef again takes his time, sights the baddie, and bang, he’s down for good. The scene represents a lesson learned from duels: Take your time. A duelist who shoots rapidly may compromise aim. One who takes his time can aim carefully while the other remains frozen.

Wyatt Earp agreed. He wrote, “The most important lesson I learned was the winner of gunplay usually was the one who took his time.”

The were admirable exceptions in the dark world of duelling. Occasionally a duelist would deliberately fire into the ground, leaving his opponent the moral dilemma of wreaking death or mercy. A wise choice, especially when combatants were former friends.

After the Show

In the early 1900s, gunmen (and Annie Oakley) who survived found themselves in Wild West Shows where they showed off their skills along with trick riders and rambunctious stage coach robberies, à la, WestWorld. As mentioned previously, my father as a child became acquainted with the last of the fancy shooters. They could literally shoot coins tossed in the air.

Several years ago at a fair, I watched a quick-draw artist do his thing. He extend his right leg well forward so that his thigh was pointed toward and about even with his target. His draw and reholstering was so fast, it was barely a blur. The suspicious part of my mind wondered if it was a magic trick, one where he pretended to draw and reholster, while a bang sounded and a hole popped in the target.

On the other hand, a woman at the back of the tent sold VCR tapes. They could be slowed and studied frame-by-frame, which argued against trickery, a damn fast 20ms. What do you think?

How the West has Worn

What defines a Western? Many argue it’s an American phenomenon although European filmmakers have left a sizable stamp. It’s more than six-guns and shootouts and Mama, fetch the rifle.

To me, their morality plays with clearly delineated rôles, good and evil, male and female, peace and violence. Good triumphs over wickedness and although we vicariously enjoy violence in pursuit of justice, peace eventually reigns. All becomes right with the world.

List of Lists

I was thumbing through my feed when it decided I needed more exposure to Westerns. The internet is loaded with articles about the 10 Best Westerns and the 20 Best Western Actors. More than most genres,  opinions differ wildly but not violently. An actor at the top of one list doesn’t appear on other lists at all. I was surprised one film list opened with WestWorld and The Three Amigos comedy on the list. Are those even Westerns?

So be it. When we were children, lists in no special order might include:

1.	Roy Rogers	11.	Richard Boone
2.	Gene Autry	12.	Jimmy Stewart
3.	Clayton Moore	13.	Michael Landon
4.	Jay Silverheels	14.	Dan Blocker
5.	Duncan Renaldo	15.	Hugh O’Brian
6.	James Arness	16.	Gene Barry
7.	James Garner	17.	Josh Randall
8.	Steve McQueen	18.	William Boyd
9.	Chuck Connors	19.	Lash La Rue
10.	Clint Walker	20.	… and many more

Haboob has watched more Westerns than Sergio Leone’s film editor. Some of her favorites are obscure, some she’s watched many times. Her popularity list runs thus:

1.	John Wayne	4.	Sam Elliot
2.	Walter Brennan	5.	Barbara Stanwick
3.	Yul Brynner	6.	Maureen O’Hara

Frankly, I’m not sure Haboob could be trusted in a room alone with Sam Elliot. Similarly, Sharon’s list goes like this:

1.	Kevin Costner	4.	no one worth mentioning
2.	Kevin Costner	5.
3.	Kevin Costner	6.

To me, the mark of a good film is what we remember five or ten years after viewing it. Some blockbusters (i.e, The French Connection) have left few memory traces, but other less popular movies had scenes that stuck. My own list isn’t as well considered, but I’d hazard my favorite actors include:

1.	Clint Eastwood	5.	John Wayne
2.	Lee Van Cleef	6.	Charles Bronson
3.	Henry Fonda	7.	Jack Elam
4.	Yul Brynner	8.	umm…

Jack Elam had a wandering eye. No, not that kind, although he was once called the most loathsome man in Hollywood. Sadly, two of my favorites have been called Mr. Loathsome and Mr. Ugly. Elam injured his eye as a child and it became a kind of trademark, terrifying children with his bad guy portrayals in B-movie after movie Westerns. He appears so often, that he earned a kind of audience affection and went on to become a leading man and even starred in comedies.

