IBID (19 page)
Authors: Mark Dunn
“I’m lucky. When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift, that’s something. When everybody down to the
groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies, that’s something. [When the fellows in the press box pitch in to buy you a shiny new toaster, that’s something too. So is getting a three-speed blender from your shoeshine kid who doesn’t have two pennies to rub together on the best of days. And when that woman who sits in the bleachers and sounds like a crow gives you cookie jar shaped like a fat chicken, that’s something that will make a fellow sit up and say,‘Gee! A chicken cookie jar from the crow lady!’ And when the guy who lives over your stoop with the Homburg and the caterpillar brows leans out his window and yells, ‘Hey, Lou—take this egg poacher—and oh yes, this “Champion” Croquet set with weatherproof varnish, and this “Waldorf”’ Wardrobe Trunk with vulcanized fiber binding and built-in shoe pockets!’ that sure is something too. I’ll say it again.] I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth
.”
10.
Jonathan changed his mind about converting to Catholicism.
Fate would treat Father McNulty none too kindly. Several years after his highly-publicized sanity hearing, the priest was defrocked for trying to exorcise an epileptic maid-of-all-work. I should note that Jonathan maintained a close friendship with McNulty in spite of all of his difficulties, and even as Jonathan began to take his first tentative steps toward a full embrace of secular humanism, which at this stage involved working the punch ladle during the refreshment portion of meetings of the Society for Ethical Culture.
It has also been alleged that Jonathan’s decision not to join the Catholic church can be traced, in part, to Adam Powers’s scathing anti-Catholic treatise
Onehundred and seventy-eight Questions You Should Ask Yourself About the Catholic Church
, which received an ringing endorsement by the Indiana Ku Klux Klan, although all of their copies were
accidentally burned in the infamous Hoosier Book Bonfire of 1928.
Dismissing the publication publicly, Jonathan admitted privately to finding some merit to questions 3, 45, and 79. Only one copy of this notorious tract is known to exist, and it lives in the heavily restricted “Bad and
Very
Bad” vault at the Notre Dame University Library. I gained access only through heavy cajoling and the bribing of a particular sweet-toothed librarian with a dozen of my Grandmother Sally’s tasty miniature apple pies (called “teeny pies” in family parlance). I’ve noted those questions below:
#3 Why do only Catholics and never Protestants see the face of the Madonna in lumber knot holes and the bubbles of simmering cheese fondue?
#45 If the Catholic Church believes that in Heaven all men and women will walk in equality in the warmth of God’s beatific gaze, why does it bar female participation in the echelons of its terrestrial church above the station of nun or rectory maid?
#79 What’s with the funny Bishop hats? What’s that all about?
Adam Powers went on to write a number of other controversial pamphlets—offensive even for their time, and each was praised by extremist elements of the political and religious right. They include the following titles:
Dark Skin, Dark Heart
The Insatiability of the Oriental Woman, Fully Illustrated
Why the World Needs Bubonic Plague
Tchaikovsky was an Aesthete; Thirty Cautionary Tales of
Famous Aesthetes, Fairies, and Limp Wristed Polly Pusillanimitors with Extensive Glossary & Foreword by YMCA Chaplain William “Parson O’ the Gridiron” Huggins, author of
The Muscular Christian
11.
“I am not dating. I am merely spending pleasant evenings with pleasant women whom I meet.”
Jonathan Blashette to Andrew Bloor, 4 September1939, AnB.
12.
Sharine had lived a hard and checkered life.
According to descendants of Sharine Picotta whom I was successful in tracking down, and who would talk to me for a price—specifically tickets to see Tanya Tucker performing in Blaine, Missouri and several pieces of pristine Revere Wear—Ms. Picotta was not a prostitute in the technical sense. Her handsomely remunerated services were strictly limited to the erotic art of adult wet-nursing, and her clientele among the rich and famous was reputed to have included Wallace Beery, Clark Gable, and German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
The fact that Jonathan saw Sharine for only one week may indicate a lack of interest on his part in “lactal lovin’.” Jonathan’s Diary, 12 September 1939.
13.
Me be tarsing through the crevettes
with the Bim-Bom-Bee.
I have no earthly idea what this phrase means. HD.
14. “
I asked if he was Judge Crater.”
