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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781463432027 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 04/17/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 380 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Songs At Twilight
Stories of my TimeBy Arthur Langer
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Arthur LangerAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-3204-1
Chapter One
Before The Parade Passes By
The idea arose after I had written to Dave McPheeters in Cincinnati telling him that I was leaving New York and moving up to the Hudson Valley where Polly and I owned a home in Woodstock. Dave was unprepared for this turn of events, calling me as soon as he read the letter.
"Leave New York?" he asked, somewhat incredulous. As though I had chosen to violate some historic compact. "How can you leave New York?" he went on. "You're such a New York kinda' guy."
His astonishment sang out like a sonar wave bouncing off some unseen glacier. I had never thought of myself as "a New York kinda' guy," even though I had been born and raised in Brooklyn when it was still a fabulous part of the city. I have always loved New York, but by the time I was leaving, I had grown to love a lot of elsewheres also. There were moments I regretted not going back to San Francisco after the war. I never got over the quiet sophistication of London when I had the flat off Chesham Square in Belgravia. And how could anyone not fall in love with the charm and elegance of Paris? Put me down in Atlanta or San Diego and my homesickness for New York would evanesce pretty quickly.
"What are you going to do in Woodstock?" he wanted to know, his voice betraying a lack of confidence in my judgment. "You're no rock 'n roller."
Dave was making the same mistake that half the world kept making. The Woodstock Festival was never held in Woodstock, but in a place called Bethel about thirty miles away. Woodstock was still a prominent artists community - once an integral part of the Hudson River School and still the home to painters, sculptors, ceramists, and writers. I would not be a stranger among them.
"I'll probably write another play," I answered almost coyly, knowing that my reply had no chance of satisfying him. While we were good friends, my career in the theatre had always been a mystery to him. Dave was as far away from the Arts as he was from playing shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds. Yet I understood his sense of concern.
"Why don't you write your memoirs instead," he suddenly suggested. "You always had such wonderful stories to tell. Some of them were awfully funny. Why don't you put them down on paper?"
I hadn't thought of writing stories for a long time. I had lost my interest as soon as I went to work in the theatre. Although I had spent the major part of my career in production and management, I sometimes wrote plays. But outside of a one-woman musical, the others were still waiting to be discovered. Yet coming from Dave McPheeters, the idea of writing my memoirs seemed strange. Dave had many of his own stories to tell but never put pen to paper. He had been a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, that legendary contingent of Army Air Corps fighter pilots that never lost an American bomber over Europe during World War II. Then, when I first met him, he was working for The Urban League during the civil rights struggle. Afterwards he became director of the Head Start program. Dave was throwing me one from left field. But after hanging up the phone, I started to think about it.
Write my memoirs?
At first the idea exploded in my head like a wet firecracker. Pffft! Who the hell would be interested in reading my memoirs? I had always chosen to be laid back, never coming on strong about anyone or anything, preferring that my action or lack of action would say it all for me. I always basked in the applause I received for a job well done; like good grades in school, or winning a race, or catching a touchdown pass in an intramural football game. But fame was never the spur. Still I had always thought of myself as a writer, even when I wasn't writing. I can no longer remember what it was that started me down that path, but no doubt the loneliness and surge of patriotism I felt while I was in the Army had a lot to do with it.
Now we have come, my comrades For a cause which is far greater Now we have come, my comrades So that no one shall come later
To see my poetry and stories in Army publications filled me with an inordinate sense of pride, feeling that, perhaps, they were bringing a note of hope to the GI Joes and Janes caught in some dismal region of the globe. That was even electrifying. In later years I began reading the Martha Foley anthologies which were collections of the best stories chosen from outstanding journals and magazines. In college I became a mainstay of its literary publication and even had one short story published in an obscure magazine in Chicago. I was on my way, until The New Yorker sobered me up. It seemed that each time I submitted a story to its editors, it was taken from one envelope, then quickly placed in another, and sent back to me by return mail. It didn't take long for me to understand that there could be no future in an exchange like that. I soon gave up the quixotic idea of writing the great American novel. Besides the theatre was calling by then and God had other plans for me.
So, what kind of a memoir? An autobiography?
Several theatre luminaries I had either worked with or admired had written autobiographies that no one ever read, except their staffs, their families, and me. All of them disappeared as quickly as they came. Act One by Moss Hart and Dance To The Piper by Agnes DeMille made something of a splash for a while and then inundated the stalls of secondhand book shops. Mister Abbott by George Abbott should have done better, because here was a man with a terrific sense of humor. But, outside of the theatre, no one seemed to notice.
A tell-all memoir?
There have been so many of these in recent years that the art of subtlety and innuendo has been lost. Besides, from the reviews of these books, it seems that for a tell-all confession to succeed it must contain some truth, some half-truths, and a lot of untruths, embroidering all three into a triptych of contrivance. Reading tell-all books is like smoking cigarettes. They might give you a momentary jag, but add nothing to your life expectancy.
