16 - VLADIMIR-IVANOVICH

Vladimir ... or a reasonable facsimile

     I grew up during the red witch hunts, a time when a portion of the U.S. Congress, spearheaded by the eminently unlikeable Joseph McCarthy, spent years and vast sums of public money hunting down communists and their sympathizers, often in the most unlikely places.

      Though still a child, I started to pay attention when McCarthy's committee on un-American activities turned its attention to the movies and television.  It managed to wreak havoc and destroy any number of careers, and as far as I know, no one in the entertainment world was ever uncovered who might have actually been posing a threat to the security of our country.

      It was only years later, as an adult, that I began to understand some of the injustices carried out during the 1950's in the name of democracy.

      Caution ! If I am beginning to sound like a bit of a Bolshevik, myself, please believe I am assuredly not, never have been, and certainly never will be. I grew up a child of the free enterprise system, convinced that the harder you worked, the more successful you'd become. If this didn't necessarily prove infallible as I stumbled through the workplace part of my life, it has nevertheless remained imbedded somewhere within me.

       A few years into UNESCO, I found myself working for a Soviet spy.  I must point out that Vladimir was nothing like the sinister villains in the old movies I grew up on like « I Was A Communist For The F.B.I. » or « Comrade X » ; but although salaried by UNESCO, his real employer was definitely the KGB.   He gave his time and devotion to them, and managed to pretty much leave me in peace to get along with producing my little statistical office documents without any supervisory interference.

     I don't know exactly what he did for the KGB, but it was apparently more about reporting on each other than anything directly connected to UNESCO or the French Republic.   Although Vladimir was fairly inept at his UNESCO job, he appeared to be quite high-ranking with the soviets.

     He was treated with respect by his colleague-compatriots who would regularly troop to his office.   The door would always be shut while they conferred, and after-lunch meetings would usually include rounds of vodka for which Vladimir had a special fondness.  About once a week he would leave with other KGBers for unannounced destinations.  I always assumed they had been called to their embassy for whatever raison d'état.     

      I went into this unlikely relationship with what I considered an absolute open mind, accepting the possibility that everything I had grown up being taught about the Soviet Union having as its sole driving force the desire to destroy America, well that this was perhaps a bit exaggerated.  I had learned in grammar school about the downtrodden, unhappy common man in Communist Russia, how he was shipped to work camps and deprived of Democracy.   As time went on, I realized that perhaps not ALL of the Russians were quite as miserable as I had been led to believe.  By the time I arrived at UNESCO, I tended to think that most countries had their good and their bad, and as a former journalist I learned it best not to over-generalize.

      Then along came Vladimir, and I discovered that he was every bit as brainwashed about America as I had been about Russia.

      The irony was that, due to my exotic nationality,  he was completely fascinated by me.   Every word I spoke, every action, every gesture was of interest, and invariably attributed to what he saw as my unfortunate Western indoctrination.    I  learned to keep a low profile and avoid controversy.    Despite everything, Vladimir seemed to have a real affection for me.   Frankie-Norfleetovich, he would often call me, making a Russian hodgepodge of my name as well as that of my father's.  I would occasionally reciprocate by calling him Vladimir-Ivanovich.

      There were moments --days even-- when he seemed normal enough, then suddenly I would be catapulted back to reality.   I once reported on a tender and  moving Russian play that I had seen at the Comedie des Champs-Elysees.  It featured two of the French stage's greatest stars of the day, and I highly recommended it.

      I felt a tension in the air, and Vlad curtly announced he had no interest in seeing the work of a dissident and a traitor, that this was yet another example of western propaganda putting the Soviet nation in a negative and politically-motivated light.

      I learned to go to whatever lengths to avoid political discussions with him, because I found them profoundly depressing and above all futile.  Sometimes it was hard to stand silent.  One day he came back from home leave, excited with new knowledge.  He had recently seen a shocking television documentary of life in New York City.   He could hardly retain his excitement as he recounted how infants throughout the city were regularly attacked and devoured by rats.

      He asked how I could continue to go to New York, knowing of these dangers. « But where in the world did you hear such things ? » I asked. « On television in Moscow. It was produced by PRAVDA, » he replied with the trusting innocence of a child.

     Although his tendency to irritate is the thing that most sticks in my mind today, there were certainly good moments as well.   He was convinced that Russian cuisine was superior to all others, and he frequently invited me into his home for meals.  This in itself was exceptional within the UNESCO-Soviet community, as it was always assumed that staff were discouraged from much fraternizing with Western colleagues.  I interpreted these invitations as both a personal compliment and a sign of his importance in the KGB hierarchy.   Although I refused more dinners than I accepted, I remember with a certain fondness meals with Vlad and his long-suffering wife who would occasionally roll her eyes in exasperation as he recounted one of his lengthy stories.

     Then there was the Bolshoi Ballet.   One afternoon out of the blue, Vlad proposed  that I join him at the Palais des Congrès where the troupe was appearing in a sold-out engagement.   To my surprise I was taken backstage which was much better than any orchestra seat.   It remains an extraordinary memory:  from a vantage point at the edge of the curtain, I could see both the performance and all of the backstage interaction.