I put Fonda on my list not because of his heroic rôles, but when he played a bad guy with chilling ice-cold blue eyes. Fans could easily believe the presence of evil. His interaction with Charles Bronson is memorable.

Since I was a kid, Lee Van Cleef fascinated me. When spaghetti Westerns emerged, Ol’ Squinty Eyes came into his own. He seconded Eastwood in a couple of man-with-no-name Westerns and starred in his own, once matched against a knife-thrower and a psychotic German bounty hunter. He also starred in a near-Western as a ferry operator facing off against an army.

My favorite of the man-with-no-name series was the middle one, A Few Dollars More. Many will challenge that, although I think John mentioned he agreed. The most humane of the films, it combines an intriguing plot with a poignant relationship between bounty hunters Van Cleef and Eastwood. We can see Eastwood doesn’t mind poking fun at himself and we discover Van Cleef is a better nimrod^† than Eastwood himself.

Train Spotters

I’ll end with a clip not of Van Cleef, but of Eastwood chatting up an old man in his shack by the railroad. The scene is unusual in that you simultaneously know and don’t know what’s coming, laughing when you least expect it.

 

 

 

 

To Kill a Dead Man @ Portishead

 

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^† In modern slang, nimrod means fool, but in traditional use dating back to Biblical times, nimrod refers to a good hunter, a good shot with gun or bow.

The Tintinnitus of the Bells, Bells, Bells

My parents used to rebuke us: “Enunciate!”

Humph. I didn’t think I spoke badly, but they would’ve instructed the nation with resolutely precise enunciation if they’d had their own Discord and YouTube channels.

A couple of decades later found me in France at a colleague’s dinner table talking about the weather. I mention the harsh winter in Minnesota and my French friend stopped me.

“The harsh what?” he asked.

“Harsh winter,” I said. At his request, repeated it yet again.

He said, “I don’t understand.”

“Spring, summer, autumn, winter.”

He looked puzzled. “I thought winter had a T in it.”

He was right. I wasn’t pronouncing the T. Same with ‘plenty’. Likewise, I pronounced only the first T in ‘twenty’'. Some words with an ’nt’ combination – but not all– lost their ’T’s coming out of my mouth.

Banter and canter, linty and minty seem fine, but I swallow the T in ‘painter’. Returning after a year overseas and more conscious of enunciation, I sounded like a foreigner. “I just love German accents,” said my bank teller, cooing and fluttering her eyelashes.

Language in Flux

By age 8 or so, I’d become adept at soldering and still use the skill for repairs, projects, and mad scientist experiments. Pitifully, it took me decades to realize I didn’t know how to pronounce it.

I’m not sure if it’s a Midwestern thing or an American attribute, but I leave out the bloody letter L. Most people I know pronounce that compound of tin, lead, and silver as “sodder.”

I don’t do that with other LD combinations like bolder, colder, and folder. Even with practice, solder with an L does not trip readily off my tongue.

The Apple electronic dictionary that comes with Macs shows North American pronunciation as [ ˈsädər ]. Interesting… no L. Then I switched tabs to the British English dictionary where I learned it’s pronounced [ ˈsɒldə, ˈsəʊldə ]. Okay, there’s an L. But hello… What’s this? What happened to the R? Whoa-ho-ho.

Speaking of L&R, when was the R in ‘colonel’ granted leave? Kernel I understand; colonel, not so much. What about British ‘lieutenant’? The OED blames the French, claiming ‘lievtenant’ evolved to ‘lieutenant’ but pronounced ‘lieftenant’.

Finally, what happened to the L in could, would, and should? They seem to have broken the mould. The Oxford lords giveth and they taketh away.

Sounds of Silence

I know precisely why another word gave me difficulty. I tended to add a syllable to the word ‘tinnitus’, which came out ‘tintinnitus’. I’ve puzzled an otolaryngologist or two, because I conflated tinnitus with tintinnabulation.

(Otolaryngologist? Speak of words difficult to pronounce!)