Jonathan had every right to ask. The man behind the counter of the small fishing purveyor’s shack looked very much like the famously missing Judge Joe Crater. It is unlikely, though, that the lure salesman was, in fact, Crater, the 1930s judicatorial version of Jimmy Hoffa. Nor is it conceivable that his nonagenarian companion was the equally missing newspaperman Ambrose Bierce, although Jonathan inquired about his
identity as well. According to Jonathan’s diary, the Crater-look-alike responded to Jonathan’s inquiry with a sarcastic, “And Amelia Earhart’s in the back doin’ the dishes, ain’t cha, Fly-girl?” From the rear of the house came a woman’s voice, sheared with attitude: “Yeah, gonna finish these pots and pans and then go kiss me some damned clouds!” Jonathan’s Diary, 12 October1939.
15. “
I got the damned runs three days straight! Believe it or not!”
Jonathan met Robert Ripley in the public men’s room of the New York Public Library.
16. “
I put on the fez, and I get head-hives. I take off the fez and the head-hives disappear.”
Davison was never again to wear a fez. One wonders why he felt the need to put one on in the first place.
17.
She was trampled in the Wilmington nylon riot of 1940.
Barbara Sadler,
Nylon Riots: An Exhaustive History, Volume 3
(Chicago: Sartorial Press, 1953), 255-57. Hiram Diles’s wife Cassia recovered within a couple of weeks. Her sister Magda required surgery and two years of intensive psychological counseling.
18. “
German pansies are on the war path.”
Here, I think Davison means German
panzers.
Davison’s Diary, 1 November, 1939HD.
BEI MIR BIS DU PRETTY
1.
“I have been thinking about Great Jane a lot lately.”
Jonathan Blashette to Andrew Bloor, 13 November1939.
2.
“You should go down and see her.”
Andrew Bloor to Jonathan Blashette, 17 November1939, AnB.
3.
“I have done one better: I have brought her back to New York.”
Jonathan Blashette to Andrew Bloor, 24 November 1939. Although both Jonathan and Great Jane had understood that their restored relationship would be chiefly a platonic one—the reanimation of an old and dear friendship facilitated by close proximity and, in Great Jane’s case, a vast improvement in life style—the decision was not easily understood or accepted by Davison, who wrote in his diary:
“…Apparently the woman was living on the street. He won’t tell me the whole story. Eating out of garbage cans—that sort of thing. It was sad. But what does Jonny do? Leave her some money for food, for her to get her own place? Get her checked into some sanatorium or hospital somewhere? Nope. He brings her all the way up to New York and sets her up right in his house.
I just don’t get it. He’s opened his home to this sorry looking creature with an Arkansas delta accent so thick I can’t understand half of what she says (and that’s when she’s got the teeth in) and for what? So he can fret and fuss over her the rest of her life? Like he owes her something? What does he owe this woman? They didn’t make a go of things years ago and believe you me they aren’t going to make a go of it now with all those open sores and what have you. She’s a sick, beat-up old woman who’s probably
going to funk him out every day she’s there. Which could be years, or hell, she could kick the ol’ bucket tomorrow, and send him right into Depression Valley thinking of what he might have done to save her.
That’s the thing with Jonny. He wants to save everybody he meets and with his dumb luck he loses more than his share. And I really can’t get through to him. So I just keep hands off.
And worry.”
4. “
Could you pick up Great Jane after her appointment at Elizabeth Arden?”
Undated note in JBP.
5.
She seemed to bloom in Jonathan’s daily company.
Glover,
Three Legs, One Heart
, 189.
6.
Jonathan introduced the former prostitute to penicillin.
Ibid., 191.
7. “
Great Jane is back in my life. I am a happy man.”
Jonathan Blashette to Andrew Bloor, 14 December 1939, AnB.
8. “
I told that man, ‘you couldn’t get elected dog catcher in this town!’”
Taped interview with Amory Gumbert, Ottawaugus Oral History Project. After winning election as dog catcher in Ottawaugus, the small upstate New York town where he had purchased a summer home a few months before, Jonathan learned to divide time between the corporate board room of Dandy-de-odor-o headquarters in Manhattan and the shady lanes of Ottawaugus, where he chased errant mongrels to the delight of locals who’d never seen a three-legged dog catcher before.
The job was not without its perks. Jonathan fell in love with a sassy, long-lashed Chihuahua, which also fell in love with
him, and which he named Señor Smalls.
