Man Robs Bank In Sterling Virginia In A Hillary Clinton Mask

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20026845-504083.html

More On Emil Van Horn Hollywood's Most Famous Motion Picture Gorilla

I have written two other posts about Emil Van Horn who I knew in New Orleans in 1965 and 1966. Click on the label Emil Van Horn below to read them.
  I found this just recently. This has the most information on Emil Van Horn I have ever run across.
http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/21567/t/BLONDE-VENUS-or-GORILLA-MY-DREAMS.html
    They say no one knows his birthdate or birthplace. I seem to remember him telling me he was Hungarian or at least if not that eastern European.
In the video below from Blond Venus Emil Van Horn claimed in a 1939 interview in the article above that it was him in this video. No one seems to be sure who it was.

A Strange Coincidence Happened This Morning At McDonald's- Long Distance Mental Telepathy?

There is a guy from Paraguay who we see every morning at McDonald's before he goes to work. But he only is in DC in good weather. From the 1st of November to the middle of March he has gone home to Paraguay. That way he misses all of the really bad weather in the DC area.
He left almost 2 months ago for Paraguay.

The person I was talking to this morning said to me, "I hope George(the guy from Paraguay)doesn't call this morning. I bet it is about 85 or 90 degrees where he is". It was about 30 degrees this morning in Arlington, Va. with high winds making it feel much colder.

Less than 5 minutes later I heard a cell phone ring. It was George calling from Paraguay. He called a guy named Harry.  They talked about the weather here in DC and in Paraguay where indeed it was 97 degrees.
What are the odds on something like that happening. We had not heard from him in almost 2 months.

Something like this happened to me once before. In 1970 when we were living on P Street N.W. near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. I was playing with my 4 year old daughter. She had a Fisher Price toy telephone. One of my best friends had recently moved to Boston. I said to my daughter let's call Bill McKenzie in Boston. I picked up the toy telephone and dialed it and pretended to be talking to Bill in Boston. Not more than 15 minutes later the real telephone in our apartment rang. It was Bill McKenzie calling me from Boston. I was stunned. Just like the call yesterday from Paraguay. I guess these were examples of long distance mental telepathy.
  
Another time recently this same guy that mentioned George asked me to bring in a 1955 Washington-Lee High School Yearbook so he could look up some of his old friends. As he was slowly going through it he came to a senior picture of a guy named Ron. He asked me if that is the Ron that sometimes comes in McDonald's. I said that is him all right. We had not seen him in weeks.  A few minutes later Ron came through the door. We told him about seeing his picture. We have not seen him since. And that was a week ago.

Some Examples Of Charity Gone Awry, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished,Helping The Less Fortunate In A Land Of Plenty

 
I have written about Emil Van Horn elsewhere on this blog. He was "Hollywood's Most Famous Motion Picture Gorilla".   Check the list to the right of this to find what I have written about him before. He was down and out when I first met him in New Orleans in 1965. He was living with two or three other men in a small room in an old apartment building on Gov. Nicholls Street near Decatur Street. That was in the New Orleans French Quarter but it was a run down kind of place. They had one or two small rooms. Then the men disappeared. They may have been oil workers or maybe they shipped out on a merchant vessel.

Van Horn had no money so he became homeless. I had bought an old 1955 Studebaker and I wisely kept nothing in the car and the doors unlocked. I had discovered if you kept something in your car the vandals would break the windows to get in to steal whatever they could find. I figured I would let them look if they wanted to. I had nothing in that car but one pencil in the glove compartment.
  
Feeling sorry for Van Horn I told him he could sleep in the car. It went OK for awhile. But then one day I found a pee stained sheet on the back seat.  I told Van Horn he had to move out.  Where he went after that I do not know but he still continued to come by our apartment to visit during the day. I would let him sleep on the couch while I typed away.
  
One time I invited him to have the evening meal with us. I also invited two of our friends. They were polite but not much more. They were trying to join "society" in New Orleans and this was not what they had in mind.

When we moved to Washington D.C. we lived near Dupont Circle. Since the apartment did not have a washer and dryer I would take out clothes down the street to the laundramat. In the winter it was a place some homeless would sleep back by the dryers.

One of the bums asked me for some money. I told him I would not give him any money but I would give him something to eat. I told him to follow me the one block to our apartment. When I opened the door Rachel saw him and said, "Joe, don't bring that bum up here!" I told her I was just going to give him something to eat. We walked up the stairs. I told him to wait in the living room and that I would go get him something to eat. I went back to the kitchen and made him a sandwich. When I came back to the living room with the sandwich he had his back to me and was facing the mantle. He had his had in a box on the mantle that contained some small amount of money. I asked him what he was doing. He turned around removed his hand from the box. I gave him the sandwich and told hin to leave.

  I have a friend who worked with his wife helping the homeless in Washington, D.C. They used to work for a charity or their church and they would go around and deliver meals to the homeless in D.C.
    They did this out of a van. Crowds would gather for the free meals. He is a big guy and part of his job was to try and maintain some kind of order among the crowd.  One time he saw a homeless guy eyeing him. Then a few minutes later he felt a prick. The guy had stabbed him with a needle. My friend had to go to the hospital and get checked out and take some shots and be tested for aids. Lucky for him it was not an infected needle. They no longer do this charity work.

I have a friend here named Sam who plays the ukulele. He is homeless and plays his ukulele and also pan handles down at the train station in D.C. Union station is a good place to pan handle even though someone stole his ukulele when he went to the bathroom even though he had asked someone to watch his stuff while he was gone.