Which brings us to a trivia question all our readers should know: How does ‘tintinnabulation’ connect with the world of mystery?^†

Rhymes Not with Venatio

Before Trevor Noah became a US political humorist, his career began as a South African standup comic. On one of his DVDs, he altered words to sound snooty and high class, such as ‘patio’ rhymed with ‘ratio’.

Junior high, Bubbles Mclaughlin: nineteen months and three days older than me. Like Trevor, this ‘older woman’ had no idea how to pronounce another word ending in ‘atio’. For years, neither did I, but she could have rhymed it with ‘aardvark’ and I wouldn’t have minded.

C Creatures

I’ve been listening to ebooks recently. Almost all text-to-speech apps claim to use buzzwordy AI, but most don’t, not when ‘epitome’ sounds like ‘git home’. Similarly, ‘façade’ does not rhyme with ‘arcade’.

When making the Prohibition Peepers video, I altered spelling of a few words to get the sound I needed, such as ‘lyve’ instead of ‘live’. What a pane in the AIss.

I wondered if ebook programs would pronounce façade correctly if their closed captions were correctly spelled with C-cédille, that letter C with the comma-looking tail that indicates a soft C. If you stretch your imagination, you can kinda, sorta imagine a cedilla (or cédille) looking a little like a distorted S. (For Apple users employing text-to-speech, a Mac pronounces it correctly either way.)

Our local Publix grocery (when their founder’s granddaughter and heiress isn’t funding riots) spells the South American palm berry drink as ‘acai’, which meant both employees and I sounded it with a K. If they’d spelled ‘açai’ with the C-cédille, I would have learned the word much sooner.

I could say ‘anemone’ before I knew how to spell it. The names of this flower and sea creature are spoken like ‘uh-NEM-uh-nee’, which rhymes with ‘enemy’.

Bullchit

Permit me to introduce you to Rachel and Rachel’s English YouTube channel. She kindly explains we often learn words through reading and don’t learn their sound until much later. I was shocked that three of the words she led with have given me trouble including one I hadn’t realized I was currently mispronouncing– echelon. I was saying it as CH (as in China) instead of SH (as in Chicago).

Those other two words: In grade school, I became confused how to say mischievous and triathlon, requiring more careful attention.

Rachel also discusses how modern usage omits syllables. I say ‘modern’ because my teachers would have rounded smartly on us had we dared abbreviate, so I tend to fully sound out several of her examples. One she doesn’t mention is ‘secretary’, at times said as ’SEK-ruh-tree’.

When is a T not a T?

The phrase ‘can not’ has been shortened and shortened again over time:

• can not
• cannot
• can’t
• can’

What? Rachel enters extreme territory beyond my ken, explaining the ’stop-T’. Listen to what she has to say about it. That’s all for now!

 

 

 

 

© SleuthSayers

 

^† Answer to trivia question: Edgar Allan Poe famously used the obscure but wonderful word ‘tintinnabulation’ in his poem, ‘The Bells’.

The Mystery of the Firebear

This real-life mystery sounds like the title of a Nancy Drew / Hardy Boys novel, doesn’t it? But stay tuned.

First Nations near Flat Rock, Indiana first told of the Firebear living in nearby caves. At night, the Firebear roamed forests and fields, burning brightly at night. Seen by generation after generation of Native Americans, the creature was deemed immortal.

In pioneer times when homesteaders settled Flat Rock, they learned of the legend. Not only did they hear of the myth from local Indians, they saw the Firebear for themselves, coming out at night, flaming in the dark.

So, if I told you the Firebear was actual, factual, what explanation might you give? Historical records indicate it was real. Take a moment to ponder before we solve the mystery.

Major Works

My recent story, Dime Detective, was influenced by Booth Tarkington’s Penrod stories. Tarkington was among a number of Indiana authors wildly popular in their time, but, despite films, stage plays, and now audiobooks, are virtually forgotten by subsequent generations.