       Whenever a traveling troupe was visiting, the KGB would be out in full force.  I couldn't tell if they were there to supervise, to make sure no one was about to defect, or just to confer among themselves.  It was probably a little bit of all three.   Backstage, I observed  the artists who looked like any theatrical company, clearly in their own world, and alongside them a dozen or more black-suited diplomatic figures of authority (including Vladimir), bustling about, whispering.   Only, each of the two different worlds seemed somehow oblivious to the other.

     When the iron curtain definitively fell in 1990, Vladimir's life was momentarily thrown for a loop.  The KGB had heretofore taken care of almost everything.  Until then the embassy pocketed all their nationals' salaries, then gave back what it considered appropriate pocket money (the government took care of lodging, automobiles, travel, food, etc.).    Suddenly he was "free" to make his own decisions, handle his own paycheck and plan his own future.   Along with many of his compatriots, he went through a period of disorientation, but he soon picked himself up, sensed which way the wind was blowing, and changed his political persona accordingly.

     Suddenly, democracy seemed not such a bad idea after all, and it was as though communism had never really existed .    Everything American was now somehow wonderful, and he couldn't get to New York fast enough.  Before I knew it, he had his tickets for a week's vacation there, his first trip to America.   

     I couldn't resist.  "But Vlad, what about all the rats?" I asked.    

     "What rats?" he said.  It sounded genuine.  I never brought the subject up again.

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

15 - Ben Hogan at the Masters, the Farrells, Grandmother Vivian, and Miss Lillian Carter of Plains, Georgia

Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer at the Masters (Getty photo)

      News of Arnold Palmer's recent death set off a chain of long-forgotten memories swimming around in my head, stemming from his first Master's Tournament victory in 1958.  As unlikely as it now seems, I was actually there.  But although I was indeed in Augusta for that historic tournament, it was more of a happenstance, and my memories today have little to do with Palmer and all to do with the Farrell family.

     Dan and Faye Farrell were best friends of our family for most of my growing-up years and beyond.  In fact, Mother and Dan had once been serious sweethearts, but that was long before they each married another.

     I always saw Faye as something of a small-town Tallulah Bankhead.  As a child, and especially as an adolescent, I thought of her as a more glamorous, surrogate mother.   Being an especially contrarisome child, I shared this information with my real mother, which would naturally irritate her no end.  

     But Faye did have so much more pizzazz!   

     Margaret was the oldest of Faye and Dan's four children.  When we were teenagers, unlike the other mothers, Faye loved being part of the gang.  When friends would come to see Margaret, they would  sit around with her mother and share the local gossip for far more time than normal politeness might have dictated.  Faye had a real boudoir with wraparound windows and an enormous bed (which has undoubtedly become even bigger in my memory).  She spent a lot of time there, propped up, reading, watching television, talking on the phone, or just receiving.   I would frequently stop in with other friends, and we would sit on her bed and discuss the events of the day.

     In the beginning, they were our neighbors on Wilder Avenue.  Then, when I was eight, they built one of the first luxury homes in Forest Hills --a split-level ranch-style house with a nice expanse of pine trees overlooking the lake.  My aunt Frances assisted with some of the original interior decoration, but Faye's creative independence eventually took the upper hand, and they parted, friends.   

     Margaret and I were just a year apart, we were playmates from an early age, and I was always closest to her.    About the time we started school, she was excessively timid, and would often chew on her pigtails to keep from having to speak.   I wasn't really aware of it at the time, but Faye once told me that when we were five or six, I was about the only person outside the family with whom Margaret felt comfortable enough to talk.
    

Dan around 1936

  Dan was said to be an exceptionally talented salesman.  He had an important interest in Taylor Chemical Company, and he was credited with a big part of its success.   He was the embodiment of a certain American dream, achieving many of the outward signs of success at an early age.   He had his own plane, and he traveled much of the time, often mixing business with pleasure.  The trip to Georgia was a case in point.

      There was just one year after Margaret went away to boarding school and before her younger brother, Frank, left home, that I spent more time with him.   That year, Frank's first in high school, I would sometimes stay with him when his parents were traveling.   Dan announced one day he had a travel plan for the two of us.  He would be flying to Georgia later that week, and proposed making a detour to Cuthbert so that I could see my Grandmother Vivian. 

     Frank was just along for the ride, as far as I knew.   I Later realized that this was all part of an elaborate plan to present McCallie Military School in Chattanooga to Frank in the best light. He hadn't initially wanted to go away to school, but this visit to the campus was probably an important turning point.     

     Like many of Dan's trips, this one was strong on improvisation.  For instance, the Master's Tournament was either a last minute decision or a well-kept secret.   We knew nothing until we were about to land at Augusta's old Bush Field Airport.

     Once at the Masters, Dan went off with some of his business cronies, while Frank and I were left to our own devices.  As I recall, we had top entry passes to all courses and we went wherever we pleased.   Most of the fans crowded around the new stars, Palmer and Cary Middlecoff.  I had no particular interest in golf, but I had seen the movie biography of Ben Hogan with Glenn Ford, and I was more than happy to follow Hogan --then considered an old-timer at 46-- around the course.  Frank and I watched him while the serious crowds went elsewhere.  I think he was about 18th that year, but I didn't care; he was definitely the most famous golfer there to me.

     It was only afterwards on our way southwest to Cuthbert that Dan casually announced  to Frank that they would be flying on to Tennessee and taking a look at McCallie.  I suspect Frank thought he had been duped, but he had a wonderful disposition, and he voiced no displeasure. 

