Other parts of the park sport various flowers of various hues as well.
The lake is really more of a pond, and according to the Schaumburg Park District, the area is called the Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area. But all I’ve ever heard is Volkening Lake.
Fred Volkening was a Schaumburg old-timer (d. 1993) who used to farm the surrounding land. I’m glad the lake and rec area has his name, rather than that of an otherwise forgettable park district functionary. Still, a park by an other name would bloom as lush, I figure.
Hibiscus are blooming. Since last week. That seems a little early, but I can speculate that the summer’s rains might be at least part of the reason.
Only some of our bushes, however. Mainly the ones that receive extra water when we water the vegetables and flowers, which is usually in the morning and evening. That strengthens my speculation about water, but not enough to do any actual research.
They aren’t our only back-yard glories. We have morning glories rising from seeds my brother Jay gave us some time ago. They grow near the garage.
And more.
Worth the small amount of effort when it comes to watering.
It’s entirely possible that this is the only place this photograph is posted anywhere. Considering the imponderable size of all the servers everywhere, that would be something. But also completely trivial, since there’s no end of physical images tucked away collecting dust.
I’ve had this physical print in my possession for more than 40 years. How exactly I got it in the first place, I don’t remember. It looks like a publicity shot, with the white border trimmed out for scanning, though nothing was printed there to indicate who they are, which seems like a serious lapse. Maybe that cost extra, or they couldn’t agree on a name yet.
But I know them (mostly). The five people were the members of a short-lived comedy troupe in Nashville, Gonzo Theatre.
One reference to the troupe online I’ve found is at a page on Newspapers.com depicting the July 18, 1982 Daily News-Journal of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
The entirety of the text: NASHVILLE July 23, 31 “Gonzovision” will be presented by the writers of Gonzo Theatre every weekend at The Cannery, 811 Palmer Place.
The troupe name was Gonzo Theatre and the show was called Gonzovision. On the back of the photo, someone else wrote Gonzovision, and I added 1982.
On July 23 that year – very likely, since on the 31st I was caving in rural Tennessee – I went with some of my friends to The Cannery to see Gonzovision (the venue is still around as Cannery Hall). I remember being entertained, but otherwise not much else about the show. At one point, one of the troupe pretended to be Bob Dylan, another pretended to be Ethel Merman, and they did a duet. That was funny.
Also, there was a well-known local politico in the audience, who was red-nose drunk at the time, and the troupe spent some time making fun of him. I wish I could remember who that was, and what they said, but my notes are silent on the matter. Even 20 years ago, I couldn’t remember much more about the skits.
All this brings to mind Jim Varney. Not because he was a member of the troupe at that moment – he had better, and far more remunerative things to do at that time. Rather, some of the members of Gonzo Theatre would soon be in the very first Ernest movie, Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam, a flick that took a bit of my money and about an hour and a half of my time for little in return.
Lee Johnson is at top left of the photo. He’s no doubt the reason we knew about the show at all, since we were tight with his younger brother Mike. Mac Bennett, whose career in movies was very brief, is top right. Sometime later, I heard him recite from memory, at a party and with great verve, a translation of Baudelaire’s “Get Drunk.”
Jackie Welch is bottom left. These days she’s “a professional life coach and president of Visions Manifest Coaching Services,” according to imdb, but whose web site doesn’t exist anymore. She has had a minor career in the movies – including a couple of other Ernest movies, Ernest Goes to Jail and Ernest Scared Stupid, and the short-lived TV show, Hey, Vern, It’s Ernest. Too bad Varney died when he did (2000) or she might have been in such epics as Ernest Goes to War, Ernest Rockets to Mars and Ernest and the Zombie Apocalypse, which surely would have been made in the 2010s.
I can’t remember the name of fellow in the lower center, who looks to be the head of the troupe, but I do know that to the right of him was Daniel Butler, who was also in Ernest movies, but is better known (relatively speaking) for a thing called America’s Dumbest Criminals. Again, too bad Varney’s career was cut short: Butler could have been his counterpart in My Dinner With Ernest.
RIP, Bob Newhart. I came along too late to listen to the button-down mind record when new – I learned about it later – so for me Bob played the fellow who walked through Chicago and was a psychologist-chair straight man to a revolving group of eccentrics.
He’s one of the reasons the ’70s was a golden age for sitcoms. As a regular viewer, I must have seen almost all of The Bob Newhart Show. Because I didn’t pay much attention to TV after that decade, I haven’t seen many episodes of Newhart, but maybe now is the time to start.
Speaking of the ’70s, I found this posted online recently.
RIP to all these classmates of mine. The list was compiled by classmates who organize reunions and the like.
A few on the list were good friends of mine, including Kevin Norton and David Bommer. Most of the others I knew, or knew of. For a few I wonder, who was that again? even though AHHS wasn’t that large a high school. About 320 or 330 in the Class of ’79.
I know that because of the astonishing fact – in retrospect, at least to current or recent high schoolers – that periodically the administration would issue every student a GPA card that would not only tell you your exact GPA, but also where you ranked out of those 320 or 330. (I was always near the bottom of the top 10%.)
