IF YOU DON’T THINK 95 YEARS IS LONG TIME, JUST ASK THE STANDARD OIL FOLKS: Found this place still standing, sort of, after all these years, in the Four Corners area, where the borders of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah intersect. After I passed by it a couple of miles before, I debated with myself and then turned around to photograph this spot, because since it was the first time I had ever seen any sign for Standard Oil, it would probably be the last time too. Little did I know then that I would find a use for it so soon.
TIMEOUT FOR TEARSI’m interrupting the regular order of these posts to relate some very sad news. My uncle, Charles Richard, has passed away in Massachusetts at the age of 95.
A towering man of great savvy and spirit, he raised a wonderful family in partnership with my beloved and always entertaining Aunt Cag, who herself passed away just last year. Uncle Dick later maintained a brisk lifestyle into his ‘80s and a splendid sense of humor well beyond. He never failed to call me “Sam.” Why? Never got the straight dope on that. Now I’ll never know …
Think of it, Uncle Dick was born on New Year’s Eve, Saturday, Dec. 31, 1910 -- for all intents and purposes, a New Year’s baby. It sure was a different world. People talked back then, really talked. Colorful, lively discussions, full of descriptions, informed opinions, useful instructions. They swapped life's lessons.
People valued intelligent discourse then, unlike today when you might see a group of people walking together, but each talking on their own cell phone, ignoring their companions.
So let’s take a look back at a few of the dinner-table topics the first year after Uncle Dick arrived on the scene:
Broadway was boss back then with the movie industry in its infancy. A Tale of Two Cities was drawing a few to the silent Silver Screen, but most common folk read for entertainment. Imagine the howls today if you took away a kid’s Gameboy and handed he or she one of the classics like Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome or the Frances Burnett masterpiece, The Secret Garden, both of which made their literary debuts that year. Back then, it was probably child’s play to get the lads to read Jack London’s adventure trilogy The Cruise of the Snark, South Sea Tales and When God Laughs and Other Stories. John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra and Booker T. Washington’s second effort, My Longer Education: Being Chapters from My Experience, also kept the bells on the doors of bookstores ringing.
Ragtime was the music of choice with Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin calling the tunes.
In physics, the theories surrounding the mysterious atom were all the rage (unfortunately we all know how that turned out) with the development of the vacuum tube - precursor to TV and early computers - a close second.
It was in 1911 that a fellow proved that you could tell a tree’s age by counting its rings and a basketball-sized meteorite killed a dog in Egypt. The only mammal death by meteorite ever recorded kept scientists scratching their heads for the next 75 years, although, on the plus side, the sport of basketball would become a popular distraction in the time in between.
In France, chemist Marie Curie is awarded the Nobel Prize for her discovery of radium (another event too late to snatch back before the jaws of history swallowed it whole), while in Paris, a thief ripped the Mona Lisa from the walls of the Louvre and it remained hidden until his capture two years later.
Bell Telephone Labs opened its doors, IBM began its rise under another corporate moniker and the phrase cultural anthropology stormed into the popular lexicon.
Explorer Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole and Thomas Hunt Morgan mapped the genome – of a fruit fly!
The escalator was introduced, the first load of air cargo ever was delivered and although automobiles were becoming such a common sight on the roads that officials began to use a white line to divide the traffic lanes, 1911 was the first year you didn’t have to use a hand-crank to start up your ride. Chevrolet mounted the first challenge to Henry Ford’s Model T and, on the gasoline front, the Supreme Court decided Standard Oil was a monopoly and ordered it disbanded. Gas was only pennies a gallon, so, in retrospect, maybe the Justices should have just let the Rockefellers Bros. and Standard be. Didn’t happen (see above).
Pius X tended to his enormous flock from Rome. Ferdinand was a just a prince, not a symbol, so World War I wouldn’t erupt in Europe for another couple of years. George V reigned over the far-flung British Empire; and William Howard Taft was in the middle of his one term in the White House. Taft later became the 10th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Try that today.