      The arrival in Cuthbert remains a special memory, left untarnished by time.   Dan's Cessna 180 touched down in an honest to goodness cow patch, replete with a few cows.   Grandmother Vivian had come to meet us with two of Mother's childhood friends.  As we were landing, Frank laughingly pointed out the welcoming committee who were jumping up and down, waving us in, like a comic version of ground traffic marshals.

        Stepping out of the plane,  I felt singularly important, aware of the celebrity status to which my grand arrival had elevated me.   Cuthbert is marginally smaller than Aberdeen, and in those days everyone knew everyone else.  My landing provided fodder for major conversation about town, and the fact that the pilot had once been my mother's steady beau did not go unnoticed.

     Like so many of my early memories,  I recall the beginning so well, but then it all sort of fades away, and I remember nothing about the return.  This would have been close to the end of the school term, and I didn't see so much of Frank after that year.  Our families always spent some time together at the beach during the summer, but Frank and I drifted apart once we both went away to school.

     He died much too young, still in his twenties.   It had been years since I had heard from him, and like many of my generation, by the onset of the 1970's I had started a journey into a very different life, in my case one far from Aberdeen.  By then, so many things that I had assumed to be permanent --the interactions you take for granted, so many of the friendships growing up in a small Southern town that you believe will never change-- had begun to recede into the background.

Faye in later years

      

SIDEBAR --Miss Lillian Carter and Vivian

      

    When I took that trip to Cuthbert in 1958, no one had yet heard of future U.S. president Jimmy Carter, let alone his mother Lillian.

      Except Grandmother Vivian, of course, who knew Miss Lillian well.  They started school around 1905 in Richland, Georgia, in a one-room structure, and they continued  together for the next five or six years.  

     They also had a brief contact again as adults when Lillian worked at Andrews College, a small girls' school, just a couple of blocks from our family home in Cuthbert.  

     Lillian Carter, née Gordy, came to international attention during her son's presidency as something of a swinging grandma.  At least one who very much stood up for what she believed.  She had joined the Peace Corps when she was 68, and she served in India near Mumbai nursing leprosy patients.

     When years later I learned of their "connection", I tried more than once to get Vivian to talk about their friendship as little girls.  She had known her well, but Vivian did not like her politics, nor those of her son.  So that was that!   While hinting that she was some sort of a dreadful revolutionary, she always refused to share any precise childhood memories.  

     I suspect my grandmother was a little jealous of Miss Lillian's rise to prominence in the media.  Not Vivian's finest hour, I always thought. 
 
           

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

 Margaret is also featured in  "Margaret at Le Cirque" from Hotel Musings No. 26; Vivian and Mother and the town of Cuthbert were featured in "Grandmother Vivian, Doc and the Others", Hotel Musings No. 46   (to access, click on highlighted titles).

14 - Linwood and Doris

Doris and Linwood, Aberdeen 1957

     My uncle Linwood was my father's older brother.  He was the eldest of six children, and he had left home by the time Daddy started school.  

     He was middle-aged when he married Doris, and most everyone in the family found both of them eccentric and a little comical.   We called him Bubba.  That's what Daddy had called him as a child, and the name stuck.   He always made me think of the actor Paul Douglas, but that is neither here nor there, as I don't suppose there is anyone left who remembers Paul Douglas.

     Doris was generally considered to be a hypochondriac, and growing up I remember Mother and Big Polly gossiping about seeing Doris' car yet again parked in front of Doctor Bowen's office, speculating on what could be wrong with her this time.   She had a raspy, bass voice, the result of years of chain smoking; and as far back as I can remember she was taking a variety of pills for what she called her allergies.   

     As for Bubba, he was  obsessed with money,  with not spending it.   He would fixate on the worst scenario of finding himself without enough money, and each year he became more and more of a miser.

  

Bubba and Daddy 1946

    As simple as our family creature comforts seem in retrospect, we lived sumptuously compared to Bubba and Doris.  Although they had considerably more money (due to the fact that they were childless and spent little on themselves), there was never any question of going on holiday, almost never a meal out, and only rarely an extravagance such as an outing to what Linwood still called the "moving pictures."

     Whenever family members encouraged them to do something which would entail an extra expenditure, Linwood would launch into a lecture on the importance of his money earning interests at every moment.  He could be quite unintentionally comical when explaining how he waited until the last possible moment before settling his electricity bill.

     "It makes a lot more sense  earning two percent in the Building and Loan," he would say, "than giving it to the Carolina Power and Light."

     He was permanently preoccupied with the possibility of one day finding himself without the financial means to take care of himself and Doris.  I don't know if there was any real explanation for this money phobia, other than he had lived through the Depression and had seen his mother lose her savings when the  bank owned by her cousins failed in 1934. This dramatic local tragedy did not, however, seem to unduly affect anyone else in the family.

     So  Bubba continued throughout his working life to spend the absolute minimum.  By the time he retired, and Daddy had bought out his share of the sand company, he had amassed what seemed to be a real little fortune.  Even Stanley Hartly (see blog on Stanley) once said he thought Linwood must be sitting on quite an impressive nest egg.

     Fate decided on a bizarre twist.  Bubba, who had known no illness during most of his working life, suffered a massive stroke in the early years of his retirement.  He was hospitalized at Moore Memorial in a coma for many weeks before being transferred to another hospital and nursing home. 