Yet there were other kinds of stories I could tell. Growing up within the shadows of Ebbets Field when the Brooklyn Dodgers played there had a dynamic all its own. Then I can still recall the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. It was a turning point for Americans that still resonates among us today. It changed everyone's life in ways that were completely unforeseen when it happened. For the young men of my generation choices were narrowed. It was no longer what college you would attend or the kind of career to pursue. It was either Army, Navy, Marines, or Coast Guard. On the night of my graduation from Boys High School at the Academy of Music in January 1944 some mother in the audience seated next to mine whispered to her very softly -
"They'll make a fine bunch of soldiers!"
And we did. Most of us answered the call to the colors and most of us came home. A bunch of American kids who hadn't learned to shave yet. Those were momentous days when the world had turned upside down.
There were boyhood stories, family stories, travel stories, and theatre stories as well. There was even one murder story. As I began to assemble notes, I started to see them as the landmark episodes of my life. By painting a broad canvas I could create a gestalt, a Freudian term which is the basis of some modern art. It theorizes that when a person looks at a painting, he or she will focus on the key elements in the picture. So if that is the case, why not simply paint the key elements and allow the viewer's imagination to fill in the rest of it? The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It would relieve me of the burden of minutiae which most likely could put the reader to sleep. Not only that, but I might be put to sleep as well. Once I understood where I wanted to go, I saw the immediate danger. For a writer to become his own editor might be a symptom of hubris. I hoped not. Out of the plethora of incidents and people that shaped my life I decided that the stories I selected have an attraction that outperforms the rest.
In the theatre the phrase Take it from the top is a directive in rehearsal for the cast to repeat everything from the beginning. Of course, unlike the theatre, nothing in life is a rehearsal nor is it make-believe. Yet having been there before, the last thing left for me to say is
This is where I came in.
The Jersey Bounce
No one knew where Max Ader came from, nor did anyone care. Some of the Jewish farmers in Pine Brook thought he had emigrated from Rumania. Others weren't sure about that, only agreeing that from his accent, he had probably been born in the Carpathian Mountains. My mother said he was never born at all, only hatched.
He had been introduced to my Aunt Rosie by Sam Nachamson, a dairy farmer who let him sleep in his barn during cold winter nights in return for chores like sweeping out the stable and seeing that the cows remained content. As far as my mother went, he was an anathema. Although my mother could never qualify as a Brahmin, Max Ader in her eyes was an Untouchable. Of course, no one knew what he thought about her.
Nor did anyone know what Max did for a living. Maybe that's because he never did anything. He was perfectly content to live off the earnings of his wife which wasn't much at all. Yet somehow he and Rosie managed to scrape together enough money to buy a dispossessed shack on Route 46, a two-lane highway that cut through New Jersey from the George Washington Bridge to the Delaware Water Gap. Back in the years of The Great Depression the house lay in a bucolic area of farm country with brooks that babbled and where fruit trees grew. There was also an abundance of corn fields with scarecrows standing guard like sentinels. If you didn't have to worry where your next meal was coming from, which farmers never do, Pine Brook was a pleasure dome of sorts, far away from the great metropolis on the other side of the Hudson River. Here the air was fresh and life was good.
Rosie was one of my father's sisters who had forged a path to the New World before him, moving in with Esther, another sister. Esther lived in a cramped tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and was raising five kids on her own, having been abandoned by a husband who had run off with a cashier at the restaurant where he worked. There was no bed in which Rosie could sleep, so most of the time she slept standing up. Rosie learned very quickly that she had no options except to die, so after several weeks she said goodbye to Esther and headed for New Jersey, the land of opportunity. She found work at once, mostly as a dishwasher in diners. Later she was promoted to short order cook which compelled her to handle bacon and ham, forbidden to her by the dietary laws of her religion. She was amazed to find that these abominations did not bring forth thunder and lightning. The Greek who owned the diner set up sleeping quarters for her in a storeroom off the kitchen and in addition to her dawn to midnight hours, she had to look after the coal stove during the night. "So what?" she thought out loud. This was America, and you had to start somewhere.
