1. I think they used to call it the rubber chicken tour. Major league baseball players were not well paid before winning their right to free agency. Our baseball cards sometimes told us what their jobs were in the off season. Some sold cars. Richie Hebner, third sacker for the Bucs, dug graves for his family-owned cemetery. Others sold insurance. Some worked at trades. Others worked in clothing stores. Players also picked up some extra cash appearing in cities and towns across the USA at banquets -- where "rubber chicken" was served! I don't know that when Vernon Law came to Kellogg in the winter of 1965 that he left the Silver Valley with pockets full of money, but what he did do was thrill many of us Kellogg kids and that was priceless.
I heard today from Byrdman. He told me about being at the banquet, securing Vernon Law's autograph, and keeping it neatly folded in his wallet for years thereafter; I heard from Rog who was also at the banquet and he remembers Cas's dad asking Vernon Law, during the Q&A, why pitchers were such notoriously lousy hitters. I also heard from Stu, who was not at the Vernon Law banquet, but went to a similar rubber chicken dinner the following year at the Wallace Elks that featured both Cubs' pitcher, Larry Jackson, a Nampa, ID native, and Spokane Valley resident and master base stealer, Maury Wills of the Dodgers. Rog's dad, Con, took Rog (a lifelong Dodger fan) to the banquet and Stu, too.
What a thrill!
2. Noisy work resumed in our house today: the guys sawed pipes, drilled holes, banged away on walls and pried up flooring. None of this noise deterred me from finishing the Joseph Mitchell anthology, Up in the Old Hotel. In his profile of rivermen living and working on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, across from Manhattan, Mitchell turns a long piece detailing the intricacies of Hudson River shad fishing into a reverie on the inevitability of death and an existential inquiry into whether there really is any purpose to human life and our endeavors.
The anthology's last piece is very likely Joseph Mitchell's most famous, Joe Gould's Secret. You might remember that nearly twenty years ago Stanley Tucci directed a movie by the same name. Tucci played the role of Joseph Mitchell and Ian Holm played Joe Gould. I haven't seen the movie but hope I can figure out a way to see it before too long.
I came away from Joe Gould's Secret thinking long thoughts about the unrealized, unfinished, and failed projects that have and still do live in my mind. To me, it was a profile examining how any of us decide to live with our failures, what we tell ourselves are the reasons we never wrote the book we might have carried in our minds for many years or how we present ourselves to others in light of the fact that inevitably we fall short of completing things we have started, things we have might have very publicly talked about doing, but never did. My list of such failures is lengthy. I'm often haunted by them, especially in my dreams. This was Joseph Mitchell's second profile of Joe Gould. It reassured me that failure is routine in our lives. I need not hide from what I've left undone or try to present myself as any better or worse than I am. It's a challenge. The temptation persists to exaggerate or fabricate accomplishments and live in denial of failings.
3. Yoke's sells these small sirloin steaks. One package of them is perfect for a dinner for the Deke and me. They cook up quickly and pair deliciously with chopped onions and mushrooms cooked up in bacon grease. That was our dinner tonight. Easy. Tasty. Satisfying.
* Oh! By the way, there's a deal going on at Facebook where friends ask friends to list ten albums that have mattered a lot over the years. Here are ten that have meant the world to me over the years. I could have listed all of the Deke's and Babe with Axes albums; same with Bill Davie.
Debbie Diedrich Ninety Miles Out
Bill Davie Phobia Robes
The Beatles White Album
Chorus Line Original Cast Recording
Warren Zevon Live at the Roxy
Miles Davis Kind of Blue
Blood, Sweat and Tears Blood, Sweat and Tears
June Tabor and Oysterband Freedom and Rain
Richard and Linda Thompson Shoot Out the Lights
Dire Straits Making Movies
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