     Doris, who had no experience in money management or in running anything, pretty much fell apart.  She left bills unpaid and overpaid others.

     Bubba died  five long years later, still hospitalized and for the most of that time still in a coma.  He had been presumably unaware of the horrendously expensive long-term medical and nursing care, or that his most dreaded fear had in fact indeed been realized.  

     It was not until the bank began foreclosure procedures on their home that family realized almost every penny of his money was gone.   My father and Frances tried to help Doris find a last-minute solution, but it was too late.  She paid one final visit to Dr. Bowen, and then chose what she saw as the easy way out, with the aid of an overdose of barbiturates and a plastic bag. 

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Doctor Bowen and Big Polly were feautured in "Doctor Bowen and Janette" from  Musings and Meanderings No.1; Doctor Bowen is also mentioned in "A Date With Dephie" from Musings and Meanderings No. 17.  Linwood and Stanley Hartly and Frances were featured in "The Guardian Angel", Musings and Meanderings No. 2.   Grandmother Pleasants and Frances in Hotel Musings No. 2 "Grandmother Pleasants and Mrs. Kennedy" and Hotel Musings No. 4 "A Two-dollar Hamburger Under A Silvery Dome"    (to access, click on highlighted titles).

13 - Grim Postcard from Nice

Nice fireworks 2015

       I have lived part time in Nice since reconnecting with Brenda in 2006.   She had been there in a rental apartment for several years then; she would have probably preferred spending more of our time in the South, but I wasn't keen on leaving Paris, and we ultimately decided --for financial and logistical reasons-- to give up the Nice apartment.  We visited in the winter of 2007 in order to recuperate a few bric-a-brac for Paris and give notice to the owner.

      She put up little resistance about giving up the apartment, and I have sometimes wondered if she hadn't somehow planned it all along; but before that week was up, I had fallen in love with Nice and the French Riviera.  We left the bric-a-brac where they were, and we've never seriously discussed giving up the apartment since.

     So every few months we find ourselves back on rue de France.  There isn't an enormous amount to do.  We walk, and bicycle, and occasionally swim.  We don't hide from the sun.  We have an exceptional list of wonderful little restaurants for lunch, then we often head for a park to play a game of Scrabble.   Other than that, we go to the movies, an occasional concert or exhibit, and consume a steady flow of DVDs.  To some, with its stunning blue azure backdrop of the French Riviera, life might sound idyllic, to others downright boring.

     Last summer was special, though not in a good way.   It will be remembered as the year of L'Attentat, the terrible terrorist attack on the beachfront Promenade des Anglais the night of France's national holiday.

      When in Nice, we go to the elaborate fireworks display just around the corner late on the evening of July 14.   With tens of thousands of spectators, it is usually too crowded for comfort, but in 2015 we finally managed to find a really good spot away from the worst of the crowd.   We had a near perfect view, and for once were not too pushed and shoved by other spectators.

     I decided to quit while I was ahead.  I announced I would not be going this year, and Brenda was not pleased.  She said she would go alone, but instead we ended up watching another DVD.

     It was just as well, because around 10:30 I looked out in the direction of street noise below, and I could see people running in all directions, and two ambulances were stopped beneath our window, lights flashing and sirens blaring.

     "Sit down and finish the film.  It's just the excitement of the holiday." Brenda said.  And I did, not quite assimilating what I had just seen.

     It wasn't until midnight that we began to get radio reports that ultimately confirmed 86 deaths and many more injured.   As most in the world now know, a deranged newly-minted terrorist succeeded in slaughtering the maximum number of pedestrians leaving the fireworks, running over them with a giant refrigerated delivery truck, often plowing through four or five at a time.

     In the days following the attack, normal summer life pretty much came to a stop.  A lot of hotel tourists left, and many more (one report said over 35 percent) canceled upcoming reservations.  The Promenade des Anglais quickly transformed itself into a shrine in memory of its victims, and floral tributes sprang up at the spots where they had perished.   Long lines often formed outside neighborhood florists, waiting to buy one or two roses to leave on the Promenade.

An unending floral tribute along the sea front

   
     The first fallen were probably children, waiting around a well known ambulatory candy stand.  It was here, near the Negresco Hotel, that the first flowers began to appear.  By the following evening, piles of stuffed toys and candles and flowers covered parts of the boardwalk and spilled across the street around the hotel entrance.

 

Late into the night in the Negresco lobby (Twitter)

     (The Negresco, Nice's best known hotel, opened its doors to those in need throughout the night.  Its lobby area was turned into a makeshift hospital where those touched by the drama waited to be treated.)

    

    For over a mile, innocent victims perished under the wheels of the crazed assassin.   The carnage route only ended when police shot and killed the attacker in front of the Canne à Sucre, a local terrace café where we sometimes go for breakfast.  Here, there were no flowers.  Instead, a shrine of a different sort sprang up.  Angry residents threw bricks and trash on the spot, and spit on and cursed the memory of the man responsible for all of this heartbreak.  

End of the route ...

      Nice is a friendly city, much more at first glance than Paris.   It is very much a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual city, with good relationships between the communities.  These bonds were sometimes challenged in the days following the attacks.  There were occasional insults and at least one serious scuffle along the Promenade.  But for the most part, residents remained calm.  There has been no official list of  victims by nationality and certainly not by religion, but along with those who lost their lives from the U.S. and England and Japan and Italy, one of the biggest groups represented in this tragic statistic was certainly the French Muslim population, itself.

