Category Archives: people

Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene

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The names might ring a bell for some of our readers.  “They” wrote books that have sold millions of copies and are still being published after more than a century.

For a short time, Franklin and Carolyn were the same person.   His name was Leslie McFarlane and I came across his second autobiography during a recent visit to a bookstore in Michigan.

Did you ever read or hear about The Bobbsey Twins?

Your grandfather or great-grandfather might have read  the Tom Swift novels or The Rover Boys, or perhaps novels featuring the heroics of Dave Fearless or the sleuthing of The Dana Girls. I have some copies of The Radio Boys. There also was a companion series, The Radio Girls. All were among the 109 juvenile fiction book series published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate which hired writers and gave them story outlines and paid them small amounts to churn out books, the best known of which are The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. 

Their contracts required that they never admit they were ghost writers of any of these books, using names assigned them by the syndicate.

McFarlane wrote 22 of the adventures of Frank and Joe Hardy and the first four spinoff volumes of Nancy Drew called The Dana Girls.

The book I picked up in Michigan is Ghost of the Hardy Boys. If you grew up reading any of the syndicate’s series, you’ll enjoy reading McFarlane’s story—which is far more than the story of the Hardy Boys stories.   His writing about the small Canadian town where he grew up and his stories of his early jobs with small-town newspapers are wonderfully written.

Not even his son knew he had written that shelf of books in the family bookcase. McFarlane, who considered his authorship just a job, never paid attention to what happened to his books after he wrote them and did not realize until the closing years of his life the significance of his efforts.

(I read several of the Hardy/Nancy novels but the real juvenile fiction author of my youth was Fran Striker, who created The Lone Ranger novels.  I have all of them about ten feet from where is have written most of the literary gems such as the one you are now reading.)

McFarlane struck a chord with your book reviewer a couple of times when he wrote about writing.  Here are a couple of excerpts:

When my young wife told her friends that she had married a writer, their good wishes sounded more like condolences…One good woman said, “God help you, my dear!” with compassion. We thought it amusing at the time. Later we realized what she meant.

Writers are not good husband material. (I am not qualified to speak for the husbands of female writers.) Not because they are worse characters than men of other occupations. They aren’t. Not because they are impractical and untidy. They are. Not because their income is chancy. It is. But they are always underfoot…Who can blame her if she envies her sisters whose husbands clear out every morning and stay the hell out until dinner time, returning with fascinating accounts of their adventures in the great world, of the installation of a new water cooler and how he told off the assistant manager? My life has been blessed by two remarkably happy marriages, each happy because of a woman who had the cheerful courage and devotion to put up with an existence calculated to drive most wives to a psychiatric hospital or divorce court…

The other day someone asked my friend, MacKinlay Kantor, when he planned to retire. Our paths in life have differed vastly but we both are of the same age, began on small-town newspapers, made a living from the pulps, and are still writing. “Writers,” replied Kantor, in a voice that came mighty close to a snarl, “never retire.  Real writers, that is.” And we wouldn’t have it any other way. It is a survival course that never ends for any of us. I will be freelancing until someone draws the cover over my typewriter for me for the last time.

I wish more people were writers.  Of their own stories.  Many people are intimidated by the thought, never sure “where to start,” thinking a story has to begin at the beginning.

Hogwash.

A story just has to begin. Earlier or later accounts will fill in the before-and-after holes. All life stories are worth telling. It is unfortunate that the main accounts of the lives people have lived are woefully inadequately summarized in the last newspaper article that will ever mention them.

Some people who retire worry about what they will do without a job and the social contacts that are part of employment.  The answer is simple.

Become a writer.  Write about the things you know best.  And the one thing you know best is yourself.  Abandon any pretense of modesty. Enroll in McFarlane’s “survival course that never ends for any of us.”

Descendants you will never meet will meet you.  And they will be enriched by what they read.

I was enriched by reading about Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene and discovering how much more they were than a couple of names.

 

Sports—Keeping Your Head in the Game

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Kurt Busch was sitting in a chair he didn’t want to be in Sundary afternoon.  He would rather have  been strapped in to his usual seat in his NASCAR Cup car,  racing three-dozen other drivers on the three-quarter mile track at Richmond.

But for the fourth weekend in a row the 2004 Cup champion was ruled unfit to race because of a concussion incurred in a qualifying crash at Pocono last month. He appeared unhurt when he got out of the car but doctors at the infield care center determined he was showing concussion symptoms.