   I was told he did right well the two days before Christmas panhandling outside Union Station. He got 180 dollars each day. $360.00 for two days is not bad. Some gave him 5 dollars some gave him ten dollars and even a few twenties. Churches took up collections and put them in envelopes. The little children would put their one dollars or so in also. Then someone would deliver the envelopes to Sam and hand them to him.
Sam has dirty clothes and long hair. He really looks the part. He also has a sad expression on his face. Very rarely does he look people in the eye. He keeps his head and eyes lowered. Sam is a very smart well educated person. He has worked before but now he lives on the street. He keeps his possessions in a storage unit. He pays for the storage unit each month but does not have an apartment or a room. The homeless in Arlington get food every day from local churches. They had a Christmas meal from 2pm to 4pm yesterday at a church here in Arlington. Sam was there I was told by someone this morning.

  Sam has been banned from several places where he would go to get warm. One of them is the library. They have a rule that you cannot sleep in the library. They warn the sleepers once and then ban them the next time they catch them sleeping.

I first saw Sam last year sleeping out in the cold in a bus shelter. He would sleep in his sleeping bag all night and then later come in the McDonald's and go sit quietly in a booth and go to sleep. They let him do this for a long time. I finally went over and struck up a conversation with him. I was surprised to find he was so well read and well educated.  And he has talent also. He is quite good on the ukulele and is a good singer as well.
  But the people that come in McDonald's finally complained that he smelled bad and he was told to leave and not come back. So he stayed outside in the cold.

  Last year there was also a woman who slept out there in the bus stop shelters. She finally drove Sam away because she would not stick to one shelter. She kept moving back and forth to the one across the street and leaving a big mess which Sam said attracted rats. So he left and now sleeps somewhere down near the Central Library. He takes to metro into Union Station each day and comes back in the evening.
   I went looking for him today down by the library but he was not there. I feel he must be down at Union Station doing his thing.

A-SPAN helps the homeless in Arlington, Va.
http://a-span.org/HBMP.html

Butter Cookies Used As Money in Prison Danish Butter Cookies Are The Best Kind

I had a friend who taught school in a prison in Florida. It was a prison for first time offenders. It is located in Sneads, Florida. This was back in the 1970s. Many of the inmates were young teenagers who came down into Florida from Georgia and broke some law and ended up in prison. They stole a car or something like that.

   I went down to visit him in 1974 with the idea of getting a job there teaching. We drove out to the prison from nearby Tallahassee,Florida where he lived. He commuted every day back and forth to the prison. Most of the guards lived on farms nearby Sneads,Fa. It was good income for them working at the prison.
Here is a link about that prison. I see it is for adult males now. But they still offer teaching to the inmates.
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/facilities/region1/102.html
   
I have found that the best butter cookies are the ones that are made in Denmark. I don't buy any other kind.
 
   My friend told me that butter cookies were used as money by the prisoners. Whatever they needed or wanted they could get by trading butter cookies for it.

Fluff And Mamie Eisenhower's Million Dollar Fudge And Ike's Golf Shoes That Punched Holes In The Wooden Floors In The White House

http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/35/Mamie_Eisenhowers_Million_Dollar_Fudge43273.shtml
   Rachel's sister Ellen made some fudge recently that was the best I ever tasted. She said she used Fluff and the recipe was on the back. She said it was Mamie Eisenhower's recipe for fudge.
It was light and not too sweet. Delicious.
   There are several websites I found via Yahoo for Mamie Eisenhower's Million Dollar Fudge.
And Fluff has their own website also.
http://www.marshmallowfluff.com/pages/homepage.html
  But here it is. Don't be surprised if people tell you it is the best fudge they ever had.
http://www.bigoven.com/recipe/165203/Never-Fail-Fudge
  
When Ike was in the White House they had to tell him to stop walking around in his golf shoes. The spikes on the golf shoes were punching holes in the wooden floors in the White House.

Kirbyville Texas 1955

We lived in Kirbyville, Texas from 1952 to 1955. The above pictures of me were taken by Bob Stewart in the 25 acres behind our house sometime in the spring of 1955. I was almost 15 years old at the time.
   Kirbyville is famous for being the birthplace of the great singer and musician Ivory Joe Hunter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_Joe_Hunter

    When we lived there the band director was Karl Wadenpfuhl. He ran a tight ship. The band won awards every year. He used to inspect us and our instruments before every football game. I played trumpet. He would remove the mouthpiece and inspect it for cleanliness by holding it up to the light.
 His son Jay now plays french horn in the Boston Symphony.

   Here is an obiturary I found for Karl Wadenpfuhl,Sr.