In spite of her humble origins, she was accorded respect by my brother and me. To us she was Aunt Rosie and, in turn, her consort was called Uncle Max. My mother called him the worst names she could think of. In spite of the story my mother kept repeating about the Nachamson barn, no one really knew how they met. There was certainly no family bible in which it was recorded, and if there had been, my mother would have removed the archive and flushed it down the toilet, or down the dumbwaiter along with the potato peelings and cantaloupe rinds. Yet her loathing of Rosie's husband, as well as her disdain of their home as a shanty, never kept her from spending the summer in the country. Taking me and my brother and Grandma Gold along with her to escape the city heat, it was not beneath her to billet her family in that hovel. Foreign to the pleasures of Newport or Martha's Vineyard, a summer in some mysterious resort gave her one- upsmanship over her neighbors who had to place mattresses on the fire escapes or drag them up on the roof to find some sleep during the wicked hot spells. Of course, she never mentioned that the toilet facility was an outhouse behind a clump of bushes at the rear of the resort, or that you had to do your laundry in a brook. It also worked out well for Rosie. Whatever my mother paid her, it was more than she would have earned flipping hamburgers. It also gave her experience as an innkeeper where she slowly learned the skills she would later use at the hotels in the Catskills and Miami Beach. But the arrangement had a unique codicil. Max Ader was never to join the family at the table. Since my mother did the shopping, as well as the cooking, the folyock, that lazy bum, could fress goll, swallow his own bile. The line was drawn in the sand.
The house centered around one large room which served as parlor, kitchen, and dining room, if one could call it that. There were two small bedrooms and a storage shed that had been outfitted with bunk beds for my brother Ralph and me. At the rear of the house a staircase rose into the attic above, Max's bedroom when his home was turned into a guest house. It was more like a hayloft than an attic, with a pulley system that Max used to hoist and lower whatever he needed to survive. It was how Rosie delivered his meals and collected the empty dishes. The plumbing was antique. Although the kitchen had running water, there were no bathroom facilities, and we all had to bathe in a large zinc tub that hid behind a curtain. As far as our other bodily functions were concerned, we eventually got used to the outhouse out back. Though it was always fly-infested and smelled awful, I noticed that the grass and foliage around it had a deep green color, like an oasis in a desert. Along with the coal stove, this was my mother's way of spending the summer in the country.
It was always hard to figure out just what Max was doing upstairs. He left no clues that could indict him. Still he had some proclivities that were noticeable. Like melting down lead pipes to make slugs for the slot machines across the road at Grossman's, a drive-in hamburger stand that was a scheduled stop for the DeCamp Bus Line traversing Route 46. Or else he would spend his day making bathtub hooch in the zinc tub, using fermented grain alcohol and coloring it with maple syrup. There was no doubt that he had the leanings of a petty criminal who aspired to greater opportunities. He liked music in the same way that Al Capone liked opera. Up in his attic he kept a ukulele which he played whenever the Muse engaged him, serenading his beleaguered wife with assurances of undying devotion.
I can't give you anything but love, baby That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby
Whatever it meant to Max, it worked for Rosie. So what if Max was a little odd? Her sister Esther was divorced and raising five kids on her own. Rosie was childless, but at least she had a man, and in the social order from which she came that counted for a lot. Her days were often filled with anguish, wondering where Max could be all night, hearing him climb up the attic stairs and then sleep away the day. During the summer months when we were there, I sometimes heard him at the ice box in the kitchen, sampling the leftovers my mother had stored for another meal. He liked my mother's cooking, except for one thing. He seemed to abhor anything made with garlic. The pot roasts and meat loafs and liver stews were always untouched. He always seemed attracted to rare beef.
His whiskey business started to take off. But his best efforts came from the calls he received for wine. That was a lot safer than the moonshine from which his patrons could go blind. The wine was easier to handle. Sometimes Ralph and I would watch him pour buckets of cherries, which he had scavenged from the surrounding orchards, into the zinc tub. Of course, he was careful to remove the pits before he crushed them into a pulp with a sledge hammer. Then he would soak them in alcohol and let the whole mess ferment for a day. Where he got the alcohol was a mystery that was never solved, but he got it, or stole it, and it gave birth to an underground beverage which he named Mount Vernon Red. It was his way of thanking his country for the opportunity it gave him.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Songs At Twilight by Arthur Langer Copyright © 2012 by Arthur Langer. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Before The Parade Passes By....................1The Jersey Bounce....................5
Girl Of My Dreams....................13
What Is This Thing Called Love?....................25
Take Me Out To The Ball Game....................31
Running Wild....................39
Show Me The Way To Go Home....................49
Auf Wedersehn....................61
Sentimental Journey....................79
Among My Souvenirs....................87
Que Sera Sera....................103
Our Love Is Here To Stay....................109
It's Only A Paper Moon....................125
When I See An Elephant Fly....................135
All That Jazz....................147
Arrivederci, Roma....................155
The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down....................165
The Wheel Of Fortune....................179
Thanks For The Memory....................187
Cocktails For Two....................199
Baby Take A Bow....................215
Autumn Leaves....................221
Swinging On A Star....................231
April Fool....................233
Déja Vu....................243
Desire Under The Palms....................251
We Found This Moment....................255
The Samba Does Something To Me....................259
It Ain't Over Yet....................265
The Household Cavalry....................269
King Kong....................275
For Sentimental Reasons....................289
Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries....................307
How Long Has This Been Going On?....................309