Concussion protocols have become a much more important issue in sports at all levels in the last decade, highlighted by auto racing’s Dale Earnhardt Junior’s struggles in 2016 when he missed the second half of the NASCAR season. He retired at the end of the 2017 season, a season that began with the abrupt retirement of Columbia driver Carl Edwards, whose run for the 2016 championship had ended with a hard crash at Atlanta.

Edwards gave three reasons for leaving the sport. The third was his health. “I can stand here healthy after all the racing I’ve done and all the stupid stuff I’ve done in racecars. I’m a sharp guy and I want to be a sharp guy in thirty years.”

Edwards’ wife, Kate, is a doctor who works with people who have severe and traumatic brain injuries.

What do doctors look for when assessing concussions (and a person’s recovery from them?

The Mayo Clinic says someone, such as Busch after his crash, might not show signs and symptoms until hours or days after the injury.  Busch apparently did show signs because he was quickly ruled out of that weekend’s race at Pocono.

Doctors run some neurological tests that check on a person’s vision, hearing, strength and sensation, balance, coordination, and reflexes.  There also are cognitive tests—how thinking skills are working. Memory, ability to concentrate and the ability to recall information are part of that evaluation.

If the person shows signs and symptoms of severe headaches, seizures, repeated vomiting or worsening symptoms, brain imaging might be needed to see if there is bleeding of brain swelling.

The standard test to determine the condition of the brain right after an injury is a computerized tomography scan (or as they say in every episode of Grey’s Anatomy,  CT scan).

And a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be sued to identify brain changes or complications.

The great 1950s and 1960s English Grand Prix driver Sterling Moss, who raced long before sophisticated concussion evaluations, decided after a horrible crash in his Lotus that he knew his brain was no longer fit for him to race when he had to think about doing things he had previously done automatically.

Whether it is race drivers or athletes in general, head injuries that leave them having to think about what they normally would do automatically is a sign that they need to step out of the arena until the automatic response returns.  Sometimes it doesn’t and the person risks greater harm by trying to bull through the condition.

That’s why concussion protocols are so important in sports. It’s dangerous to the individual and sometimes to those also in the game with them to play before they have recovered. Self-assessment cannot be tolerated.

As Kurt Busch put it when he was ruled unfit for last weekend’s race at Richmond:

 “Brain injury recovery doesn’t always take a linear path. I’ve been feeling well in my recovery, but this week I pushed to get my heart rate and body in a race simulation type environment, and it’s clear I’m not ready to be back in the race car.”

For Kurt Busch, the brain is more important than trying to win another trophy, a recognition that now exists across various sports platforms.  Infield care hospitals or tents on the sidelines—they’re all signs that the idea of “playing through an injury” is increasingly unacceptable.

As Carl Edwards put it: “I’m a sharp guy and I want to be a sharp guy in thirty years.”

(NASCAR)—Kevin Harvick had so much fun finally winning another race a week ago that he decided to do it again—at Richmond, where he took the lead after the last round of pit stops and then held on to beat the charging Christopher Bell, on fresher tires, by four-tenths of a second.

The win is number 60 in his career, moving him to ninth place on the all-time winner’s list.

Only two races remain in the regular season. Ryan Blaney, who has yet to win this year, is the only non-winner in the playoffs and he widened his points advantage over Martin Truex Jr., for the last  of 16 playoff slots.  If a non-winner claims one of the last two races,  other than those two, both will miss the playoffs although they are  second and forth in the overall points standings.

The Series moves to the Watkins Glen road course next weekend.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR runs the first of its last three races of the 2022 season at Worldwide Technology Raceway across the river from St. Louis next Saturday.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 ends its summer break with the Grand Prix of  Belgium on August 28, the fourteenth race in the 22-race season.

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The Inner Troglodyte 

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My friend Derry Brownfield had a phrase he like to use to describe something that the “smart people” thought was special: Ignorance gone to seed.

I got a new cell phone a few months ago.  My old one was 15 model numbers behind the newest model.

A few days ago I was on a Zoom conference call, away from home and in a place with a lot of background noise.  I took the little headphones with little microphone with me to plug in so I could hear the meeting and unmute myself long enough to make a comment while keeping the background noise from distracting from the meeting itself.

That was when I learned the new phone does not have a headphone jack.  So instead of protecting my meeting attendees from the background noise of my surroundings, I contributed to the noise level at my location by listening to the meeting discussions on my cell phone speaker.

I suppose I would have known about this sort of thing if I had read the operator’s manual for the cellphone.

But it didn’t come with an operator’s manual either.

To get the operator’s manual I had to use the cell phone to get to the operator’s manual website. There were no instructions that I could find that would instruct me how to find the instructions for looking for the instructions.