Twenty-seven names, though probably a few who have passed weren’t listed, so let’s say about 10% of the Class of ’79 is gone. That’s the leading edge of the bell curve of mortality, which will start to expand soon.
But death shouldn’t have the final word, at least not right now. Another way to look at it is that 90% of us have survived those 45 years, mostly as decent folk leading interesting lives, I hope.
Closer to home, in fact at home, how does our garden grow?
What’s that, I thought from far up the street. Possibly a Ford Falcon? Not a model you see much on the streets any more.
I got closer and no, it was a Chevrolet Bel Air. I’m not enough of a car aficionado to pinpoint the model year, but it looks early ’60s to me. Still not something you see much on our 21st-century suburban streets.
My grandmother drove a Ford Falcon. Shorter than the Bel Air, if I remember right, and somewhat rounder. It was the last car she owned, an early or mid-60s model. Again, I’m not enough of an expert to know the exact year, and it isn’t something I would have asked grandma.
I have scattered, but fond memories of riding in that car. It was gray and mostly, I believe, she drove (when I was with her) the short distances to shops she traded at, such as the Handy-Andy grocery store on Broadway in Alamo Heights, or to Brackenridge Park for my amusement.
Oddly enough, besides reminding me of grandma and the Brackenridge Park Eagle, the memory of that old car makes me also think of survivorship bias. There was no seat belt in the back seat, though the the front had lap belts. I usually rode in the back as a kid and, of course, survived the beltless experience. I consider this good fortune.
Some older people – my age, and I’ve seen it in writing – thus come to the conclusion that making children wear seat belts or other safety devices while in a car is merely the heavy hand of a nanny state. Hey, I survived my belt-free childhood in the ’60s! That’s an example of a statement that’s true but also dimwitted. Are there no children (or anyone else) in their graves from that period who would have survived had belts been in use?
The light is fairly long at that place, so I had time to document his presence not long ago. I don’t know that I see him every summer at this location, at the intersection of two major roads here in the northwestern suburbs, but I know I’ve seen him there over the years. With his straightforward message.
Things are quiet out in the Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center tells us. Maybe a little too quiet, as the cliché goes.
But not around here. An excerpt from a NWS bulletin this evening:
ISSUED: 9:16 PM JUL. 15, 2024 – NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
The National Weather Service in Chicago has issued a
* Tornado Warning for…
Southern Lake County in northeastern Illinois… Northern DuPage County in northeastern Illinois… Northern Cook County in northeastern Illinois…
* Until 1000 PM CDT. …
IMPACT… Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter. Mobile homes will be damaged or destroyed. Damage to roofs, windows, and vehicles will occur. Tree damage is likely.…
We got a fair amount of siren noise, plus some wind and rain, but by the end of the day not enough to do any damage (that I can see). Other places might not be able to say the same. Looks like we got off easy.
Rain, rain, rain. So many times in that last few days I can’t remember how often. The best of them was Sunday not long after midnight. Not a lot of thunder, just rain. I opened the windows in our north-facing bedroom and lay in bed, listening to the rhythm of the falling rain. It didn’t tell me what a fool I’ve been, and even if it had, I’d have told it to mind its own business.
An artifact from Italy, July 1983.
Why do I have this? Just my pack rat nature. It’s in an envelope marked Europe, 1983.
Also, it confirms what I already knew: pre-euro Italy was a good deal in those days, though it took a few minutes to gather some data points on that. Not exactly dirt cheap, but reasonably priced, especially considering the high value, such as the many good meals.
The receipt shows that I exchanged a $100 travelers check for lira at Banco di Roma one day in July. At that moment, the exchange the bank gave me was $1 = 1,502 lira, though the bank dinged me 5,000 lira as a fee, so I didn’t quite get that. But 1,500 lira to the dollar is close enough
I checked the diary I kept during the trip for notes about what cost what. I wasn’t very good at making such notes, but I did mention a few costs in passing, such as the fact that admission to the Forum in Rome cost 4,000 lira.
So, 4,000 lira would be about $2.66. That’s in fatter 1983 dollars, however. A current equivalent ($1 in 1983 = about $3.15 now) would be roughly $8.40. And how much does admission to the Forum cost these days?
It’s a little hard to get an exact equivalent, since the options are more complicated now. Of course they are. The Forum Pass SUPER Ticket has this description: “Roman Forum-Palatine and Imperial Fora in a single itinerary. One ticket gives you access to the new route, which allows you to visit the archaeological heart of Rome in about two hours: the Roman Forum, the Imperial Fora and the Palatine.”
That costs €24. So let’s say three times as much as I paid, more or less. Are the Italians three times better now at maintaining the Forum than they were 40 years ago? I’m skeptical.
Other costs from 1983 (expressed in period units):
A bed in Rome at the Pension Grossi: 7,000 lira ($4.60). Of course, there were about a dozen beds in that room.
A meal at Mario’s in the Trastevere in Rome: 5,800 lira ($3.80). I had a number of wonderful meals in Italy, as you should, but that was one of the best: spaghetti and salad and liver and onions.
