Our second grade teach, P.S. 208 ‘s Mrs.Bautzer

Can you imagine our second grade teach, P.S. 208 ‘s Mrs.Bautzer, trying to align our left handed penmanship  to the conforming calculus of the Brooklyn’s dominant right handedness as thou  depression laden yesterdays weren’t enoughfor a breath of fresh air, no less accord conformity.

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But she persisted not unlike Roy Eldridge on his horn, hssignature birthdays  repeating the body and soul of his tatt tt tat through the same cosmos she attributed our rebellious nature…….playing ringaleveo, jumping rope, tick tack toe,getting caught up in a pickle, running back and forth, avoid being tagged “out”!

Punch ball with the Linksman kids from the corner houe on   Avenue B and East 92nd Street……Izzy, Irving, Manny and their sisters Rosy and Pearl. Their mother a master chef, inviting “Hubsy” in for a grand feast, while our own   mother  fought her way thru Pitman shorthand, while scraping a few bucks as a steno to Jimmy Cagney’s vaudeville  booker Erlanger and Blackin I the Big Apple.

Flo Zigfield and Molly Picon, Sophie Tucker, Ethel Merman,Billy Rose waiting in the wings. Molly’s posters plastered on theChurch Avenue Utica Avenue lampposts

The Roy Eldridge horn toot tooting away into in to his universe of “free” association. Cryptic muse over the  1909 lifeline gigs.…...

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But how could a six year old kid know that left handedness wasa stigma in a right handed conventional   battleground where theAdlers demonstrated their stage presence in Yiddish theater downtown. Jimmy Cagney of RedHook, hoofing it, steno Esther,his Pitman scribe as a steno taking the whole “Wabash stomp”swing era in. (Chicago’s “Little Jazz”, improvising the upper register into Hollywood…”Ball of fire” Barbara Stanywck, GaryCooper gig..                       .

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From the Hotel Pennslyvnania and Gene Krupa on the drums, Anita O’Day warbling ”Green eyes” Roy Eldridge on his trumpet…..”the Wabash   Stomp the Florida Stomp  The big fat momma”…Jelly Roll Morton..Dixie Land. On 54thStreet…..Jimmy Dorsey coming to hear “the Bird”.

Into New Jersey’s Fort Lee, Gene Krupa on his drums as the leader, Roy Eldridge toot tooting…a jam session “You ain’tgone so long” (up tempo)….”the “Stomp” and its beats in cadence, Krupa into his dissonance ,the beats smashing….. Frank Sinotra caught his Hoboken dream on Major Bowes amateur hour at the Capitol Theater on Broadway..

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But getting back to the second grade teach at P.S.208, wrapped up in  right handed conformity, yet the left handedness……..”Route 23 on the New Jersey Turnpike, just 15 miles from New York City”…..

Who cares if Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge, Gene Krupa is left handed? Not Lefty Gomez, the Yankee ace southpaw…..  Post Gas House Gang…Harry “the Cat” Brecheen? Howie Pollet?

Unregimented, improvising..

Southpaw Andy Petite?, the retired Yankee southpaw, with the menacing pickoff move at first base.

Left handed genius, Mrs Bautzer?  Right handed conformity? Whether the winds blow. Swing the boogey.. Whether we go….the New Jersey  Palisades….…..the upper registeraggressive cat A Chik Webb audition! at the Savoy Ballroom....

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In the Anita O’Day sound, Ella Fitzgeralkd was promoted by Norman Granntz of L.A.’s Boyle Heights,  her lefthandedness…., the clubs and hotels “Sorry, the gig is fillede”her vocals left handedness “The man I love” Pearl Bailey, the post WW 2 airs not yet tolerating  the sounds of Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne Ethel Waters recognized for what it was….. “Cabin in the Sky”!

….Hazel Scott’s celebrated Cotton Club …a fresh breathe of air in the land.       .Roy Eldridge’s `104th birthday.

 Left handedness in a right handed orbital universe 8 decades later?.

“Say it ain’t so, Satchmo?”.

January 30, 2015. The City that never sleeps on trumpeter Roy Eldridge’s 104th …

The mecca of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”

The mecca of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”…the Lavender Hill Mob incognito””….regardless of the courses(JackNMicholson, a New Jersey golf caddy in his prior life)“divinity”, the smoke signals were hovering over the Hollywood Hills and the nightmare back in the moneyed telephone lines of the 5 sisters as they  conspired to commit their older brother Max to the closed wards of an insane asylum, Islip, Long Island.