     Things here will undoubtedly never be quite the same again.   Nevertheless, little by little, life returns to what passes for normal.   We have always felt very much at home in Nice, but living through such a dramatic moment in its history,  we now feel a more intimate connection with this very seductive city that we once took too much for granted. 

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

The Negresco was featured in Hotel Musings No. 17 "Celebrating The Holidays Away From Home";Nice and the French Riviera are also featured in "The Paris Hiltons and the Ukrainian Mafia" and "A Great Gatsbyesque Lunch", Hotel Musings No. 21 and 41.  The Negresco Hotel is featured in "The Decline of Madame Augier", Hotel Musings No. 37.  Brenda pops up in numerous musings, most notably in "Around Africa With Brenda" and "An Encounter With Keith",  Hotel Musings 14 and 29  (to access, click on highlighted title).

 

12 - The Pinebluff Sanitarium, Doctor Kemp, Robert Mitchum and Aunt Henrietta

    

Bad boy Mitchum (photo RKO)

     I had almost forgotten about the Pinebluff Sanitarium until Johnny Mills, an old family friend and blog supporter, reminded me of its place in local history.   Johnny is a passionate collector of history of the Sandhills, and as a native of Pinebluff, he is particularly fascinated by its heritage.

      Just for memory, my hometown of Aberdeen, North Carolina, is ringed by other little towns of varying interest --Southern Pines, Pinehurst and Pinebluff-- none further away than two or three miles.

     When I was growing up, Pinehurst was a decidedly upscale, rather exclusive privately-owned village, renowned for its golf courses.  We Aberdeenians more often than not had little reason to go there. Southern Pines was more down to earth, but still much more prosperous than Aberdeen, and at that time boasted a number of quaint hotels and golf clubs, of which Aberdeen had none.  Lastly, there was the sleepy little village of Pinebluff, which had once aspired to some of the tourist luster of its other "pine" neighbors.  By my day, it was pretty much an extension of Aberdeen, sharing its school and some of its churches.  It had nevertheless maintained a special, picturesque demeanor with many acres of beautiful longleaf pines, recalling its earlier, mostly unsuccessful ambitions to attract wealthy tourists.

      Pinebluff's most ambitious tourism project was undoubtedly a grand hotel built in 1925, an impressive Tudor structure modeled after a Swiss watch factory.  It was framed by a lush woodland of nearly 50 acres, and built to lure seasonal visitors from the North.

      Whereas restaurants in the South, then as now, have always touted "southern cooking", the Pinebluff Inn distanced itself from its cultural environment by promising in its publicity "only the most refined northern cooking."

      Unfortunately for its investors (which included the aforementioned Johnny's grandfather), the hotel had its fate sealed with the arrival of the Great Depression in 1929.   It limped along for awhile, but soon shut its doors, later declaring bankruptcy.

      A young psychiatrist discovered the property a few years later, and  bought the hotel along with its plush pine woods for what was said to be a song.  Most of the elegant inn's furnishing was still intact, and Doctor Malcolm Kemp --a debonair, chain-smoking lady's man and a Northern transplant himself--  turned the property into a psychiatric sanitarium with a minimum of refurbishment.  When I was growing up, the Pinebluff Sanitarium was to many Sandhillians a mysterious and foreboding institution.  Some of the more uninformed simply thought of it as the loony bin hidden in the woods.

          In fact, although shock treatment was used with a disconcerting frequency and some now-questionable LSD experimentation was carried out long before the hallucinogenic drug was discovered by the hippy generation, the majority of Dr. Kemp's "guests" were there of their own volition for a fairly pampered drying-out vacation.  The clinic was to a large degree run like a sophisticated vacation lodge.

     Some were not so attracted by a Pinebluff vacation.  Like my Aunt Henrietta, who in widowhood had developed an increasingly noticeable penchant for scuppernong wine.   When she showed up tipsy at church two Sunday mornings in a row, it was the last straw for my straitlaced Grandmother Pleasants who reached out to other family members for assistance. 

     When Aunt Henny saw herself railroaded into the sanitarium by one of her equally hard-drinking sisters, she steadfastly refused to cooperate. The first night the nurse brought in a tiny shot of whiskey, part of the drying-out process, and placed it on her bedside table.  She never so much as acknowledged its presence.  She didn't drink it, and she refused subsequent medication of any kind.  Two days later, when she finally obtained a rendezvous with Dr. Kemp, she calmly explained that any further detainment would result in a law suit.  She was released within the hour.

      The sanitarium's most notorious guest was undoubtedly film star Robert Mitchum.  His stay became part of Pinebluff folklore, now difficult to separate fact from fiction.

      
      Mitchum was known as Hollywood's bad boy.  He had served a well-publicized jail term for smoking marijuana back when people cared, and he was generally known as a hard drinking hell raiser whose binges could play havoc with a film's budget.  Producers were wary, but his star power was enormous in 1957 when he came to North Carolina to film "Thunder Road" near Asheville.  

     When he reported for work clearly off the wagon, it was decided by producers and insurance representatives that a few weeks at Dr. Kemp's Pinebluff establishment would be of mutual benefit to all concerned.   Mitchum was not in agreement, but he was given little choice.  Under a certain coercion, he signed himself in for an undetermined period of abstinence.