Oh, and on top of all of that, the company has changed the little thingie that connects the power re-charging cord to the phone, so I couldn’t use the cable from my old phone to charge the new one. And the recharging cord is almost long enough to reach from the outlet to the nearby table where the phone can sit while charging.

So there I was, on the road 400 miles from home.  The charger I keep in my car to re-charge my cell phone had the older thingie on it so I couldn’t charge my cell phone in my car.

The other day I went back to the phone store.  I now own a pair of ear buds that have a wireless Bluetooth connection to my phone.   But I have to charge them to make them work. Fortunately, they came with a power cord with the appropriate thingie on it.  And I got an extension cord for my wall plug-in to charge the phone.

And I got a new car charger.  So now I have to carry two car chargers, one for my phone and the old one because the new charger doesn’t fit the charging port of the tablet we take with us on our trips.

As a result I have more things to worry about plugging in and more things to worry about making sure I pack for a trip. I’m not sure but I might have to leave behind three changes of underwear on the next trip so there’s room in my suitcase for all of the new charging cables, earbuds, and earbud containers.  Plus adaptors for foreign outlets.

That’s quite a racket the phone company has going for it.  I wound up spending $200 so that I can take part in my next remote meeting and so I can make sure my phone is charged enough that I can watch the whole thing.

And I still haven’t found the instruction book.

Sometimes I think cell phone companies and other tech manufacturers change things for the same reason dogs lick certain parts of their bodies—because they can.

Oh well, I can still use the earphones with my desktop computer.  And they don’t need to be charged.

You never know—

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—-what stories you might discover when you knock on a stranger’s door.

One summer night in Columbia when I was a college student selling encyclopedias door-to-door—a job that convinced me I was not meant to be in sales—an old man named Brooks Bradley answered the door.

I sold no encyclopedias that night.  Instead, I spent my time in his living room listening to him tell me stories.

He told me he was the oldest printer in the state. He showed me his commission as a Kentucky Colonel.  (Many years later, I joined him in that, uh, distinguished group.)

I wound up talking to a man who used to run steamboats on the Osage River as far upstream as Warsaw; today there are two dams and two big reservoirs below Warsaw. Nobody can take any kind of a boat upstream on the Osage anymore, at least not past Bagnell Dam at the Lake of the Ozarks.

Bradley’s family was an old family in Columbia.  He told me of the day his grandfather almost murdered General Odon Guitar, one of the city’s most famous residents. Guitar had been a Union officer and the Bradley family was on the Confederate side.

He told me he dreamed of writing a book someday called, “Pre-eminent Sons of Bitches I Have Known.”   I read his obituary in the paper a few months later. I still have it. I don’t think he ever wrote the book and to this day I wish I had a recorder that night.

The other day I decided to see if he had left any writings of any kind behind.

I found a January, 1914 copy of the magazine Typographical Journal that listed “W. Brooks Bradley, age 29 years; at trade fourteen years; learned trade in Rockport, Mo; has also worked in Pleasant Hill, Harrisonville and Warrensburg, Mo.”  He was applying for membership in the Typographers Union.”

I don’t know if the house where I spent that memorable evening was at 810 Sandifer Street, but that’s where he and his wife, Mae, were living when the census taker came round in 1940 and found them living with their 20-year old daughter, Dorothea.

I have run across one other record that includes a Brooks Bradley story.  A monthly magazine, Confederate Veteran (published “in the interest of Confederate Veterans and Kindred Topics”), from October, 1923, has him asking for some help.

An inquiry comes from Brooks Bradley, of Fayette, Mo., for some information of a soldier buried in that community, Richard Benedict, of Virginia, who went into Missouri in 1864 to secure recruits and information, and while there was taken ill and died. Mr. Bradley is very interested in securing the record of this soldier, as he and a few friends wish to erect a monument at the grave, which is on the old Bradley farm.

The following is taken from a newspaper story of this long forgotten soldier:

“In a neglected grave on a farm some seven miles northwest of Columbia (Mo.) rest the remains of a Confederate soldier whose tragic death is still remembered by a few Boone County people. The name of this soldier was Benedict, a commissioned officer of the Confederate army, and his business in this part of the country was to secure recruits. The county at the time was overrun with Federal commands.

“While on this mission, Benedict was taken sick, and, to keep his whereabouts a secret, he was placed in a camp on what was then the William Wade farm. In the same camp was a wounded soldier, Andrew J. Caldwell, now a resident of Columbia, who had been shot in a sharp skirmish on what was known as the John Fenton Ridge.