"Karl H. Wadenpfuhl, Sr. of Kirbyville, Texas, passed from this life Sunday, June 13, 2010, at Harbor Hospice in Beaumont after a lengthy illness of almost three months. He was 88 years old. Karl was born November 26, 1921, in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Jacob and Alma Klos Wadenpfuhl. He was raised in Jefferson Parish during the Depression with his brother Ray and sister Alma. After graduation from high school at age 15, he soon enrolled at Louisiana State University and became a member of the LSU ROTC Cadet Band. He received a Bachelor of Music Education degree as a trumpet player in 1942. During the war, Karl joined the U.S. Army Air Force serving as principal French horn in the Army air Force field bands at Keesler Field, Mississippi, Smyrna, Tennessee, and Blytheville, Arkansas, and then the junior high director in Orange, Texas. Karl met Lottie Starnes at LSU and they married in Jonesboro, Ark. in 1944. They were five days shy of their Sixty-Sixth Wedding Anniversary. In 1949, Karl and Lottie moved to Kirbyville, a small AA school, and organized the band program there. He earned his Masters Degree from Sam Houston State University in 1953. This was to become their home, and Karl taught there until 1964. The Award Winning Kirbyville high School Band exerted considerable influence on school bands throughout Texas during the 50's 60's and 70's, even though it was a very small AA school. The concert band consistently performed difficult literature; the marching drills were challenging and innovative and performed to challenging music. The community took great pride in their band. In 1964, Karl and family moved to Beaumont where he became Assistant director of Bands at Lamar University for six years. He received his Doctorate in Secondary Education in 1970 from McNeese University. During the fall of 1970, Karl and Lottie returned to the failing band program in Kirbyville and restored the program to its previous status, winning many awards. In 1978, Karl started a new business as owner/operator of East Texas Music in Groves, where he remained until 1987 when he sold the successful business. He and Lottie officially retired to busy themselves taking care of their three acre homestead in Kirbyville. Karl's service to music education was bountiful. He served on many state music committees for T.M.E.A., T.B.A. and N.B.A. He was much sought after as a judge and clinician. His professional affiliations include Kappa Kappa Psi, Phi Mu Alpha, Kappa Delta Phi, Phi Beta Mu, TMEA, TBA, and Lions Club International. In 1977, Karl and wife Lottie were named Outstanding Citizens for Service to Youth by the city of Kirbyville, a tribute to almost thirty years of service to that community. In 1997 he was induced into the Texas bandmasters Hall of Fame, a singular honor for a lifetime of work and achievement in music education. Karl was preceded in death by his parents, Jacob and Alma Wadenpfuhl of New Orleans, wife Lottie Jay of Kirbyville, sister, Alma Weber of Decatur, AL. He is survived by brother Ray and wife Mary of Beaumont, son Karl, Jr. and wife Patty of Bevil Oaks, son Jay and wife Michelle of Boston, MA, son Ken and wife Patt of Cleveland OH, daughter Kathy of Austin; grandson Kris Wadenpfuhl and wife Sheila of Spring, granddaughter Karen Cotton and husband Carey Cotton on Beaumont, grandson Jacob and wife Leanne of Cleveland, OH, granddaughters Jennifer and Hana Jun Wadenpfuhl of Cleveland, OH; great-grandchildren Koren and Kylen Wadenpfuhl of Kingwood, Dawson Droll of Spring, Karlee Cotton of Beaumont, and Poppy Anne Wadenpfuhl of Cleveland, OH., numerous nieces and nephews. Funeral Services will be 10:00 a.m. Friday, June 18, at First United Methodist Church in Kirbyville with Rev. Bart Reddoch officiating. Burial will be at Kirbyville Cemetery. Visitation."

Here is another good obituary for Karl Wadenpfuhl.
http://www.kfdm.com/articles/local-38209-age-band.html

Karl Wadenphul taught me and many others the beauty of classical music. We had a great marching band also.  We marched in a 1955 Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans. It was on a Sunday afternoon Feb. 20, 1955.
After the parade we walked around the French Quarter.
Some of us tried to walk through The Court of Two Sisters but were told we could not as it was being set up for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. I always thought it was a scene for a movie. But never could find a movie that fit the time period.

This does: It was The Colgate Comedy Hour broadcast live Sunday Feb. 20, 1955.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813665/


The two pictures below are of a handmade baseball card I made in 1955. My brother Bob took the picture and I cut up an Early Wynn baseball card and pasted in my picture.  I typed the information on the back. When I showed it to Allen Ebarb he was not amused since I had made up the little story of striking him out. It never happened. The statistics are those of Early Wynn who had a good year that year.

Macy's Product Placement On Soap Opera The Bold And The Beautiful Today

Christmas shopping invaded a soap opera today. In the middle of a segment on the soap opera The Bold And The Beautiful sponsored by Macy's they decided a commercial was not enough. There was a Macy's shopping bag sitting on the couch in the preceding scene. Then if that was not enough the character tells another character to shop online at macy's.com. Then to carry it even further they go to a laptop computer and bring up macy's.com.

   Now that is product placement. Then they wrote a letter to Santa to raise money for Make A Wish Foundation. It is part of the Believe campaign. For every letter to Santa that is taken to Macy's they will donate 1 dollar up to a million dollars to the Make A Wish Foundation. On line you can write a letter to Santa. They even have letters written by celebrities.

http://social.macys.com/believe2010/?LinkType=Homepage&cm_re=1.2.6-_-HOMEPAGE_INCLUDE_1-_-CATEGORY%20--%205125%20--%20:create%20your%20letter#/home

http://www.macys.com/

SUDDENLY Frank Sinatra From 1954 Movie Was Withdrawn From Distribution After JFK Assassination

http://dvp-potpourri.blogspot.com/2010/10/suddenly.html
Click on the above link to see the entire movie Suddenly.

Click and double click to enlarge to read the above.

There Was No Record In The Juvenile Court Probation Office In New Orleans Orleans Parish Of Lee Harvey Oswald In 1965

When I worked as a Juvenile Court Probation Officer in New Orleans in 1965 I checked the files and there was no file for Lee Harvey Oswald. Did this mean he had no record as a juvenile delinquent in New Orleans? Or did it mean the file(if there had been one) had been removed?
   I have never seen any information that he was ever sent to Juvenile Court in New Orleans.

New Theory On Why Oswald Shot JFK He Was Mad At The American Government FBI And Agent James P Hosty So He Took It Out On The Head Of The USA Government JFK

FBI Agent James Hosty

http://www.cdo.co.uk/jfk/wiki/index.php?title=James_Hosty
    This is somewhat far fetched but since no one else has come forward to discuss this as a possible motivation for Oswald shooting JFK I have decided to put it out there for consideration.
 
For many years I believed Oswald acted alone since I never saw any hard evidence to prove otherwise. And there was hard evidence to prove that he did do it.
   The question remains why? What was his motivation? If he did it why did he do it? That has never been explained.
    There are so many theories out there about the CIA,The Mafia,and many others but no hard proof that I have seen. It is true that I also believe that it could have been a Mafia conspiricy hatched by Carlos Marcello,Sam Giancana,and Santos Trafficante. Marcello had been heard to ask ,"Who will take this stone from my shoe?" And, "Cut off the head and the tail will die."  He had  strong reason to hate Bobby Kennedy and JFK.

Oswald's mother's friends included Clem Sehrt and Raoul Sere, attorneys with links to Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss. She was also friendly with Sam Termine, who had worked for Marcello and was a close friend of Oswald's uncle Charles "Dutz" Murret. Murret was married to Marguerite's sister Lillian and had a great deal of contact with Oswald. Murret was also connected to Marcello.
   So maybe Oswald did have help and it came from Carlos Marcello,Sam Giancana,and Carlos Trafficante and some hired hitman or hitmen.