9.
He came within a hair’s breadth of winning the big prize.
In Davison’s defense, the winning “musical question” on the radio program
For Pete’s Sake! I Know that Tune!
was a riff selected from Mexican classical composer Carlos Chávez’s torturously named concert piece
Xochipilli Macuilxochitl.
Previously, Davison had impressed Jonathan and others in the audience with the breadth of his musical knowledge and his on-microphone aplomb. In his article on Davison, “Harlan Davison, A Man Who Means” written for the journal
Entrepreneurial History
(13 [1990], 25-42), Griswold Lanham writes:
“Davison, in an obvious pickle, could only respond with, ‘For Pete’s Sake! I know that tune! I just can’t pronounce it!’
‘Well then,’ the host rejoined, ‘can you spell it?’
‘What do you think I am—an Aztec? Jeez Louise!’
‘Well, that’s a shame,’ said the host, handing Davison a box of Oxydol detergent as his consolation prize. Had the Dandy-de-odor-o executive answered correctly, he would have gone home with a check for $75,000 and extensive bragging rights.”
Later that night Davison nursed his disappointment with four double bourbons and eventually decked the barkeep when the man ran out of beer nuts. Jonathan bailed his best friend out of jail and let him sleep it off on his sofa. “At least you found something you’re good at,” Jonathan said consolingly over breakfast the next morning, and raised Davison’s spirits by singing the song that had gotten him into the finals the night before. Davison soon joined in as did Great Jane who trilled away from her bubble bath down
the hall while little Addicus Andrew merrily galloped to the beat upon the impromptu hobby horse of Jonathan’s three knees—the house rocking with the joyous lyrics:
Hollywood party
At Hollywood and Vine!
Motor on over.
Ain’t it too fine?
Roll up the sidewalk—
Break out the booze!
Trip it, don’t skip it—
It’s tomorrow’s news!
Starlets and bar-flits
And tinsel tycoons
Are swinging and singing
Those Hollywood tunes!
Hollywood Party!
Come join the throng.
Trip it, don’t zip it.
We’re all going strong!
Hollywood Party—
The thing to do.
Champagne service
Straight from the shoe.
We’re waiting,
We’re waiting,
We’re waiting
For you!
The world was beautiful again…for the moment.
10. “
The Japanese have bombed Hawaii. We are at war.”
Jonathan’s Diary, 7 December 1941.
11.
Hunter was first in line.
Another reason for Jonathan’s stepson Hunter’s eagerness to fight for the Allies in the European Theatre had its origins in his childhood. Hunter’s
eighth-grade homeroom teacher, a Frau Brunhilda Röhm, was a cruel martinet who delighted in humiliating her students. She was also German. Proud of her heritage, she was known to administer harsh punishment to any student who wrote her name without the umlaut. A rebellious child, as we have already seen, Hunter refused to employ the umlaut on more than one occasion, and on more than one occasion was punished by being forced to wear brightly colored lederhosen at intramural wrestling matches. The mortification he endured fed his hatred of Miss Röhm and by extension of Germans in general.
And of wrestling.
Hunter would later lose his life on Utah Beach during the D-Day Normandy Invasion. “He was a brave kid,” Jonathan wrote in his diary a week later, “a pain in the ass, but a pain in the ass I’m really going to miss. God rest him.”
12.
On the secretary’s left buttock cheek was a small tattoo of a little bald headed man peering over a fence.
Cloris Kern,
Kilroy Was There Too
(Daingerfield, Texas: Brenda Books, 1984), 132.
13.
It was one of Davison’s life goals to see the Andrew Sisters naked but for tasseled pasties and crotch patches.
Reinhold,
The Story of Dandy-de-odor-o
, 245.
14.
Addicus died after a brief illness.
A curious side note: Though Jonathan’s father never converted to Judaism, he had, by the time of his death, earned a special place in the hearts of his many Jewish friends and neighbors on New York’s Upper West Side. “Addicus, the Methodist Jew of Amsterdam Avenue” was honored with a six-day Shiva and a namesake sandwich at the Seventy-second Street Delicatessen. The “Addicus Blashette” Arkansas-Pulled-Pork-on-a-Bun remains on the restaurant’s menu to this
day, but has never actually been served in this strictly kosher establishment.