“So completely was the county overrun by Federals that it was almost impossible to give Benedict’s body a decent burial. An attempt was made to secure a suit of gray for burial purposes, but this was impossible. During the night his body was removed to the residence of James Boyce and prepared for burial. James Bradley made the coffin, and the immediate neighbors gathered and conveyed the body to its final resting place. In passing through this old deserted graveyard to-day, a close observer will find a plain, flat rock upon which is inscribed the word ‘Benedict.'”

Mr. Bradley is a young man and the nephew of a Confederate soldier. He writes: “My grandfather raised the first Confederate regiment in Boone County, Mo. He was a sort of preacher and sent out a call to meet at the church. Going into the pulpit, instead of preaching a sermon, he read the ‘Ordinance of Secession.’ At the conclusion, they all sang the ‘Bonnie Blue Flag.’ The old church yet stands as a shrine of democracy, and he is buried there. The monument marking his grave reads: ‘Here lies buried a Hardshell Baptist and an Unreconstructed Rebel.'”

Oh, how I wish that old printer had been more of a writer.

Unfinished

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Eric Greitens has lost his Senate bid and a lot of Republicans are reported to be glad that his populist appeal finally has worn out. His opponents and news reports, and his own commercials, made it clear there was not a “new” Greitens who had changed from the scandal-plagued collapse of his career as governor and rising Republican star.

Is he finished politically now?  Will we never see his name on a ballot again?  Will we never again see a Greitens with a gun political commercial?

In politics it is advisable to use the word “never” with care.  Case in point: November 7, 1962.

Richard Nixon, who lost the 1960 presidential race to John Kennedy, challenged incumbent California Governor Pat Brown’s re-election two years later. He had lost the day before. And on November 7, in a press conference, Nixon blamed the press for his defeat and declared that reporters would miss him because, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”   The general consensus among the political punditry was that Nixon’s political career was over. We know how that turned out.

That brings us to another story—

Lucy Mercer Ruthefurd, the mistress of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, told her friend, artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff in 1943 that she should paint a portrait of her lover because, “He has such a remarkable face. There is no painting of him that gives his true expression.”

It was not until April, 1945 that Ruthefurd was able to arrange a two-day sitting by the President for his portrait.

About noon on April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt sat for the official portrait. As Shoumatoff was working her watercolor and Roosevelt was having lunch, he complained, “I have a terrific pain I the back of my head,” and slumped in his chair, unconscious. He died that afternoon from a stroke.

Shoumatoff never finished that portrait.

The political portrait of Eric Greitens remains incomplete after this defeat. He’s only 48.  Nixon was 49 when he held his “last” press conference.

For now, however, “never” might be too soon for Eric Greitens to think he has a political future in Missouri.

Notes From a Quiet Street

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It’s baseball season.  And baseball is a great radio sport.

As Jack Buck put it when he was inducted ins the Radiio Hall of Fame in 1995:

“Turn the radio on. You’ll hear a friend. You will enjoy; you will learn; you will imagine; you will improve.

“Turn the radio on, at home, in your car, in prison, on the beach, in a nursing home.  You will not be alone; you will not be lonely.

“Newspapers fold. Magazines come and go. Television self-destructs.

“Radio remains the trusted common denominator in this nation.”

Or as others have said, in various forms: “Theatre is life; film is art; television is furniture; radio is imagination.”

Perfect for baseball.

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I Read.  I write.  I am an author.  A library tells me much about a town and its people.  I’ve been on various local and regional library boards for 14 years and counting. That’s why this sign was interesting:

Of course, I saw this sign on the internet.

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We keep hearing critics of the January 6 Committee refer to it as a Kangaroo Court.  Do they consider another form of investigation a Kangaroo Grand Jury?

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Your faithful correspondent has, for the last two cars he has bought, suggested, “This might be the last entirely gas-powered car I’ll buy.”  But we’re getting closer to where that statement will true. When grandchildren live in Colorado, a car that gets 250  miles before needing a charge doesn’t make the navel tingle.

But this one does. It’s the Mercedes EQ/XX, still in prototype stage. Mercedeces ranks its range at 747 miles. Might have to mortgage the house, twice, but when it goes into production, it might not be too hard to tell the grandchildren their inheritance is greatly diminished.  It even has solar panels on the roof to power some of the little things inside.

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We have heard our most recent ex-president say at least a couple of times, including last week, that he wanted to give himself the Medal of Honor but Congress wouldn’t let him do it.