 

Mrs. Collins circa 1963

   It is at this point that accounts tend to diverge.  The only certainty is that the film star was one of the sanitarium's least pleasant visitors.  He was said to have taken an immediate dislike to Doctor Kemp, and refused to even speak to the sanitarium's occupational therapist, Mrs. Collins, a charming Southern lady who was eager to meet the star and get him involved in basket making.  Throughout his short stay he regularly made fun of the doctor in front of other patients and repeatedly ridiculed Kemp's old-fashioned spats.

     There is no documented evidence of how long the uncooperative actor stayed, though it is generally agreed that he left earlier than planned and against doctor's advice.  All accounts concur that he did not depart entirely cured, as tales of his alcoholism continued throughout his lengthy and successful career.  

     The Pinebluff Sanitarium had a much longer life than the hotel which preceded it.   Dr. Kemp continued to run the institution into his seventies; and by the time he finally retired in 1967, he was unable to sell the imposing property.   Left to abandon and still fully furnished (including a fine concert grand piano in the main salon), it burned to the ground in 1975.   I had my own dealings with Dr. Kemp and the sanitarium in its later years, but then that is another story altogether.

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

 Grandmother Pleasants was also mentioned in Hotel Musings No. 2 "Grandmother Pleasants and Mrs. Kennedy";  Hotel Musings No. 4 "A Two-dollar Hamburger Under A Silvery Dome" and in Musings and Meanderings No. 10 "Ousting Mrs. Oliver".  Aberdeen was earlier featured in Hotel Musings No. 26 "Babe Ruth's 60th Home Run."   (to access, click on highlighted titles).

11 - A Career in the Movies

Paris 2010 --On the set and ready to go! (photo Yves de Marseille)

    
     Figuration is what it's called in French.  

    Fee-guuu-rahh-see-ohhn.  Bit parts and faces in the crowd.  In Hollywood they called it extra work, but I think it definitely has a better ring in French. 

    I used to dream of being in the movies.  For a long time I was bored with my office  job at UNESCO and imagined a kind of stimulating parallel life working with a film crew.  

    Actually, it started long before that.  When I was about ten, I wrote to Hollywood proposing my services.  In those days I aimed high; I was thinking more about being a child star, though I did point out that I would be agreeable to smaller parts.  I no longer remember to whom I wrote, but think it was someone at RKO Studios.  Don't ask me why.  My letter remained forever unanswered, but that didn't stop me from recounting various fantasy versions to friends, mainly that I had heard from an important producer who would be letting me know when something turned up.

     When I started the art business, I had a client-friend, Yves, who was a successful set designer.  Over the years I followed his films, and I shared with him how much I would have enjoyed being a part of his world.  It was implicitly understood that whenever I took my retirement he would use his influence to find me extra work.  

     I guess I'd have to say that for much of my life the idea of working on a film set had become a special, if odd, dream.  Everything about it appealed to me.  Not the movie star kind of glamour, rather the stimulation of associating with interesting, creative people, participating in the making of something permanent and unique like a motion picture.

     (I once had a psychiatrist acquaintance in New York who occasionally filled in as a spear-carrying extra either at the Metropolitan Opera or the NYC Ballet.  Whichever it was, that always appealed to me as the epitome of a certain eccentric worldliness.)

     So when the time came and I was able to leave UNESCO, I did all the necessary paper work in order to be employable. Yves was in touch with the top casting director for extra workers.  He explained I would need a press book with plenty of photos, and then he would speak to his contact about me.

     My neighbor, Annie Tresgot, the documentary film maker, agreed to take photos of me.  Unfortunately, by the time we got all this done, Yves was considerably less enthusiastic about my chances.   He started talking about hard times in the industry, and I understood that my future in the movie business was not looking so promising.

    I nevertheless did send off my resumé, along with the photos, and I waited.  And waited!  In fact, I waited for over five years.  Then one day Yves came for lunch, and he was reporting on a new film he would soon be starting.  It was to be a four-hour television movie based on the writings and life of Marcel Proust.

     Out of the blue, he remembered my enthusiasm.  Better still, he volunteered that he could probably find me a few days work on the set when the production moved to Paris later that month.

     And he did.   Convoked by the casting agent and the production company, my hopes were surpassed: I was assigned an actual role, that of an old British general, and though without spoken lines I was to be prominently featured in some of the film's most important scenes.

     Two of the most iconic moments in Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" are the Duchess of Guermantes' grand dinner and its lead-in reception.  I was in both, and to cap it all off, I was assigned a place, both at table and during the reception, next to the star.  That way I figured my moment of glory would be less likely to end up on the cutting room floor.

     Once on the set, I quickly realized that the glamour I had imagined was, to say the least, illusory.  We spent an inordinate amount of time waiting between takes; in fact, most of our time --hour upon hour-- was spent doing nothing. The worst part was the weight of my costume, replete with tassels and sword.  After an afternoon standing in the summer heat, fully dressed in formal military garb, I began to really feel my almost seventy years for the first, though not the last, time.

     The actress portraying the Duchess of Guermantes just happened to be the daughter of the director; she exuded a keen sense of her star rank, and she didn't waste any time in idle chit-chat with the rest of us mortals.  Whereas just about everyone else was deprived of all extraneous 21st Century paraphernalia --watches, telephones, magazines-- Ms. Star did as she pleased.  During the long waiting periods she was generally glued to her cell phone.