A demonic conspiracy, rivaling Ezra Pound’s poetic incarnation. 

“Right Roscoe? Right!”

                                                       II

Whatever their unholy alliance of penis envy, brother Max scribing a letter to the current occupant of the White House. “All he needed was emotional support,” said the shrink , handing Uncle Max’s dossier to his nephew. 

“All he needed was emotional support,” repeated the witch doctor.”You’re the only relative who cared. Where were the relatives who opposed the trumped up indifference of his sisters who visited their brother once a month in a hired limo.

“Ladies in retirement” playing out?” 

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Self serving morality. Aunt Carrie  building her mansion on Long Island Sound, transporting her cart of flowers from 125th Street in Harlem. Preserving the buds and bulbs in her lighthouse. Her drive and ego trip into Goldfarb flowers,her catering (CBS) store on East 57th Street and ThirdAvenue, two blocks down  from Sutton Place.

Aunt Carrie’s Freeport manse off North Long Beach Avenue, was fought out as n immigrant ‘s success peak..onedaughter omitting suicide, the other suffocating in a fire.

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Poor Uncle Max didn‘t have a Chinaman’s chance, forging hisown  immigration . Not a support system among the alleged sisters, to show him the way.

Right Major?

Right!

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A suffocating self serving “the Ladies in Retirement”  playing out their phony  endearment, while their older brother,diminutive Uncle Max, caught up in the family’s tyrannyand hypocrisy, held unto those steel bars that identified hisimprisoned universe.

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In attempt to find liberation and possibly enlightenment, our mother migrated to Southern California, knowing her older son was an  bully, always seeking acknowledgement by  domination and suppression. His womanizing but an encore in his self serving gratification.

The business of fantasy and cinema in the studios was beyond his ken.

MGM and Louis B. Bayer. Paramount and 103 year old AdolphZuker. 20th Century and the Mexican War veteran Daryl Zanuck.  Warner Brothers and Harry, Jack, Sam nd Albert.Universal Studio and the German Carl Laemmle… Columbia and Harry Cohn. Republic Studios….Vera Ralston and her tycoon husband.……cowboy “shoot em upevil”, with Gene Autry, Andy Devine, Smiley Burnett 

From Kansas City, Missouri….Walt Disney and Mickey andMinnie Mouse. Snow white and the 7 Dwarfs.  Stokie’s“Fantasia” Sam Goldwyn studio in Hollywood’s “Wuthering Heights”  Danny Kaminsky Kaye” “HansChristian Anderson….. Monogram in the Valley, ‘B’ Michael Shayne crime flicks. Charlie Chaplin’s studio onLa Brea. The United Artists alliance: Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford (Gladys Smith) and Charlie. RKO (Howard “Slim” Hughes)…Desi Lu on Melrose..(Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball)                

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In this mist, the Cream Cheese Bandit into his own   bullying demoniac, atop his Mulholland Drive        

hi rise status “copter” pad, he drove to Trader’s Joe in Rancho de Mirage for two jars of blackberry jam….not stumbling on  shoplifting a Philadelphia cream cheese while he was a“batch”, a single stud playing out his  Chief Special Rehab,serving time at Treasure Island, near the end of World War2...

From his perch, the Cream cheese bandit played out his paranoia…”That Tilden High School basketballcoach(1939) writing me off. “You’re not a Varsity team player”….a half a century later, the cream cheese bandit went off on a diatribe, fit for the Californiafreeways. “All his yesterdays surrounded by selfless basketball heroes…..LIU’s Dolly

King, Ozzie Shectman, Stan Waxman, the Rader twins,(Madison High School) selfless magicians whosegenius coach Clair Bee cud mold into a full court press. Defending and attacking the basket nets, once in the paint..

An incorruptible tale of morality, from the cradle to the grave playing out …….

1/27/ 15 the “Blizzard that closed down the 127 year old subway system” The City that neversleeps. 

 

 

Is it Divine Providence KARMA

Is it Divine Providence KARMA “meant to be” or not…but there was Charley Parker’s alto sax from Bird land…Oh sure“Bird’s”afficiandos from Kansas City would acclaim, that the “Bird” was their own..