Should he ever read one of these postings (and there are some serious suspicions in this lofty place that he reads much of anything), here is how the Medal of Honor is awarded.

The main way is through nomination and approval through the military chain of command.  The second is a nomination by a member of Congress who is usually acting on a constituent’s request.  The medal is general presented by the President, in the name of Congress.

A year ago about now, I was honored to work with some veterans and with Gold Star Families to put up a monument to those families that have lost loved ones during wartime. I cherish the opportunity to have been part of that effort.

The ex-president’s remark is an insult to those who deservedly have received Medal of Honor—-or to the families of those who did not live to know they would receive it. Actually, it is an insult to anyone who has ever worn our country’s uniforms.

In fact the first time he joked about that was at an AMVETS meeting a couple of years ago and he embroidered his poorly-read remarks by kidding Woody Williams about them.

Woody Williams died a few weeks ago. He was the last surviving WWII Medal of Honor winner.  It was his foundation that supported last year’s efforts to put up the Gold Star Families Memorial Monument near the Missouri Capitol.

Our ex-president might have thought he was being funny. I am ashamed of those who laughed or applauded.

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And finally, another observation about baseball:

You faithful observer has seen a new book that says “Bull Durham” is the greatest sports movie ever made. It is difficult from this recliner chair next to the TV remote to disagree.  Part of one of Hollywood’s greatest movie scripts is when Crash explains to Nuke how to use all of the great baseball clichés.

We suggest, however, that there are two baseball clichés that need to be thrown on the ash heap of baseball cliché history.

After watching  the Kansas City Royals and the St. Louis Cardinals leave some of their players behind, including some of the bigger names of both teams, when they went to Canada recently because they had not been vaccinated, we suggest these two clichés be discarded:

Take one for the Team.

There is no “I” in Team.

Maybe the Royals and the Cardinals need something we find supporting our high school sports.

Booster Clubs.

 

The Fifth Amendment Debt 

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It is possible  Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, John Eastman, Alex Jones, Allen Weisselberg and two Trumps have no idea who John Lilburne was.  But they owe a large debt to this Englishman who died in 1657.

Trump aides, advisers, and defenders Stone, Flynn, Eastman, Jones and Weisselberg have “taken the Fifth” when summoned to testify on this or that issue involving our most recent former President.

Indeed, DJ Jr., the son of the aforesaid former president, reportedly has done it more than 500 times, as did Weisselberg, the former Trump organization chief financial officer, when summoned to talk about the elder Trump’s reputed manipulation of property values to get loans.

And so, for that matter, has the Big Guy himself. More than thirty years ago when he was carrying on with Marla Maples and his then-wife, Ivana, was divorcing him, DJT was asked about 100 questions about faithful marriage and reportedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment 97 times.  The questions came from his soon to be ex-wife’s lawyer who wanted him to explain his reported dalliances with other women.

But he must have had an epiphany sometime in the next twenty-or so years when he he told a crowd of followers during his campaign, “You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

How does John Lilburne enter this unsavory set of circumstances?

Isaac Amon’s article for The Journal of the Missouri Bar a while ago tell us that John Lilburne was an English pamphleteer who was arrested in 1637 for writing things the king and his Star Chamber Court did not like and he was badly punished for it.

The Star Chamber?

It was the court of inquisition in England that was above the common law and answered only to the King.  Those brought before it were ordered to take “the ex officio oath” that promised they would admit charges against them—-before knowing what the charges were.

John Lilburne was arrested in 1637 for printing and circulating unlicensed books. When he was taken before the Court of the Star Chamber and asked how he pleaded, Lilburne refused to respond until he knew the charges against him and argued that he was not bound to incriminate himself. He maintained the oath was “against the law of God and the law of the land.”  He also demanded the right to confront his accusers.

That defiance earned him a sentence in February of 1638 of a £500 fine, imprisonment at the Fleet Street Prison, and to be whipped and pilloried until he obeyed the court. In April he was taken from his cell, his hands were tied to the rear of an oxcart that pulled him through the streets, as he was flogged with a three-tailed whip before he was locked in a stooped position in the pillory.  Even then he spoke loudly against those who sought to silence him—until he was gagged. He was taken back to prison where, despite his situation, he was able to write a pamphlet describing the cruelty of his punishment and another encouraging a separation of the English government fronm the Church of England.

Eventually he was released but he continued to stand for his contention

Lilburne was called “Freeborn John” by his supporters for his contention that citizens have “freeborn rights” that include the right to hear charges against them, to face their accusers, and to refuse to say something that might incriminate themselves.