    An inveterate eavesdropper, I found it relieved the monotony listening to her conversations.  At one point she received a call from London, and to my surprise her English was virtually perfect.   Afterwards, I asked how it was that she spoke my language so well.

     Her reply was one for the annals. "Please don't speak to me, I am trying to concentrate," she snapped.

     I didn't let this somewhat humiliating social rejection get me down, as I immediately sensed an unspoken support from other members of the cast, and it was abundantly clear that the star was held in no esteem. 

     The banquet table was set in the elegant manner befitting the world of turn-of-the-century French aristocracy, and the meal was catered by a specialist film food company.  It looked fine, but after a few hours at "dinner", you can hardly imagine how unappealing can be a plateful of gooey boiled fish and cold soggy Brussels sprout purée!   As the filming continued intermittently throughout the afternoon, I soon caught on that no one was really eating.  We would just keep putting bits of bread on our forks, and nibbling from time to time.  It looked exactly like the fish and tasted less dismal.

     I may have had no lines to memorize, but I was certainly not reduced to silence.  The banquet was intended to be a sophisticated and merry affair, so after many of the clever Proustian bon mots were uttered, the rest of us were told to emit great guffaws of laughter.  Between nibbles of soggy bread, I thus spent most of an afternoon howling with laughter.

     As I was in a state of rather foolish excitement when the movie was finally premiered on television, the ensuing disappointment was all the greater.  As it turned out, I didn't much like the film at all, and the fact that my presence was virtually non-existent did nothing to endear me to it.   You could sometimes glimpse my shoulder or the back of my head, occasionally a long shot where I was fairly unrecognizable.  The director had opted for extreme close-ups of the principal characters, particularly at the dinner.  The result was that the old general had pretty well disappeared.

     Still, the experience was fascinating in its way, if not quite up to expectations.  No calls from Hollywood, that's for sure, not even another local movie proposal.  Never mind, it's something I always wanted to do, and I did it.  Another project ticked off the old bucket list.


Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

 Annie Tresgot is also featured in "Best and Worst [hotel movies]," Hotel Musings No. 19  (to access, click on highlighted title).

 [NOTE:  All Europe will soon be on vacation, so there will be no new posting for August.  See you in September!]

 

10 - Ousting Mrs. Oliver

Piano playing days circa 1955

        
       Mrs. Lucile Oliver was my grammar school piano teacher.  She was from one of the Dakotas, and she used to tell me no matter how cold it got in Aberdeen, that South Dakota was a lot colder, how it started snowing in October and didn't stop until March or April.  I have always liked extremes, whether it be weather or anything else; and when I was a kid I dreamed of finding somewhere extremely different from Aberdeen, so for awhile I thought of one day living in South Dakota.

     She was a little on the dumpy side, with a sheaf of salt and pepper hair piled atop her head much like the hairdos at the turn of the 20th Century.  Her 1950's horn-rimmed glasses completed the schoolmarm look.   Which is all to say, no glamour girl was she!

    I was kind of her star pupil when I was about eight or nine.  I had no special talent, but I seem to remember managing an okay-version of  “Fur Elise” at about that time.  My Aunt Ruth in neighboring Southern Pines was particularly proud of my musical abilities, and she once  arranged for me to perform on the new grand piano of one of her daughter's boyfriends.  My big memory of that occasion was when my host pulled a cord and tassel, and summoned the butler to bring me a Coca-Cola.  Needless to say, there were no butlers in Aberdeen, and I shouldn't think there are any left in Southern Pines by now either.  

     My grandmother Pleasants, who was an accomplished musician and who played the church organ for several decades, also sang my praises, but I don’t think anyone outside of the family was very interested one way or the other in my piano playing.  At any rate, I was never very motivated, and preferred playing the sheet music of the day rather than my more serious assignments.  I was nevertheless always fond of Mrs. Oliver, and I feel sure that it was mutual.

     She had her piano classes in the grammar school building. I don’t know exactly how it worked, as I don’t suppose she was officially part of the faculty; but she was somehow subsidized by the school, and her pupils also paid something extra for the lessons.  It was certainly considered a plus for the Aberdeen School, and for a number of years it worked out well for Mrs. Oliver also.

     I guess it was when I was about twelve that people started to whisper.  It is one of the unfortunate things about small town life, as opposed to a more anonymous bigger city.  When there is anything perceived as gossip-worthy, things can quickly get out of control.  Long before personal computers, gossip could go viral in no time.

     That’s what happened with poor Mrs. Oliver.  

     Apparently she was having a liaison with a married man.  I don't think I ever knew who the other party was.  The scandal clearly centered around her, and it was almost as though he were considered an innocent bystander.  It wasn't long after the rumors began that I heard there was a movement to get rid of her. 

     
     Mrs.  Lewellyn was the ring leader.  She was a former school teacher and was known as a busybody.  She was also a rather astute politician, and had recently been appointed to a place on the school board.  My mother had never much cared for her, and when it came to light that there was a petition being circulated, Mother uncharacteristically jumped to the defense of Mrs. Oliver.  I say “uncharacteristically” because both my parents tended to flee confrontation.  Along the way, they communicated this dislike of open conflict to me, and I must say that it has served me very poorly throughout life, because it is pretty certain that those who know how to confront get along a lot better than those who don’t!