   But for the purposes of this theory I will leave them out of it and just consider Lee Harvery Oswald acted alone. And that his motivation was hatred of the US Government and JFK for their policy and actions toward Castro and Cuba and also the FBI and James P. Hosty for bothering his wife without him(Oswald)being present.
Hosty had also called the Texas Book Depository to confirm Oswald worked there. This was before the assassination. He tried to get Oswald's home address from them but they only had the Ruth Paine address in Irving, Texas. It is possible that someone in the Personnel Dept. would have mentioned this phone call to Oswald and asked for his current address. That would surely have upset Oswald even more.

James Hosty had been twice to Irving,Texas to Ruth Paine's house to interview Oswald. Neither time was he home. Still those visits had upset Oswald to the point he took a note to the Dallas FBI office and left it for Hosty. This is the note that was destroyed after the assassination by Hosty at the direction of his boss.
The link below is to Hosty's testimony before the Warren Commission. No mention of the destroyed note is to be found in this testimony.
http://www.jmasland.com/wctestimony/fbi/hosty.htm

Also even though Oswald had never met James Hosty before the assassination Oswald became very upset when he was questioned by Hosty after the assassination. That was at Dallas Police Headquarters.
  It could be that Oswald had been planning to kill some government official for some time. And that he became more agitated by Hosty's increasing interest in him and Marina. Then when Kennedy came to Dallas and the motorcade route was published in the newspaper he decided to act. Alone.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/route.htm
The above link proves the parade route was well publicized in the Dallas newspapers. And was not changed at the last minute.
Oswald would have read what the parade route was going to be giving him plenty of advance notice and time to arrange to bring his rifle to work on the morning of Nov. 22,1963.

Here is some more interesting information.
http://hnn.us/articles/20369.html

And more on Lee Harvey Oswald.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/oswald.htm

Lee Harvey Oswald's Motives.
http://www.hnn.us/articles/23430.html
The following paragraph is taken from the link above.
"In the month before the assassination Oswald may have entered into his revolutionary fantasies whilst watching television. A Secret Service interview with Marina was first recognised by Jean Davison as a telling indication of Oswald's state of mind. Marina told agents that on Friday, October 18th. Oswald had watched two movies on television and he had been “greatly excited”. The first movie was Suddenly, in which Frank Sinatra played an ex-soldier who planned to shoot an American president. Sinatra’s character was to shoot the president with a high-powered rifle from the window of a house overlooking a railway station. The second movie, We Were Strangers, was based on the overthrow of Cuba’s Machado regime in 1933.John Garfield had played an American who had gone to Cuba to help a group of rebels assassinate the Cuba leader. Oswald’s reactions to these movies made a strong impression on his wife, according to the Secret Service report."

History Of WWVA Radio Station In Wheeling West Virginia And Something On WWVA Jamboree And The Truckers Expo

http://jeff560.tripod.com/wwva.html
  The above link is a good history of the radio station WWVA in Wheeling West Virginia.

    In September 1974 I went with Bill Garrison over to Wheeling, West Virginia to go to the WWVA Jamboree and Truckers Expo. He was going to write something about it for Rolling Stone Magazine but they decided not to use it.

Meanwhile we had a really fun trip. We got to go to the big country show at The Capitol Music Hall in downtown Wheeling shown in the photo above.

    First we went over across the river to the large expo hall where 18 wheel trucks were on display. Detroit Diesel Allison was exhibiting its engines and giving away free 45rpm records of Dave Dudley singing a special song made just for them about Detroit Diesel Allison engines. Of course many other trucking companies were there showing off their trucks and supplies.
Here is a mention in Billboard of that 45rpm promo for Detroit Diesel Allison by Dave Dudley.
http://books.google.com/books?id=QwkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT36&dq=dave+dudley+detroit+diesel+allison&hl=en&ei=7VMCTd_hAYSClAeO1KHTCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=dave%20dudley%20detroit%20diesel%20allison&f=false

   Buck Owens flew into Wheeling for a big show at the race track. Susan Raye was his featured female singer. Buck flew in on a private jet and played the concert and flew back out on his private jet.
  I was much impressed with Susan Raye. I had never heard of her and she was really good.



Buck did a press conference before his big show. Someone asked him how the death of Don Rich affected him and his band. I dont remember his answer. I could tell though it was something Buck Owens did not want to talk about. Don had died in an motocycle accident in July 1974.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Rich

   Then we went back that night for the big country music show at the Capitol Theater. Dave Dudley was the featured performer that night. Bill interviewed Dave in his dressing room. Dave and hurt his foot somehow and was limping. He had a nice looking blond woman with him. Dave told us how he played pro baseball and then became a DJ and finally a country music performer himself.
Here is a good link on Dave Dudley.
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/02/profiles_in_tru.html
Dave was a nice friendly man who really seemed to be enjoying himself. He arrived as I recall with the good looking blond in a big white Cadillac.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Dudley

Susan Raye Precious Memories

This song was featured in a film called, 'Hardcore' with George C. Scott in 1979.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079271/

Jerry Lee Lewis Middle Age Crazy 1977

  The picture above shows Jerry Lee Lewis after he was arrested in Memphis after trying to climb the fence and break into Graceland to see Elvis Presley.

Jerry Lee is still alive and still rocking. He was in the Betty Ford clinic once and they kicked him out because he would not work or do chores. A guy who worked for Jerry Lee told them "Jerry Lee doesn't have to do anything but rock and roll."

  Click to enlarge the above which is an advertisment for Gus Stevens nightclub in Biloxi,Mississippi from around 1968.