Bomb-makers and anarchists were terrorizing the public at large, mirroring events in today’s world. The Russian revolt against the Czar was brewing while Pancho Villa kept the Mexican Revolution at full boil. In China, mobs overthrew the 267-year-old Manchu dynasty.
Ray Harroun won the first Indy 500 and Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s ruled the baseball world but rookie sensation “Shoeless” Joe Jackson batted .408 for the Indians, his dark days with the Black Sox still down the road a piece. Jack Johnson was the heavyweight champ, both of boxing and of controversy. Meridian wore the roses at the Kentucky Derby, hockey was a Canadian sport, football was confined to college play and basketball was played under peach baskets nailed to gym walls. Soccer? Only overseas. Fenway Park would not open its doors until next year, the same day the Titanic sank.
Uncle Dick outlived playwright Tennessee Williams and theater producer David Merrick, comedian Phil Silvers and Irish humorist Flann O’Brien, sports heroes Hank Greenberg and Babe Didrikson Zaharias, bandleader Mitch Miller and cowboy Roy Rogers, President Ronald Reagan and would-be president Hubert Humphrey, Hollywood stars Vincent Price, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, Jean Harlow, Merle Oberon and Irish beauty Maureen O’Sullivan, along with director John Sturges and Gone with the Wind’s Butterfly McQueen. L. Ron Hubbard was also born in 1911; his new “religion,” Scientology, would come along later. Uncle Dick outlasted Kennedy assassination enigma Jack Ruby and Nazi horror Josef Mengele. For good and for bad, they were all born contemporaries. Temperance queen Carrie Nation and publisher Joseph Pulitzer passed from the scene as all these folks made their debuts.
Yes, It was indeed a different world in 1911.
There wasn’t any assembly lines or atom bombs, No ATMs, no VCRs. No CNN, ESPN or MTV. No TV at all. There were no computers, microwaves, cell phones or satellites dishes. No supersonic jets, super stations, super highways, Souper Salads or Super Bowls. Even Superman Comics wouldn’t fly for another 20 years.
Only the wealthy had those new-fangled radios and, as for refrigeration, most folks bought ice from wagons rolling down the street. No penicillin or smallpox vaccine. Fighting back a fatal flu would soon prove a fool’s errand, claiming our family patriarch.
Depression? Prohibition? Those were descriptions, not defining eras.
The Jazz Age was a few flappers short of a phenomenon, and Elvis and the Beatles were more than a half-a century down the road. Enron, Exxon and Jimmy Neutron were all still yet to come. Woodstock was an artists’ colony.
Babe Ruth was but 16. Uncle Dick was a teenager when The Babe was at his best. Ditto the Iron Horse, Lou Gehrig.
1911, Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Ho Chi Min and Chairman Mao were just out of short pants. Space travel was an eccentric man’s fantasy. The moon was made out of green cheese for all anyone could tell.
Uncle Dick was around for the last two Red Sox world championships. In between the flag raisings in the Fens, he probably discussed Hoover and Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor, Tokyo Rose and Hiroshima, Louie Armstrong, “The buck stops here.” Fatty Arbuckle, Buck Rogers, Roger Maris. Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, Yalta, Seabiscuit then Secretariat, and The Marshall Plan. He may have told his kids about Teddy Ballgame and DiMaggio in the summer of ’41. Imagine that? He watched those box scores. Everybody did.
In those days, you kept yourself current with newspapers and the newsreels spooled out before the Saturday double-feature down at the Bijou. The 38th Parallel and Pork Chop Hill, Al Capone, Swinging with Sinatra, the triumphs and tumbles of Howard Hughes, D-Day and V-E day, V-J day, too. Ben Hogan, Jesse Owens, Marlene Deitrich, Churchill and DeGualle, Joe McCarthy, Malcolm X, Jimmy Stewart, Sputnik.