      Mother did enlist some of her friends to start up a counter petition, but it was too late.  The anti-Oliver movement had taken off like wildfire, and there was no turning back.

       It split the town, at least in my eyes.   Even one of our family's oldest friends signed the vigilante petition.  The friendship didn't really survive, though the initial hard feelings mended as the years went by.  I never forgot, however, and I never forgave.  
  
     Anyway, Mrs. Lewellyn finally had her way.  The school board gave little resistance.  The fact that the families of most of Mrs. Oliver’s pupils counter-petitioned for her to stay had little effect.  It was a moral issue, and she was pronounced not up to standard to teach Aberdeen’s little musicians.

     When  her contract was terminated (dramatically before the end of the school year) I joined a handful of her students to follow her, and she tried to make a living teaching in each student’s home.  But it was a losing battle.  Thinking back on it, I still feel a tiny bit of guilt, because I chose this moment when her classes must have been so important to her, to decide I no longer wanted to play the piano.  I was oblivious at the time, and no more than 13, so it was hardly a condemnable act on my part.   

     She soon folded up shop and left the area for good.  I think she went back to South Dakota.  It turned out she had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer about the time that petition was being circulated.  No one had known.  I corresponded with her for a short time --with a lot of parental pushing-- but I wasn’t very persevering, and like so many teenagers encouraged to do the right thing, I soon lost interest.

     She died a little more than a year after leaving the area.  Her funeral service was held in Aberdeen, I cannot imagine why.  It was the first funeral I ever attended, so I remember it well.   The thing I recall the most was seeing Mrs. Lewellyn there, she and some of the others who had signed the petition.    

     There was a rather tawdry novel at the time which had a huge national success, “Peyton Place.”    It was a study of the dark side of small town America, and had recently been made into a hit movie with Lana Turner.  I remember thinking when I saw Mrs. Lewellyn at the funeral, what a great scene to slip into “Peyton Place!”    


 

... Some more Southern reminiscences

Friend Joel Fletcher, art dealer in Fredricksburg,Virginia, author and grand raconteur, responds to today's posting with some of his own Southern memories, growing up in Louisiana:

     It is the kind of thing that would have happened in Ruston, Louisiana, the
town in northern Louisiana where both my parents were born; not as likely in
then Cajun and much more tolerant Lafayette where I grew up.

     Mother told me a story about a young couple who moved to Ruston in the
1920s.  The husband got a job coaching at the local high school. One day,
just as the wife was about to get in the bathtub, she remembered that she
had forgotten to put in the window the card that indicated to the ice man
how much ice she wanted. She wrapped herself in a towel and went to the
kitchen. She was halfway across the room when the back door started to
open (doors were never locked in Ruston then)  and she did not have time
to run back to the bathroom; so she ducked into the kitchen closet and was
squatting uncomfortably on the gas meter when suddenly the door to the
closet opened and there was the gas man come to read the meter.  With no
presence of mind, she shouted: "I was expecting the ice man!"   Everyone in
town knew about it by that evening, and the couple were shunned by the entire
town and soon moved away.

     Lafayette, in the heart of Cajun country, was very different from Ruston
where my grandmother and aunts lived on what was known as "Presbyterian
Hill."  Even as a young boy I knew about the whore house on Jefferson Street
on the other side of the railroad tracks. And I grew up hearing whispers of
adultery.  When one prominent business man was caught having an affair, his
wife punished him, according to my father, by not leaving him so she could
make him miserable for the rest of his life.

     When I was again living in Lafayette in the 1970s, one day my mother
startled me when the name of the wife of the town photographer came up in
conversation and Mother casually mentioned that during the war, when her
husband was away, the photographer's wife "worked as a prostitute at the
Terrace Hotel," as if it were a perfectly normal thing to have done.

     I also took piano lessons, but only very briefly.  My teacher was Miss
Rosenthal, sister-in-law of the wealthiest man in Lafayette, Maurice
Heymann, who owned the local department store and after the war built the
Oil Center for offshore business that was responsible for much of
Lafayette's prosperity during the oil boom years.  Mr. Heymann had met his
wife in France during the First World War and she came with a spinster
sister who was a musician. I began taking piano lessons from Miss Rosenthal
when I was about 7 or 8. Somehow I was terrified of  her. Not only did she
have a strange accent, but she made me balance dimes on my fingers when I
was practicing. I was almost relieved when I came down with a very severe
case of scarlet fever that kept me at home for many months of convalescence.
When I at last recovered, I never went back to piano lessons.

     When I returned to Lafayette in the 1970s, I got to know Miss Rosenthal
slightly and realized that she was a very sweet, shy person, and I wondered
how I could ever have been so frightened of her.  By the early 1980s, she had
become a little confused. I once saw her driving slowly through town with
her purse on the roof of her car. And about this time I heard that she had
gone into the First National Bank to make a deposit wearing only her slip
and a pair of shoes.

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Aunt Ruth is also featured in  "Renata" from  Musings and Meanderings No. 4; Mother and Aunt Ruth in "Thanksgiving, Ruth and Dickie" from Hotel Musings No. 49; Grandmother Pleasants in Hotel Musings No. 2 "Grandmother Pleasants and Mrs. Kennedy" and Hotel Musings No. 4 "A Two-dollar Hamburger Under A Silvery Dome"    (to access, click on highlighted titles).