In 1968 a friend of mine was playing at Gus Stevens nightclub in Biloxi, Mississippi. He was George Cummings who a year or two later founded the band Dr. Hook And The Medicine Show.
Jerry Lee Lewis came into the club after hours and the juke box was  playing some Beatles songs. Jerry Lee said, "Turn that(expletive deleted)off". George told Jerry Lee "Man let them have their day. You have already had yours". Jerry Lee then took umbrage at that statement and invited George out in the parking lot to fight.
Dick Van Dyke's brother Jerry Van Dyke happened to be present and he broke up the argument and cooled off the situation and kept the two from going to fist city.

Elizabeth Taylor Sat Right In Front Of Me At Tennessee Williams Clothes For A Summer Hotel 1980 At The Kennedy Center In Washington D.C.

Elizabeth Taylor was not in this play but she was in the opening night audience at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

In March of 1980 my wife Rachel gave me a ticket to go see Clothes For A Summer Hotel by Tennessee Williams at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. where it was having a tryout before going on to open in New York.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_for_a_summer_hotel

It was opening night and my seat in the third or fourth row was directly behind Elizabeth Taylor and Senator John Warner. Before the lights went down I sat staring at Elizabeth Taylor's ears and the largest diamond earings I had ever seen or have ever seen. Several gay young men ran down the aisle before the play started to say hello to her.

  I enjoyed the play very much and since I knew the story of Scott and Zelda very well I had no trouble following all the action. It was sort of a memory play about their life and included an actor playing a young Ernest Hemingway who was very good I thought.

    At intermission between acts I went out in the foyer to smoke my pipe.

 There was a drink cart sitting out in the foyer for those that wanted some liquid refresment. I did not get anything to drink. I just stood there smoking my pipe and watching the people come and go.
  
I heard some bell ring or some notice that the next act was about to begin. By this time I was the only person still standing outside. The hall was empty except for the drink cart. As I was about to start in a man came running out to get a drink. It was Tennessee Williams. I looked at him and he glanced at me. I did not say anything to him because he looked very worried and very hurried. He got his drink and ran back inside. I went back to my seat.

When the play ended he stood up and acknowledged the applause when they asked for him to stand up.
   I thought it was a good play but when it went to New York it closed after 14 performances. See above wikipedia entry about the play for details.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_williams

    Back in the late summer of 1972 I had met Tennessee Williams briefly on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It was in August. A very hot day. There had just been one of those frequent rain storms that come and go in late summer in New Orleans. I had sought shelter under the Cabildo across from Jackson Square just a few minutes earlier. After the rain stopped I wandered over to Bourbon Street. I was standing on Bourbon Street watching the people when I was surprised to see Tennessee Williams coming down the street. He was not alone. There were three people with him. I crossed the street and called out to him. Even though they were in a hurry(it was near noon and I feel sure they were on the way to Galatoires his favorite restaurant) he kindly stopped and spoke with me for a minute or two. The people with him did not seem to like this but he did. He held my hand between his two hands much like a grandmother or mother would.
   Then they took off. I had finally met one of my most favorite authors.

  But eight years later I did not bother speaking to him since it was clear he was worried about his new play.
  And as it turned out he was right. He had much reason to worry about Clothes For A Summer Hotel. It was the last play he opened on Broadway. After that it was off Broadway for him. The critics had it in for him and that was all there was to it.

The Legend Of Suicide Bridge Near Cambridge, Maryland

http://www.suicidebridge.com/legend.html
   
There is also a Suicide Bridge Restaurant. It is near Cambridge, Maryland but it is off the beaten track. It is a hangout for locals on  that part of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Not many(if any) tourists at all. You have to drive out of your way to find this place. Someone told me about it. He ate there. It is not inexpensive. And from reviews I have read on line some people did not like the restaurant but others did.
http://suicidebridge.com/
Directions:
http://www.suicidebridge.com/directions.html

A Christmas High School Assembly From 1982

  For some reason I find this high school assembly Christmas show very entertaining. Maybe because it is from 1982 and seems so long ago.

Does Santa Claus Ever Get A Speeding Ticket? He Almost Did This Morning In Arlington, Virginia

Sandra Bullock as a cheerleader at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington,Virginia in 1982.

http://www.apsva.us/washingtonlee/site/default.asp
I went to the annual Washington and Lee High School Christmas Bazaar this morning early to watch them set up. I have been going to this event for many years.
   As I was leaving the guy who is going to play Santa Claus came rushing in wearing his Santa Claus suit but not his beard or Santa hat. He had a coffee cup in his left hand. He said, "I almost got a speeding ticket. But they let me go." The police laughed and said , "Where is your sleigh?"

    This is the high school here in Arlington,Va. that Sandra Bullock graduated from in 1982. She was President of the German club. At the annual Christmas bazaar different clubs at the school serve ethnic foods. The German club makes and sells German pancakes. If you were there in 1982 you could have gotten some German pancakes and apple sauce from Sandra Bullock. Everyone called her "Sandy" back then.

Woody Guthrie Once Stayed in Arlington, Virginia With Alan Lomax And Pete Seeger In March,April, And May Of 1940

Alan Lomax is shown in the picture above.
Many thanks to the person below who tells the story of Alan Lomax,Woody,Nick Ray, and Pete Seeger in Arlington, Virginia in 1940 at 1811 N. Oak Street. I have been looking for this address for a long time and this is the first time I ever found it. Woody Guthrie stayed with Alan Lomax in March, April, and May of 1940 at 1811 N. Oak Street, Arlington, Virginia.  The house is long gone and replaced long ago by office buildings.
http://ourredneckpast.blogspot.com/2010/10/arlingtons-critical-role-in-american.html

Bayou Bakery Has Their Website Up Now! You Can Get Real Beignets At Bayou Bakery And Lots More Authenic New Orleans Food And Coffee

Click on the link below to see their new website.
http://www.bayoubakeryva.com/
Click on the label Bayou Bakery below to see my other posts about this fine new restaurant in Arlington, Virginia. I tried the pralines recently and they are as good as any I ever had in New Orleans.
Down South we say praw-leens. Up North they say pray-leens.  Either way they are good. These are made with plenty of good spiced pecans. Another word that has two pronunciations. Down South we say pe-cahns.
Up North they say pe-cans.