He was a soldier in the first English Civil War as a “Roundhead,” the Parliamentarians who fought against the Royalists to determine the type of government England would have and to seek religious feedom.  He left the army after rejecting the Presbyterian Solemn League and Covenant, an agreement in which the Scots agreed to help the Parliamentarians if England, Scotland, and Ireland would unite afterwards under a parliamentary-presbyterian system.

Lilburne maintained the covenant was, in effect, an agreement to preserve the religion of Scotland and was therefore a restriction on general freedom of religion. He had no problem with the Scots being Presbyterians but he wanted no part of an agreement that bound others to that faith.

In the end, the Civil Wars of England united England, Scotland and Ireland into the United Kingdom, ended the monopoly on worship and government control held by the Church of England, protected the reform movement in Scotland, and cleared the way for the Protestantism to become established in Ireland, leading to political control under the Anglican Church of Ireland, a situation that led to “The Troubles” or the Northern Ireland conflict, a thirty-year sectarian conflict between Protestant loyalists and Catholic nationalists from 1968-1998. That’s a discussion for another day, perhaps.

John Lilburne was imprisoned again in 1645 for criticizing members of Parliament for living well at a time when English soldiers were poorly treated. While in prison he penned An Agreement of the People for a Firm and Present Peace Upon Grounds of Common Right.

Lilburne’s political activism saw him in and out of prison and even banished from England for a time. In 1657, while visiting his wife (who was expecting their tenth child) on temporary release from prison, he died.

More than three centuries after his death, James Madison, who was influenced by Lilburne’s story, wrote as part of the Bill of Rights, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The Fifth Amendment and the other nine statements of OUR “freeborn rights” were adopted in 1791.

In 1966, United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren specifically mentioned Lilburne in writing the majority opinion for Miranda v. Arizona that police must tell suspects that they have the freeborn right to remain silent in the face of accusations against them.

A few days ago we watched Michael Flynn refuse to answer questions from a Republican member of the January 6 Committee, saying only, “Take the Fifth, “Fifth,” and “The Fifth” in responding to three questions.

A man almost four centuries ago endured imprisonment, whipping, the pillory, and even banishment from his country to give him that right.

But here’s the deal: While it is easy to think those who “plead the Fifth” are therefore hiding their guilt, there is far more to the plea than that. This amendment stands between us and Lilburne’s Star Chamber Court. All of us—you, me, them—are not forced to say something that others might consider an admission of guilt before any charges are filed. This amendment keeps the government from considering you guilty unless you can prove yourself NOT guilty.  This amendment protects our sacred concept that a citizen, no matter how reprehensible we might consider their behavior, is innocent until proven guilty.

We doubt that Mr. Flynn or any of the others we mentioned at the beginning of this piece know about or care about what John Lilburne went through to protect them.

But all of us should care—-because we Americans all have freeborn rights.

(image credit: Library of Congress)

The Chair

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It was one of those little mysteries that we notice that stays quietly in the backs of our minds but doesn’t nag at us.  But then somebody says something and the mystery is solved although they don’t know there ever was a mystery.

This mystery is rooted in the story of one of Jefferson City’s most prominent 19th Century citizens, the donation of a building to the city, the founding of a church, and the creation of a center to help the city’s needy a century after a man’s death.

And a mausoleum.

Joseph M. Clarke, Ohio-born, Illinois newspaperman, Alabama horse trader, Osage County Missouri plantation owner, state legislator, and Jefferson City banker is at the center of the story.

He was a city developer and philanthropist and upon his death toward the end of 1889, he bequeathed Bragg Hall to the city.  Bragg Hall still stands at the corner of High and Monroe Streets, on the southwest corner. For decades, the upper floors were city hall, with the city council chambers (which doubled as the Municipal Court during the daytimes) on the top floor.

One of the provisions of his will was that the city had to pay for a life-size bronze statue of Clarke to be kept in the building. Portraits of his wife, Lavinia, and of his two sons, Marcus and Junius, also were to be placed prominently in the building. All of them wound up in the council chambers, the statue in the southeast corner where it watched the council proceedings, the portraits of his sons on the east wall and the life-size portrait of his wife on the west wall.  In those days, five councilmen sat on each side of the room and I always felt sorry for the councilmen on the east because Mrs. Clarke was, well, a very severe looking woman and I often wondered if any of the council members felt her withering gaze.