Along similar lines, Indianapolis attorney Charles Major took to writing, and success eventually allowed him to give up lawyering. His intensively researched historical romances became immediately popular, beginning with When Knighthood was in Flower in 1898. Three years later as Knighthood was finally giving up its bestselling status, a new children’s novel set in soon-to-be Shelby County, Indiana, The Bears of Blue River, made a hit with youngsters and adults alike. Today, the town square of Shelbyville features a sculpture of a boy with bears.

Major was certainly aware of the Firebear legend. So how would you explain the mystery of the Firebear?

See solution below the break.    _⤵︎

Nursery Crimes and Grim Fairie Tales

Last week, we brought you the surprise discovery of Zelphpubb Blish’s L’Histoire Romantique et les Aventures Malheureuses de Jacques Horner Hubbard Ripper Beanstalker Candlesticken Spratt,^† also titled Grim Faerie Tayles, a crime story believed lost to the ages.

Thanks to an arrangement with the British Museum non-Egyptian archives at the University of Brisbane in Glasgow, we are pleased to bring you this legendary poem, a work considered to rival William McGonagall’s Scottish translation of Poetic Edda.

The Curiously Murderously Nursery Mysteriosity Atrocity

A Grim Faerie Tale by Zelphpubb Blish (1419-1456)

	Jack Spratt of nursery rhyme fact:     With merry men his wife was seen. He had no clue Jill wasn’t true,     How could she be so mean?
“Render him dead,” her lover said.     Why did they act so cruel? With nightshade fruit and mandrake root,     She played Jack for a fool.
	Under low heat she sautéed meat,     Badger brains and ferret feet. She hated waste and tried a taste,     And found it savory sweet.
She stirred in newt and poisoned fruit.     The odor made her faint. She added mouse found round the house,     And now the mouse– it ain’t.
	She shirred a dish of poison fish,     She dosed it sight unseen. She sniffed it twice, she added spice,     But still Jack stayed the scene.
She stirred the vat. She sprinkled gnat,     Sliced in a long dead rat. That killed a bat, it killed her cat,     Yet Jack remained intact.
	Soon Jack fell ill, he sensed ill will,     Finally dawned a notion. How à propos, he had to know     About her deadly potion.
Jack felt quite old, flushed hot and cold,     Consumed by prickly fever. With some alarm, he grasped the harm,     When she snatched up a cleaver.
	Fearing his wife, he ran for life.     Jill appeared ready to kill. Rather than dead, poor Jackie fled     And tottered up the hill.
Heart a’flicker, he felt sicker.     He'd drunk a dram of liquor. He glanced aghast. She ran so fast.     She hastened much, much quicker.
	Cresting the hill. Jack took a spill.     Cobblestones made him stumble. The resulting wreck fractured his neck,     Jill’s push caused him to tumble.
Twas no avail, Jack kicked the pail,     Shuffled off this mortal coil, Gave up the ghost, demised utmost     Because she’d been disloyal.
	Though she’d contrived, coppers arrived.     They inspected how Jack died. The sergeant said, “We’ve got one dead.”     He wrote murder, homicide.
Plods sniffed the vat. They smelled a rat.     They seized Jill’s deadly bucket. They eyed the stew, the deadly brew.     Twas then Jill muttered, “chuck it.”
	• This was thought to be the end of the epic poem until the team's archivist, Rob Lopresti, discovered their Teutonic landlady making shelf liners and patching broken plaster with 600-year-old folios. Much of Zelphpubb Blish’s work has been lost behind mouse-run laths of the German inn, but the team found a scrap deemed to be the true ending of the poem:
With pen in hand, Sergeant LeGrand     Jotted her infamous last words. “I lost my nerve and forgot to serve     Four and twenty sickly blackbirds.”
	Under arrest, Jack’s wife confessed     In the church’s saintly hallows. Disdaining hood, froward she stood,     Defiantly faced the gallows.
She lost her head, poor Jill lay dead     Over a man, the village said. Committing vice, she paid the price     When she took a lover to bed.

— end —

Happy Easter and April Fool’s Eve.

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^† Spratt was known to ingest no polyunsaturated fat substitutes rendering poisoning difficult.

^‡ Last year, we shared a nursery rhyme about a greedy sister by Australian poet David Lewis Paget.