August 27, 2008

Yesterday we set our sights on Peru, Wabash, and Silver Lake, Indiana, where we strolled around the former wintering grounds of the Ben Wallace Circus (now a sleepy museum and hall of fame overseen by a veteran ringmaster named John Fugate), chatted with the owner of a vintage, largely unaltered Lustron prefab house from the 1950s (which features prominently in the current MOMA exhibition), ate curbside bratwurst at Mr. Weiner’s drive in, and cleared out the New York section of Reading Room used bookstore (including a rare, early 1930s roman a clef entitled The Scandal Monger and probably the first work to take a pot shot at the gossip columnist Walter Winchell: “What a grotesque being he really was, with his thatch of red hair, his beaked nose, his slimy eyes, his angular gait and nasal twang. He reminded himself of a high-crested, crimson macaw chattering idiotic gibberish among the owls of vaudeville”).

[insert rant -- %$#@&^%* because our digital camera malfunctioned and deleted all the day’s pictures]

Instead we can offer this amateur video of the 1922 barn erected by Ben Wallace to house his elephants and lions. A distant cousin now patrols the doorway.

***

So, before venturing to other towns in the vicinity we pause to examine the Failey family cottage in Culver, Indiana, on the quiet banks of Lake Maxincuckee. Purchased almost a hundred years ago by Malby Failey of Kankakee, Illinois, it became a summer retreat for his brood of five daughters: Elizabeth (Eleanor), Cora-Catherine, Laura, Patty, and Ethel. Their library survives largely intact, a mix of Malby’s passion for fishing, hunting, and armchair traveling and the escapist literature of his daughters’ generation (full of Edwardian moralism, flapper exuberance, and Depression-era cynicism). Here’s a sample:

“Now you go to it. You sit right down on your little fanny and do your stuff. Hoochie-kooch situations for Lowell [Sherman]. And—here’s an idea—introduce a bunch of skoits. Arab skoits! Them there Oriental odalisques! Give ‘em swell lines—hot lines, if you get wot I mean. And I’ll long-distance down to N’Yawk, to the Chamberlain Brown agency, and have ‘em send me half a dozen good-lookers. And I’ll get Livingston Platt, our art director, to get costumes for ‘em. Not too much. The sort you can mail in a small envelope. And tomorrow night we’ll have a brand-new show. And—take it from me, sweetheart—she’ll be a wow!”
--Achmed Abdullah on his experience writing the comedy, “The Passionate Prince,” for Broadway producer Al Woods (The Cat Had Nine Lives, 1933)

“It is incomprehensible how the country Abyssinian manages to survive the heavy boredom that must be his. It is well enough to rise early in the morning to get a good start loafing, but when such inaction faces one each day, day after day and year after year, it becomes a hard occupation. With nothing to do it follows naturally that he will sit in the shade long hours with friends—all in the same strenuous state of inertia—and while away the long days with rambling, pointless talk, heated arguments about nothing and ferocious but harmless discussion.”
--Explorer James E. Baum on his Ethiopian expedition funded by the Field Museum of Natural History and the Chicago Daily News (Savage Abyssinia, 1927)


“Now by general word, the Dead Rabbit was not unknown to me. It was neither tavern nor boarding house, but a mill of vice, with blood on its doorstep and worse inside. If ever prayers were said there they must have been parcel of some Black Sanctus; and if ever a Christian went there it was to be robbed and beaten, and then mayhap to have his throat cut for a lesson in silence.”
--Alfred Henry Lewis on Gotham graft (The Boss: And How He Came to Rule New York, 1903)

“Vaguely I heard the thundering hoofbeats of stampeding zebra; the picture of black human bodies, oily and naked, flashed through my chaotic mind. Once more I was in the land of ticks, heat, thirst. Then I could hear the rhythmical throbbing of tomtoms; the sad melody of a ‘sing song’ under a colossal full moon.”
--Daniel Streeter en route to Africa (Camels!!, 1927)

“The camel has a single hump;
The dromedary, two;
Or else the other way around.
I’m never sure. Are you?”
--Ogden Nash’s doggeral “The Camel” (The Primrose Path, 1935)

“Very often Doreen did not want any breakfast after a late night. She then lay in bed until eleven or twelve o’clock, smoking cigarettes. Sometimes she had a brandy and soda in the middle of the morning; sometimes she waited for a cocktail before lunch. Doreen Galbraith was twenty-five, without joy, without morals, and without hope."
--From a E. M. Delafield novel (Jill, 1927)

“It is neither humane nor sportsmanlike merely to cripple an animal. Instant death is the true sportsman’s motto. So long as we eat meat, the best we can do for our victims is to put them out of the way as quickly and painlessly as possible.”
Horace Kephard on “Killing Power” (Guns, Ammunition & Tackle, ??)

“Smooth, satiny, fine skin.
Shapely, long, thin, firm throat.
Shaped, but not too narrow eyebrows.
No wrinkles or lines on forehead.
Low forehead, natural hair line.
Clear, bright, rested eyes.
Curving lips, accented mouth.
Well defined firm chin.
White, sparkling teeth.
Well-kept firm hands.
Long, not too shiny, nails.
Graceful, easy carriage.
Poised, but not stiff, posture.
A pleasing enunciation and voice.
Gracious manner.”
--Margaret Story (or Mrs. Chester B. Story) on the “Standards of Beauty” (Individuality and Clothes, 1930)

“There’s something in a scrimmage like that you never forget. A helpless man dragging along behind his crazed pony with one foot caught in the stirrup. Another clinging to his saddle-horn, six-shooter gone, trying to drag his Winchester out of his scabbard, coughing blood while his wounded pony takes lunging buck-jumps. Men diving off wooden sidewalks into the streets between the whirling horses’ hoofs.”
--Captain Tom Rynning on his days as a cowboy and gunman in the Wild West (Gun Notches, 1931)