Bragg Hall became inadequate as a city hall in the 1970s and after negotiations with Clarke descendants, the city sold the building and moved to a new city hall.  But the new building didn’t seem to have adequate space for the bronze Clarke and the canvas family members.  Four years later, when the city opened a nutrition center, it was named for Clark. And today folks who have meals there do so under the watchful eyes of Mr. Clarke and his sons. And I think Lavinia is watching their table manners closely.

One of the other things Clarke did was to give the First Christian Church a lot at the corner of (then) East Main and Adams Street as the site for its first sanctuary, to which he also contributed liberally.

All four members of the Clarke family are in that mausoleum in the old cemetery.  One day while I was doing some church research about Clarke, I went to the mausoleum, the interior of which was pretty dusty and cobwebby and peered through the locked door.  There wasn’t much to see except for a very old chair that was slowly collapsing under the weight of dust and decades.

Why is that chair there? I wondered.  Were they expecting visitors?   Were they thinking someone would come in a sit with them for a while?  Somebody would come in and tell them what had happened with their gifts?

That chair was the mystery that stuck in the back of my mind for several years.  Since then, the mausoleum has undergone a maintenance and repair effort.

A few weeks ago I think I learned what that chair was and why it was there.

The Christian Church has been without a minister for more than a year, a situation that will be resolved this coming Sunday when our new minister preaches his first sermon.  In the interim we have had “pulpit supply” ministers filling in, including three retired ministers who are members of the congregation.  We’ve had sermons from two lay members. And on June 26, a young woman who was raised in our church—her parents and her grandmother are still active members—and then went on to become a minister stood in the pulpit and asked what kind of a church we would be in the future, one stuck in the old ways or “will we accept the mantles of change and embrace our own giftedness and passions?”

Her sermon was based on the story of Elijah, the prophet from the Old Testament Book of Kings where stories of his miracles are told—one of which is resurrection. Early in the message, Sarah Blosser Blackwell referred to an ancient custom that sometimes is practiced in some homes today:

An empty chair at a family gathering was likely referred to in passing as the “Elijah” chair.  The idea was that since Elijah did not die an earthly death, but instead was taken up into heaven, and we should save him a space in case he returned. According to Jewish tradition, Elijah was known as the messenger of the covenant and, thus, was present at every circumcision, so a chair was left open for his arrival.  Later that became the place of honor for the godfather of the child.

And there it was!

That was why the chair was in the Clarke family mausoleum—the Elijah Chair where he could sit when he returns as a harbinger of the arrival of the Messiah.

I don’t think there’s a chair in the mausoleum since the repairs were made. I could see no sign of it as I peered through the three dingy windows.  It’s unknown if the chair had been put there at the request of the Clarkes or if it was just part of a tradition in 1889.

I kind of think there should be a chair in there now, though.

 

Canning

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John Wesley had a birthday last week. He would have been 219 years old.

He was the founder of the Methodist Church.

Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac” commemorated his birth by passing along “John Wesley’s Rule,” noting that there’s no evidence he actually wrote it.  But it’s a good thing to remember as we breathe the increasingly toxic political air that is being generated in these times.

You might want to print it out and post it in several places in your home.

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.

Sounds like a good platform for a candidate.  A candidate adopting this standard as part of the campaign platform could certainly stand out in today’s political climate.  Certainly wouldn’t hurt to see somebody try it.

The Fourth of July

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This is a day of eloquent words.  The celebration of that eloquence is overshadowed by the festival this day has become.

We’re not talking only about the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Continental Congress on this day (but not signed by the 56 delegates for some time), but for the eloquence of a speech by a special man before thousands of admirers on this date.

This is the day in 1939 that Lou Gehrig, one of the greatest players and greatest people to play baseball, said goodbye—with words of courage and gratitude before a crowd of almost 62,000 people in Yankee Stadium who had come for baseball games but mostly to pay tribute to Lou Gehrig.

The words were spoken a little more than a month after a consequential trip to Missouri.

The most memorable line came at the beginning, not the end—as is the case with the Declaration’s most famous line.

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

“Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, 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 you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter – that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body – it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed – that’s the finest I know.

“So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”

As far as the trip to Missouri—

Gehrig had sensed something was wrong when he hit “only” .295 in the 1928 season with 29 home runs and 114 runs batted in—the kind of season most of today’s major leaguers would love to have.  But it lowered his lifetime batting average to .340 and left him 287 hits short of becoming the seventh player with 3,000 hits, an achievement he could have expected to reach in 1939 under normal circumstances.  It also left him seven short of 500 home runs and six short of 2000 runs batted in, both statistics he would have achieved in ’38 if he had had a normal year.