Do You Know What It Means To Be Dead In New Orleans? Or Why I Don't Think I Will Ever Go Back To New Orleans The Big Easy Is Hazardous To Your Health

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2010/11/police_seek_public_assistance.html
New Orleans is now a crime ridden city. Dangerous to your health. The only way to protect yourself is to leave the Big Easy and don't go there anymore. Too many juveniles and others with guns and knives.
Most of the crime is late at night. But not all. The French Quarter used to be safe but not any more.
Roving bands of thugs are preying on tourists and locals alike. See the link below.
http://www.nola.com/crime/

And the links below are about Wendy Byrnes murder. She was a bartender at Aunt Tiki's Jewels Bar that I wrote about in the post below this one.
http://blog.nola.com/notesonneworleans/2009/01/wendy_byrne_memorial.html
More on Wendy Byrnes and her murder in the link below. Poor Wendy. She didn't get out of New Orleans in time. New Orleans has always been a violent city and a city full of crime. It is like Paris. A museum like city center for the rich and tourists and surrounded by extremely poor people in poor neighborhoods. As someone said if people don't have an income they are going to come for yours. Be warned New Orleans is not safe anymore. It is dangerous especially at night and even more so late at night.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/wendy_byrnes_life_ended_as_a_n.html

Aunt Tiki's Jewels Bar New Orleans 1207 Decatur Street Formerly Known 40 Years Ago As Jewel's Tavern

http://www.yelp.com/biz/aunt-tikis-new-orleans
  This is what happened to Jewel's Tavern which I write about in the post below. 40 years later it is now called Aunt Tiki's Jewels Bar.
  If you read the comments in the link above it sounds much like the old place except it is now a dive bar instead of a seaman's bar.

WUSA 1970 The Movie Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward Based On The Novel HALL OF Mirrors By Robert Stone Includes Beautiful Scenes Inside and Outside of The Long Lost Jewel's Tavern In The French Quarter Of New Orleans.

WUSA The Movie From 1970 Starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Based on the novel HALL OF MIRRORS by Robert Stone who also wrote the screenplay for this movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066540/

This movie is hard to find. Robert Stone who wrote the book Hall Of Mirrors that WUSA is based on and wrote(or co wrote) the screenplay for this movie has stated he thinks it is a really terrible movie and he is embarrassed by it. And I guess it really is a bad movie of a great book. But the movie has a few things going for it. I found the whole movie on YouTube. The person has not allowed embedding so you have to click on this link. Below is part one of 9 parts on Youtube. But you can watch all nine parts to see the whole movie. Just look to the right hand column on the page for parts 2 through 9.  In part #2 at time 2:18 and 3:21 you can see the outside of Jewel's Tavern which was located on Decatur St. near Governor Nicholls in the French Quarter. In fact the scene inside appears to be the real inside of Jewel's Tavern. Jewel's Tavern was a famous seaman's bar in the French Quarter. It is now long gone. These are the only known pictures of Jewel's Tavern I have ever seen. But you have to watch the movie(part #2)to see Jewel's Tavern. No still pictures are available.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD9I6myGmv0&feature=related

Click on the Label Jewel's Tavern below to read another post of mine about New Orleans and the Mardi Gras of 1964 that mentions Jewel's Tavern and Bob Dylan. See Note#1 in that post.

Mitsitam Cafe In The National Museum Of The American Indian Washington, D.C.

We went to this place in the middle of the day on Thanksgiving. It was packed with people. Almost no place to sit down. I have never seen it so full since the museum first opened. It has always been popular.
http://www.nmai.si.edu/subpage.cfm?subpage=visitor&second=dc&third=mitsitam

   After we sat down I wondered how many of the customers were thinking of Thanksgiving and the Indians of the Americas when they came in. The cafe does serve turkey every day except Christmas Day.  All Smithsonian Museums are open every day of the year except Christmas day.
This is their fall 2010 menu.
http://www.nmai.si.edu/visitor/files/2010fall_menu.pdf
     Above is a video that shows most of the different types of food available in the Mitsitam Cafe. Mitsitam means "Let's Eat". I don't know why she has  a number 35 on her back.

    What makes this cafe so special is that they offer Indian food of the Americas that cannot be found anywhere else in Washington D.C. and maybe the entire country at least under one roof. It is certainly the most unique place to eat in Washington, D.C.
  Here is their Thanksgiving takehome menu.
http://www.nmai.si.edu/visitor/files/2010thanksgiving_menu.pdf


   We had some clam corn chowder and corn bread that was fantastic. Others had the fry bread buffalo chili.
The cafe was crowded not just because it was Thanksgiving but also because all the food is so good.

Seated across from me were two young Japanese women. They were taking pictures of themselves and the Buffalo Burgers they had sitting in front of them.

The picture above is of The National Museum Of The American Indian located on The Mall in Washington, D.C. The picture was taken from the outside garden of the United States Botanic Garden which is located nearby.

Bayou Bakery Arlington Virginia Update

Here is an update.

http://eatingarounddc.blogspot.com/2010/11/bayou-bakery-brings-nola-to-arlington.html

They are on Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/bayoubakery

Meanwhile here is your order.

See my post below this one for more on Bayou Bakery in Arlington,Virginia.

Bayou Bakery In Arlington Virginia Opened Last Saturday New Orleans Comes To Arlington, Virginia If You Can't Go To New Orleans Go To The Bayou Bakery in Arlington, Va.

This place opened on this past Sat. It is the real deal. Real New Orleans chef and real New Orleans food and most of all real New Orleans beignets.
   As a former New Orleanian and habitual customer of Cafe du Monde and The Morning Call starting in the late 1950s I know a beignet that is real and taste real when I see and eat one.

