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Mar. 12, 2010 I’m going out on a limb here, so to speak, but I kind of believe that spring is about to arrive here in south-central Texas, possibly. The clues are growing intense. Redbuds are budding. Bradford pear trees (a non-pear bearing beauty) are in dazzling white bloom. Our chinquapin oak in the front yard is the only holdout; waiting until it’s fully assured that winter has really and truly vanished. Smart tree, that chinquapin, even if it is a swamp enthusiast. After an abysmally chilly winter here at latitude: 30.0474 degrees and longitude: 99.1403, we are finally, in mid-March, being blessed with a temperature of 80° in the sun and 70° on my shady front porch. Cardinal couples began their courting serenades a bit ago, the male manifesting such an incandescent red that one would think he has deliberately made a target of himself. In a way, I suppose, he has. He certainly doesn’t want that choice lady to miss him among the burgeoning plant life. Texas’ state birds, the regal-looking, long-tailed southern mockingbirds, flit about flashing their radiant white under-wings as they imitate the cardinals’ chirrups. Perhaps because I grew up in a northern climate and never met a mocker until I came to Texas, I can pretty well tell which bird is making the true cardinal call. It’s the haughty chortle the mockers can’t quite cover up at the end of their counterfeit arias. I did notice early on down here that Texas cardinals have an accent, y’all. Northern cardinals loudly announce “I’m pretty-pretty-pretty” in case you’ve failed to notice how gorgeous they are. Texas cardinals chirp, “Look at me! Look at me! I’m a Texan.” The mockingbirds are not affected in the least by their flashy fellow fowl. They continue to lampoon the magnificent red birds that go on doing their own thing without obviously noticing the state birds at all. So much for spring in Texas. I have a bone to pick with Oprah. The maven of all mavens has implemented a crusade against the use of cell phones in automobiles, moving automobiles that is, particularly use by the driver. I am not against the rationale of Oprah’s campaign. After all, as Steve Mirski wrote in a recent Scientific American article, “Numerous studies have shown that a sober driver becomes as erratic as an intoxicated one when merely holding and talking on a phone – the chances of an accident more than quadruple.” He points out that research in this area is still very new, mostly because researchers never in their wildest nightmares thought that people would even think of applying their opposable thumbs in such an insane manner. Granted, Mr. Mirski wrote about an absolute imbecile in Florida riding a motor scooter on the A1A just up the coast from Fort Lauderdale, while texting. When he had the chance at a stop light, Mr. Mirski told Scooter Boy to do the world a favor and carry a signed organ donor card with him at all times. That way, when the paramedics were through scraping him off the roadway, there would be some very happy people on the organ donor need list. Mr. Mirski got no response. Anyway, back to Oprah and her grand anti-cell idea. Exactly who do you think is getting the message, dear? According to your daily show’s audience demographics, 70% plus of your watchers are female, over 50 years old, 75% Caucasian, and live in non-child homes. Oh yes, most watchers are fairly affluent. Pew Research tells us that 49% of adult Americans consider their cell phone a necessity while 57% of the 18 to 29 age group simply cannot live without their cells. Do you believe these kids are watching the Oprah TV program and getting the anti-cell use message at the end of your show? And could the kids care less if they did somehow hear that the woman who has a personal attendant for every single daily need telling them they are irresponsible and thoughtless? I doubt it. But keep at it, Oprah dear. After all, you did get thousands of old white women to read tear-jerker books. There’s always hope. Lastly, Hoagy Carmichael is haunting me, or the ghost of his music is. Hoagy was a musical genius, born in Bloomington, Indiana on November 22, 1899. Any of you youngsters out there born after 1981, the year Hoagy died, probably haven’t got a clue as to who the guy was. Unlike people of my generation, that is, born over 7 decades ago, you would not have a soft spot in your sclerotic heart for the dear man from Indiana. His songs were original and sparkling with folksy and/or sweet music. Some of the best lyricists wrote for him. Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Paul Francis Webster, Harold Adamson all wrote lyrics for a variety of Hoagy’s songs. He wrote his own lyrics too, as well as playing the piano and doing smoky, languid vocals. Mitchell Parish wrote the soaring poetry for Stardust, probably the single song Hoagy is known for.
Sometimes I wonder why I spend There’s a lot more magic in this libretto. Something about a nightingale telling his fairytale of a paradise where roses grew and the singer dreaming in vain while his heart retains his stardust melody, his memory of love’s refrain. My Dad, a musician and a fine Irish tenor, loved this song above all others that he sang with his band. I must have heard him sing it two thousand or more times before I left home to get married. Mitchell Parish’s spirit also haunts me now that I know it was his fertile and elegiac mind that came through for Hoagy with the wonderful word for Star Dust. Parish was born Michael Hyman Pashelinski in 1900 in Lithuania. The family immigrated to America before baby Michael was a year old. They wound up in New York City. This was the perfect place for Mitchell Parish. In the 1920s Tin Pan Alley was at the peak of its power and Parish had what the Alley was looking for. Lyrics to music. A few of his best are; Star Dust, Sweet Lorraine, Deep Purple, Stars Fell on Alabama, Sophisticated Lady, Moonlight Serenade, Sleigh Ride, and One Morning In May. So, OK, what has this story to do with Hoagy Carmichael’s ghost haunting me? The truth is, I am easily possessed by dead people’s lives. Simply checking up on who exactly wrote Carmichael’s lyrics has made me want to look into the stories of Johnny Mercer and Frank Loesser as well as Mitchell Parish. I just might do that before the evening is over. That means there is a definite possibility that I’ll write an article about one of these gentlemen or the whole bunch of them.
Make that a likelihood.
Writing was always my first choice in life. I began writing at the age of 8, small books about pioneers heading west. Little did I know then that I would be living in the most "western" of all the states, Texas. No one told the Texans that they are simply Southerners who, like Bugs Bunny, took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and wound up here.
I am sneaking up on 70 years of age and now own a vast store of useless knowledge. Happy to share any or all of it with you all.
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