He was troubled at the start of the 1939 season by the fact that he was only four for fourteen in the World Series, all of the hits being singles, and going four-for-28—again, all singles—to start the year.  He didn’t hit a home run during spring training and his coordination in the field was off.  He played his last major league game on April 30, then told manager Joe McCarthy he was benching himself after 2,130 straight games.

But there would be one more game. Gehrig was still the Yankees’ captain, often the man who took the lineup card to the home plate umpire at the start of the game, as he did during a series in June against the St. Louis Browns. It was there that Gehrig told reporters he was going to the Mayo Clinic soon for some tests but expected to return to the playing field during the summer.  “I can’t help believing there’s something wrong with me,” he told them. “It’s not conceivable that I could go to pieces so suddenly. I feel fine, feel strong, and have the urge to play…I’d like to play some more and I want somebody to tell me what’s wrong. Usually a fellow slows up gradually.” But this year, he said, “Without warning…I’ve apparently collapsed.”

After wrapping up the series with the Browns, the Yankees went to Kansas City for an exhibition game against their best minor league team, the Kansas City Blues, team that matched rising Yankee star Joe DiMaggio against brother Vince, who played the same position for the Blues against the Blues’ up and coming double play duo of shortstop and future Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto and second-baseman Jerry Priddy, who combined that year for 130 double plays, a league record. They were called up by the Yankees in ’41.

Lou Gehrig played his last game on June 11, 1939 in Kansas City. He played in great pain, but played errorless ball at first base. His last at-bat was in the third inning. He grounded out to Priddy.

While the rest of the team took a train to Cleveland for a series there, Gehrig and his wife, Eleanor (in this AP photo from 1936), flew to Rochester for tests on the 13th that she had arranged.  Six days later, the clinic’s Dr. Harold C. Habein issued a “Two whom it may concern” letter telling Gehrig he had been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, an illness that “involves the motor pathways and cells of the central nervous system and in lay terms is known as a form of chronic poliomyelitis—infantile paralysis.”

The letter concluded, “The nature of this trouble makes it such that Mr. Gehrig will be unable to continue his active participation as a baseball player inasmuch as it is advisable that he conserve his muscular energy. He could, however, continue in some executive capacity.”

Gehrig took the letter to manage Joe McCarthy and team president Ed Barrow on the 21st.  They released the information to the media that day and announced that July 4th had been set aside for Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at the stadium.

Gehrig admitted he was shocked by the findings. He told New York sportswriters, “Mrs. Gehrig and I are fully resolved to face the situation calmly” and he called the trip to the Mayo Clinic “the best move I ever made.” But he didn’t ignore the reality of his situation. “My friends tell me not to worry. They slap me on the back and say, ‘Don’t worry, Lou. Everything is going to be all right.’ But how can I help worrying.”

He was honored during a forty-minute ceremony held between games of a doubleheader against the Washington Senators.  There were a lot of gifts including a fruit bowl and two candlesticks from the New York Giants. The one that might have had the most meaning was a 21-inch silver trophy from his 1939 teammates, their names and a poem by New York sportswriter  John Kieran engraved on it.

To LOU GEHRIG

We’ve been to the wars together;
We took our foes as they came:
And always you were the leader,
And ever you played the game.

Idol of cheering millions:
Records are yours by sheaves:
Iron of frame they hailed you,
Decked you with laurel leaves.

But higher than that we hold you,
We who have known you best;
Knowing the way you came through
Every human test.

Let this be a silent token
Of lasting friendship’s gleam
And all that we’ve left unspoken.
Your Pals of the Yankee Team.

When Gehrig walked back to the dugout that day, the only one of the many gifts he took with him was that trophy.

Kieran said his poem was a “feeble interpretation” of how the players felt about Gehrig, who was his neighbor in the suburb of Riverdale, New York. Kieren often visited Gehrig as his health declined. One day, Kieran later related, Gehrig pointed to the trophy and said, “Some time when I get—well, sometimes I have that handed to me—and I read it—and I believe it—and I feel pretty good”

Lou Gehrig died, only 37 years old, On June 2, 1941.  Six months later, the Baseball Writers Association of America voted unanimously to ignore the traditional waiting period for admission to the Hall of Fame and unanimously elected him.

When Eleanor Gehrig died in 1984 she donated that trophy to the Hall of Fame. It and other Gehrig memorabilia are on display in Cooperstown.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. There still is no cure for it. Nor is there an effective treatment to stop it or reverse its progression.

July 4th.  A day we normally observe eloquent words.  Perhaps a few of us today will remember, too, words not only of eloquence but of courage in the face of a life to come and gratitude for the life that had been.