A room at the Albergo Italia in Salerno: 15,000 lira ($10)
A meal in Salerno: 7,500 lira ($5). The stars of that meal were gnocchi, along with squid fresh from the Mediterranean, about which I raved. Wish I could actually remember it.
A toilet at the Salerno train station: 200 lira (13 cents). Cheap, but not for something that should be free.
A room in Florence: 10,000 lira each ($6.60)
Doughnuts in Florence: 500 lira (33 cents) each. I remember the gelato in Florence, which we ate more than once, but not the doughnuts. I bet Florentine doughnuts were almost as good. I didn’t record the price for the gelato, but it was probably comparable. A 33-cent doughnut would be about $1 now. Still not bad, and certainly cheaper than any hipster doughnut you can get these days.
We had a bit of rain from what might have been the edge of hurricane Beryl earlier this week, as that weather system petered out over North America. Hard for non-experts like me to say, though. Clear today but a high of around only 80° F. Not bad for high summer.
I looked up Sig Ruman the other day. I remembered at least one of his performances – the pompous doctor with the pointy beard in A Day at the Races (1937), who of course is on the receiving end of Marxian wit, especially Groucho’s.
Ruman was in A Night at the Opera as well. Need a pompous German character for your movie? Siegfried Carl Alban Rumann (d. 1967) was one such during the golden age of the studio system. He has 130 credits at imdb.
I looked him up because he also had a part in A Night in Casablanca (1946), the second-to-last Marx Brothers movie. I found it available to view online (with commercials) not long ago, and decided to watch it. I wasn’t sure I’d seen all of the movie, and if I had, maybe on TV more than 50 years ago, so my recollection wasn’t there.
The only scene I remembered at all was typical Harpo. Early in the movie, he’s leaning against a wall, and another character comes by and says, “Say, what do think you’re doing? Holding up the building?”
Harpo nods emphatically. The other character, unimpressed, drags Harpo away, and naturally the building collapses.
A Night in Casablanca has all of the elements of earlier Marx Brothers movies – each of the three brothers doing their own physical and wordplay shticks, a good-looking pair of non-entities as romantic leads, a story that doesn’t matter or even make a lot of sense, straight characters flustered by the brother’s antics (but no Margaret Dumont), a few songs, and a highly kinetic final half hour or so that ought to have the brothers in top form. Such as in Duck Soup, when they go off to the front to fight Sylvania in one of the funnier romps ever put to film.
Sorry to say that A Night in Casablanca is one of the brothers’ lesser efforts. Not a terrible movie, just not a very good one. There are a few laughs. This is the Marx Brothers, after all. Harpo did what Harpo always did, and Groucho had some good lines, such as to the hotel staff:
From now on the essence of this hotel will be speed. If a customer asks you for a three-minute egg, give it to him in two minutes. If he asks you for a two-minute egg, give it to him in one minute. If he asks you for a one-minute egg, give him the chicken and let him work it out for himself!
A lot of the comedy doesn’t work very well. In one scene, the brothers hide in the room of Count Pfefferman (Sig Ruman), a former Nazi trying to get away with Nazi loot hidden in Casablanca. The brothers sneak in and out of hiding to unpack and otherwise re-arrange Pfefferman’s luggage and personal effects, to delay his departure.
It’s comedy, of course, and it depends on Pfefferman not seeing or being aware of the brothers, whom he overlooks in completely unbelievable ways. Even comedy has to have some attachment to reality, and the scene has none, and so it doesn’t really land. The scene had the feeling of being filler, as well, as it drags on.
Ruman has a fairly large part in the movie, but it doesn’t quite work. He’s the main antagonist and villain, and is as nasty as a comedy allows. He’s a former Nazi only because Germany lost the war. But Teutonic nastiness, combined with the sort of befuddled fluster he got from dealing with the Marx Brothers, isn’t a particularly good mix.
Then there’s the matter of the high-octane comic chase toward the end of the movie. That didn’t work either. It was too much like the thrill-a-minute scenes of a cheap action serial of the period, involving the brothers in a truck chasing an airplane down a runway, climbing into the airplane via a ladder, foiling the villain Pfefferman and his henchmen who are trying to get away with the loot, and crashing the airplane in such a way that somehow resolves the story and doesn’t kill anyone. Groucho, Chico and Harpo as action heroes? I don’t think so. The scene was kinetic, all right. Just not very funny.
Still, I’m not sorry I spent an hour and a half watching the movie. I can be a completist when it comes to the Marx Brothers. But I don’t want to see it again, as I do Duck Soup. Or most of the others.
One more thing: an actress named Mary Dees was in A Night in Casablanca as “minor role” (uncredited), according to imdb. That got my attention, but I’m not going through the movie again to see if I can spot her.
Dees is best known, apparently, as a double for Jean Harlow for a short stint. Besides “minor role,” her other movie parts tended to be the likes of “chorus girl, uncredited,” “redhead, uncredited,” “girl, uncredited,” and “babe, uncredited.” After A Night in Casablanca, she quit the movies and reportedly lived on until 2004.