THE ORIGINAL!!

The Kansas City “Yard bird. The Bird”.                                                                                                                                                 

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“Billy Bergs”….Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont? Wherever the Bird and Dizzy Gillespie were toot tooting theirbebop sound . ….17 years old, a Ucla “freshman, scribblingfootball scrimmages and tennis for the Daily Bruin, challenged by the semi tropical landscape, an amigo named HowieGoldman (Midwood  High and basketball at Wingate Field)whose father was the Adams Hat crème de crème at the Boulevard and Ivar,  a block off Vine Street, down away from the library, and the plume de plume hotel at the street, where the composer Harry Revel “Paris in the spring” twirled the ivories, holding court..

Later in the patio, he brought out his bag of oranges. “The Surrogate Court Blues was  my beat”(the Name Dedective) said Harry Ravel, peeling his orange as though World War 2 had ended, but shortages were still the drift..

“Finito” our boys were coming home , to continue their post warlongings and dreams into the semi tropical scene…..VictorMacLaglen (“The Informer)” came booming through the veranda . A big smirk, laughing it up, carrying his bag of oranges in a wrinkled paper bag..

It was 1945,wasn’t it? Commander John Ford, Rear Admiral ( Naval Reserve) discovered Duke Wayne on the USC football line, adjacent to the Trojan Horse. Mister Morrison was on hiswave length or meant to the:”Iformer” Maclagen into his and Commander   Rear Admiral Ford was on his “meant to be”. At the Hollywood Plaza Hotel, a block from Stanley Rose’s book store, “What makes Sammy Run’s Budd Schulberg’s reading….(“The Pismo beach tennis champ….Irwin Gelsy, Sam Jaffe, PhilGersh)

Creating art in the cinema of Hollywood’s sound stages andArizona’s Monument Valley

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How could they master Cyber Space social media rada, make it their ownr? This Holy unholy trio? The consciousness wrapped up in “Stagecoach”, the Duke riding shotgun. The passengers Claire Trevor, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell, Porter Hall.

The driver (Barry Fitzgerald) spitting out…..”giity up youDudes,” snapping   the reins, the horse flesh sweating bullets,their legs like pistons into the lashes.

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In the meantime, the Hollywood Boulevard Normandy Avenue reality was much to miniscule for the Goldman’s and the Ucla“freshman” to share, so Howie’s mommy put out an S.O.S toward the Hollywood High School locals….Jay Cameron’smother, the locale for Lana Turner, Ava Gardner at Hollywood High School. Her son Jay and Howie into the school’s band, the school off the library’s Ivar and Sunset Boulevard, the drive in restaurants Lana Turner’s a swinging  waitress made famous..

.Artie Shaw, the bandleader “Beguine the Beguine” with Mickey Rooney in the “meant to be” semi tropical environmental vibes.

“Have him call Beverly Hills Mrs Miriam Latker. She may need a roomer. A block from LaCienega’s restaurant row and across the way from m the Fox Wilshire,  near the LaCienega tennis courts……

.Schroeder, Kramer, Ted Olewine. Sammy Match’s tennis shop….actors like Kent Taylor (“Boston Blackie”) AllennJoslon playing chess…composer Igor Stravinsky  him living,offNorth Wetherly Drive.

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Little did Missus Goldman know that the call was fortuitous and that the connection would son bear “fruit”. The freshman’s girl friend’s uncle was the second unit director on “King Solomon’sMines” George Marton once of Budapest) was off to Africa,second location director…Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr, heading the international cast for footage on the second location.Giving realism to Rider Haggard’s immortal story.  

“Get the drift” asked director Marton from his  rehearsing pad,high above his home atop Lookout Mountain off Laurel CanyonBoulevard…. the Hollywood Hills.

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At the same moment in time, the Westwood Village campus of the Ucla Bruins longed for a  basketball coach the likes of Wilbur Johns, the local coach, and athletic director, who opted for his own initials in reverse for the immortal John Wooden.

Lew Alcindor….a 7 footer from the Bronx….7 decades after thekarma…. the Cultural  Ambassador of the United States,debuting on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Sunday morning .

It’s meant to be. ….. .   the “Yard bird” in disguise.

The City that never sleeps. January 24, 20154