   Having lived in New Orleans I am very critical of would be New Orleans styled restaurants outside of New Orleans. But this is one that makes it. It was packed on Sat. with happy people. It is located next to the Arlington County Courthouse on N. Courthouse Road. It is going to do great business in that busy neighborhood. Check out their menu and photos in the link below. I tried the beignets and I am here to tell you they taste as good as the ones at The Cafe Du Monde and The Morning Call.  So far the restaurant and the chef are getting rave reviews.
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/youngandhungry/2010/11/19/david-guas-bayou-bakery-opens-on-saturday/

    New Orleans music plays softly in the background. The smell of the coffee and the pastries hits you as you enter the door. I can smell beignets cooking and I see nothing but smiling happy customers.
   It is a rare thing indeed to find a real New Orleans restaurant outside of New Orleans and this is one.
This place has a real New Orleans "feel" and that is hard to describe but you know it when you feel it. And this place has it.
Now I don't have to drive 1200 miles to get a real beignet. Thanks Bayou Bakery.

The link below has some more pictures and comments from some who were there on Sat. Also some directions on how to find the place and why it is so hard to find right now.
http://www.arlnow.com/2010/11/19/bayou-bakery-begins-soft-opening-with-limited-menu/

World's First Rock And Roll Song? But What Was The Worlds First "Rock" Song?

http://news.discovery.com/human/worlds-first-rock-and-roll-song-identified.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1

I think the song above is the first rock and roll song. I believe that is what Rolling Stone Magazine decided also. Why should not the King Of Rock and Roll be the one with the first Rock and Roll song?

Ray Charles I Got A Woman from 1954 would make another good candidate for the first rock and roll song as well as anything early by Chuck Berry. I used to say that rock and roll was nothing but white boys trying to play rhythm and blues.

This wikipedia page on Rock And Roll covers the question of who was first very well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll

In the 1960s Bob Dylan used to say when people talked about rock music, "What happened to the roll?"

I  am not sure what the first "rock" song was but it would be interesting to know. Two possibilities for the first "rock" song are by The Who or The Kinks.

Then came hard rock and then hard rock cafes.

  Here is a link to American Routes radio show by Nick Spitzer. The best roots music show there is.

http://americanroutes.publicradio.org/

This week is all about Sam Cooke. The man who invented "Soul".

The Old Spanish Sugar Mill Restaurant De Leon Springs, Florida All You Can Eat Pancakes You Make 'Em Yourself

Check out the menu.

http://www.planetdeland.com/sugarmill/menu2.html

http://www.floridastateparks.org/deleonsprings/photogallery.cfm

This is a wonderful place where you can cook your own pancakes,eggs,french toast and more right at your table on a grill. It is always packed and busy.

http://www.planetdeland.com/sugarmill/index.htm

It is located in the Old Spanish Sugar Mill inside the State Park at DeLeon Springs, Flordia about 6 miles north of Deland, Fla..

Getting There:
De Leon Springs is located at the corner of Ponce de Leon and Burt Parks Road, west of U.S. 17.

Take US Hwy 17 North from Deland for approximately six miles, following the state park signs. Turn left onto Ponce De Leon Boulevard and travel approximately one mile to the entrance to De Leon Springs State Park.
It is a great place to eat and is something special.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Leon_Springs_State_Park

Here is a view of the outside of the Sugar Mill and the State Park at De Leon Springs,Fla.

Rita Hayworth Comes To The Shoreham Hotel In Washington D.C. To Accept The National Screen Heritage Award For 1977. Gene Kelly Was There Also But No One Saw Him But Us

This is how she looked when we escorted her down from her suite to the Palladian Room in 1977.

Rita Hayworth Accepts The 1977 Screen Heritage Award At The Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C. in The Palladian Room.

Since I can't find anything on the internet about this that names the hotel where she received this award I will post it here.

I was working as a Hotel Security Officer at The Shoreham Hotel in 1977. Another officer named Frank and I were working the 3pm to 11pm shift when we got word that we were to go upstairs and hold an elevator for Rita Hayworth and then escort her down to the Palladian Room. She got in the elevator with another woman who kept brushing her hair. Rita looked nervous but also excited and happy. When we got to the lobby level we headed for the Palladian Room. The doors were closed. We were told that when she was announced(this was after the guests had eaten and watched the movie Gilda) they would open the doors and she would enter.

The doors flew open. A blindingly bright spotlight was shining directly at us(really at her)and she smiled and entered the room and the doors closed behind her. She received the award shown above.

The Shoreham Hotel Washington, D.C.

The above photo is from the movie Gilda with Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth. This movie was shown in the Palladian Room at the Shoreham Hotel before Rita made her grand entrance into the room.
When she went in the crowd roared and applauded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_hayworth

Gene Kelly Was At The Hotel That Night But No One Saw Him.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kelly

Prior to going upstairs and escorting Rita Hayworth to the Palladian Room we had gotten a call to go down to the employee's entrance and escort a man upstairs to see Rita Hayworth. I can't remember if we were told who this person was going to be but I don't think we were.
   We got the elevator down to the sub basement level and in walked a man by himself. He got in the elevator. I looked at him and it was Gene Kelly that we were taking upstairs to see Rita. I could not think of anything to say to him so I just smiled. He smiled back. I must say he really did have a great smile. We took him upstairs to Rita's suite. He did not come down with her in the elevator to go to the Palladian Room. I guess he wanted her to have all the attention from her public that night.

This is the famous WW2 Pin Up of Rita Hayworth.

How I Was Chased By A Mad Farmer With A Pitchfork In Le Sentier Switzerland In The Summer Of 1964

Two photos above are of Le Sentier Switzerland

The Train Station Le Sentier Switzerland

In the summer of 1964 I went to Europe for the summer. Someone had sent me an ad he had found on a bulletin board at Vanderbilt University where he was a graduate student. It was an offer of a summer job in Europe and a charter flight over at the beginning of the summer and a flight back in early September. I was working teaching school and had enough money to pay the fee in installments. So when June came I was all set to go.  After going to the World's Fair in NYC I boarded a Saturn Airways(propeller powered)flight to London along with a plane load of American college age students who were headed to Europe for their summer jobs. The deal was we would fly to London and have a day or two there and then take the boat train to Paris where we would have a day or so and be given our job assignments.

