Questions and Answers

“Alphabets and names make games and everybody has a name and all the same they have in a way to have a birthday.

The thing to do is to think of names.

Names will do.

Mildew.

And you have to think of alphabets too, without an alphabet well without names where are you, and birthdays are very favorable too, otherwise who are you.”

So begins Gertrude Stein’s book TO DO: A BOOK OF ALPHABETS AND BIRTHDAYS published by Yale University Press in 1957  as part of the book ALPHABETS AND BIRTHDAYS.  (The book was actually finished in 1940 and was to be a sequel to her children’s book THE WORLD IS ROUND. The manuscript was shuffled from publisher to publisher and  since there were problems completing illustrations for it and “manufacturing difficulties” prompted by WWII, it was not published until it became a part of the 1950’s Yale series.)

I’ve quoted it here as today is my birthday, the first I’ve celebrated since beginning this blog.

I’m not much of a birthday person.  Yes, it fun to see who remembers it and sends a card, e mail or gives me a phone call. But it is difficult to know what to say when you receive birthday wishes in person.

“Thanks, don’t feel a year older.”

“Oh yes, another year and as long as you have your health…”

“Damn, it’s that time of year again. Before you know it Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here again too!”

Then I gave some thought to the week preceding this birthday and two people who died this week, Peter Graves and Fess Parker.  Neither of these men would be considered  great actors by the standards of a Laurence Olivier or Marlon Brando or our Ms. Streep, but to someone who grew up in 1950’s America, they are great in their own way –  pleasant, grainy memories of the days of (mostly) black and white TV – of Saturday mornings and Sunday’s “Walt Disney presents.”

In pre-Mission Impossible and the Airplane movie days, Peter Graves was Jim Newton on 116 episodes of FURY. As a role-model to Joey (Billy Diamond) and a side-kick to Pete (William Fawcett), he commandeered that black stallion from adventure to adventure, while children across America on those Saturday mornings either finished their Cheerios or began eating their toasted cheese sandwiches and Campbell’s tomato soup.

Don’t remember a lot of violence in the show like on THE LONE RANGER or “mushy” scenes with women like on THE ROY ROGERS SHOW, just good-clean adventures from the LASSIE school of Saturday morning TV. (There were always rattlesnakes lurking behind some boulders about to attack someone or something!) Thank you, Peter Graves.

And then:

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee
Greenest state in the Land of the Free
Raised in the woods so’s he knew every tree
Kilt him a b’ar when he was only three.
Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the wild frontier!

How could you not like this all-American hero growing up in Land-of-Lincoln Illinois with that theme song! Don’t remember having my own coonskin cap, but I’m sure one of the neighbor kids on Lilac Lane had one and I tried it on and wore it proudly as we explored the frontier of the cornfields by our house.

Davy Crockett was schoolbook history brought to life and none of us was concerned that it was Disneyfied and one big commercial for Disneyland – who didn’t want to visit that place in far-off California with hopes of meeting Annette and Cubby!  Thank you, Fess Parker.

“Alphabets and names make games and everybody has a name and all the same they have in a way to have a birthday.”

The names of birthdays past. Not a bad thing to be celebrating.

“…and birthdays are very favorable too, otherwise who are you.”

Now the only thing, what is this about “Mildew?!”

COPYRIGHT HANS GALLAS ©2010

Tagged Alphabets and Birthdays, Buddy Ebsen, Davy Crockett, Disneyland, Fess Parker, Gertrude Stein, Peter Graves