    There were some nice people on this flight. I met a girl from Bates College. She told me one of her fellow students at Bates College was Robert McNamara's daughter. And that the girl was driven to tears by her father's demands at the dinner table and would get up and run out of the room.

   In London I spent the evening with a smart young freshman from Harvard. He and I drank so much we overslept in the hotel(The Mitre)and woke up to find all the other students gone. But we hustled to Victoria Station on our own to catch up. The other students were already gone so we took a later boat train.

  Oddly while at the Victoria Station I heard someone call my name. It was Rob Johnson. He was a language teacher at a University in Illinois and he was traveling with his wife.  We had gone to the same college and he was a friend of the guy from Vanderbilt who had sent me the ad. It was an odd co-incidence.
We chatted while we waited for our trains.

      In Paris we found our group and got our job assignments. I was going to work on a farm in Switzerland in a little town called Le Sentier not too far from Lausanne.

    Also in Paris that summer was a college friend of mine staying at the Hotel La Louisiane. I saw her briefly before leaving for Switzerland.  She friendly with all the jazz musicians and artists staying at the Hotel La Louisiane.

When I got to the train station I checked my baggage at a  place marked Baggage. I did not speak or understand French well enough to know that the bags would be staying there and not put on the trains I was going on.

       I took the train from Paris to Geneva. While waiting for the connecting train there I went to the American Library  and read Hemingway's story Big Two Hearted River.

      The train went from Geneva to Lausanne and then on to Vallorbe. Another connection took me on a small train to Le Pont and finally Le Sentier. I got off and discovered my bags were not there. It was all my fault.   I made a report. The lady taking the report said "Do you speak French?" A little bit I said in French. "Well speak it then", she said.  She put the wheels in motion to recover my bags. It would take several days.
    In the meantime I found the farm I was to work on. The peasant family put me up in a room over the barn.
The idea was we would bring in the hay crop by pitching hay from dawn to dusk every day.. For this I would get room and board and be paid one dollar a day.

   After doing this for several days I went back up to Vallorbe and got back my suitcases. Now I was ready to leave. The family had been nice to me and I decided to leave them a note rather than just slipping out at night.

   I ended up being cornered by the farmer in his house. He had a  large pitchfork in his hands. He had decided I wasn't going to leave. He wasn't hearing of it. He chased me around a table waving the pitchfork at me. We went round and round the table. Finally I found an opening and made it out the door and went off running down the road and street to the train station. He followed waving the pitchfork and shouting at me. I made it to the train staion. There the lady train master hid me until the train arrived to get me out of Le Sentier. She was friendly and played some nice classical music for me.

It occurred to me some years later that he may have paid someone for my services. But I still had to go. I wasn't going to waste the summer pitching hay for a dollar a day.  I had things to do and places to go.  I had to get cracking and see as much of Europe as I could in three months.

I went back to Paris. That was what I had in mind for the summer anyway not wasting my time on a farm.
   I went back to the Hotel La Lousiane. And I have other posts on this blog about my stay in Paris in 1964.

In due time I went up to Brussels where the guy who ran the overseas jobs was located. I found him and he got me another job writing letters in English for Madame Collete Stasse.
 She was the head of the L'Association Belgo- Americain.
  Her husband owned an ran Europe's largest sporting newspaper Le Sport.

   She gave me free tickets to the 24 hours of Francochamps sports car race in Francochamps. Also she gave me some tickets to see the play As I Lay Dying which came to Brussels that summer with the Dallas Theater Center Group.
Here is something on the Dallas Theater Center and its founder that mentions the play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baker_(teacher)



  Madame Stasse would get a pedicure while she dictated letters to me in English. I would write them down and type them up for her.

I met a couple of other American students who showed up in Brussels. One girl who had been sent to a bar near the Black Forest in Germany quit because there was a German Army base nearby and she said the soldiers refused to believe she was not a prostitute. She was going back to Oklahoma.

   Another guy showed up with a broken collar bone. He had fallen off his bicycle. He kept me awake at night in the student hostel screaming in pain. He kept demanding I take him to the hospital so I got up and took him to the hospital.

I answered an ad to teach English to a Belgian boy while I went with them on a camping trip. But the way it turned out I was to pay for all my own food.  Again I saw that it was a waste of time before we left Brussels I asked them to stop the car and I jumped out.

Later I left for Italy. I took an overnight train and woke up and looked out the window and we were in the middle of the Alps.  I went on to Florence and then on to Rome and eventually to Greece.
It was so hot in Greece in August I had to retreat to the room where I was staying with a friendly Turk who rented out rooms in his house. One afternoon I read in an English language newspaper that Marlene Dietrich would be performing at the Edinburgh Festival of arts and music. Since it said in the paper that the temp. in Edinburgh was in the low 70's I decided to leave the 100 plus degree heat of Athens.

 I came back through Yugoslavia on a train with nothing to eat but anisette cookies for two days. This train took 48 hours to go from Athens to Munich Germany. We went through Zagreb which was still communist at that time. There was only one English speaking person besides myself on the train. He was a Hungarian American art student heading for Budapest. He is the person who shared his cookies with me. He made a big point of showing me a German family who had a big basket of food and telling me "Watch they will never offer us anything". And they never did.

    I got back to Brussels and headed for London and on to Edinburgh. But that is another story. I have other posts on my blog about that summer of 1964 in Europe. Click on the label 1964 below.
 
I need to add that in June of 2007 my wife and I took an overnight train from Rome to Paris. We had just finished a 3 week tour of Italy and Sicily.
   We had a sleeping compartment on the train. In the middle of the night we slowed down and finally stopped. I looked out the window. I saw a sign that said Le Sentier. I was back in Le Sentier after 43 years.