Orson Welles, Bogie and Bacall, Tracy and Hepburn, Gable and Lombard, Red Grange, young Marlon Brando, John Wayne, Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe. Dracula and Frankenstein the first time - in a dark theater. Wow! That’s entertainment! Pass the popcorn.
Some people had big ideas: Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Walt Disney. Sam Walton had a notion to expand his little drug store, Ray Kroc wanted to sell a few more hamburgers.
Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Amos & Andy, a lifetime of laughs! The Three Stooges were young and appeared bulletproof. Groucho, Chico and Harpo. Beep! Beep! Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Uncle Miltie. These guys created the genre, they were the real thing; comics today are just cheap knock-offs. Bing Crosby could croon all night while Danny Kaye and Fred Astaire seemed able to float above the floorboards.
Gandhi turned hunger into a weapon right before his very eyes.
Americans built the Hoover Dam and the Empire State Building. In Uncle Dick’s lifetime, the U.S. finished the Panama Canal. But, later, he watched as Jimmy Carter gave it back to the Panamanians. Now the Chinese hold the lease to it. Red China was playing chess, Carter checkers.
The Cold War. Duck & Cover! Could he have liked Ike?
Lucky Strikes. Lucky Luciano. Lindbergh was called “Lucky” when he landed in France, but we’re still waiting for Amelia Earhart to touch down. Come to think of it, just where is Judge Crater?
Yaz and Lonborg in ‘67, Fisk and Tiant in ‘75, The Gold Dust Twins, Jim Rice and Freddie Lynn … And Buckner and Stanley in ‘86.
Red Sox, Red Buttons, Red Skeleton, Red Dye No. 2. Just make mine a Moxie!
Spats, Zoot Suits, ‘63 Chevys, Brylcreem. Kruchev slamming his shoe at the UN. Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chan and Charlie Manson. Charlie on the MTA. Pat Nixon’s cloth coat. Come back, Shane! Come back!
The Gestapo, The Ku Klux Klan, The Red Menace, The Red Brigade.
Heart transplants, test-tube babies, the age of pharmaceuticals.
Russian tanks preyed on the Hungarians at Budapest. Pope John-Paul II prayed for the Polish at Gdansk.
Uncle Dick witnessed the end of polio, but the beginning of AIDS. Seems like there’s always something. The climb of Castro, the rise, then fall of Communism. The Kennedy brothers were murdered. Martin Luther King, too. Tet. The Summer of Love. The Watergate Hearings. Murder at the Munich Olympics. Man walked on the moon - so many times it got boring and America moved on. But just until the Challenger explosion drew us back into the drama.
Russell vs. Wilt. The Berlin Airlift. The Oklahoma dustbowl. Koufax in his prime. Harvard beat Yale 29-29 in ’69, The Game to beat all games.
He didn’t have much use for disco, but he could cut a mean rug. When Uncle Dick asked, “Manhattan?” he wanted to pour you a cocktail, not talk about Ground Zero.
In Uncle Dick’s day, James Curley sat in old City Hall, not Kevin from Heaven. Cushing was the Cardinal, and he was taking no guff. Somerville was known as “Sportstown USA.” Winthrop was but a summer colony. He saw the old expressway rise up right through the middle of Boston, long before the Big Dig tunneled down. Scolley Square, Walter Brown building the Garden, National League ball at Braves Field, the Combat Zone, the old Howard, The Coconut Grove in flames, the Hillbilly Ranch.
He watched the subway crews breaking ground on station after station, all the way out to the suburbs. The train almost made it to Melrose.
Revere Beach had a roller-coaster and the Mousetrap. Danny’s Steak & Cheese had the best onion rings on the strip. Sundaes up the road at Roland’s. Remember?
His two brothers went off to war, sailing off in different directions. But, as head of household, Uncle Dick stayed put, guarding the homeland as well as his mother and sister. He and Cag worked hard, somehow making ends meet on his paycheck from the mill, ‘til the kids were old enough that she could get back into the classroom. He believed in self-discipline and, because of that, he watched as his own family grew and prospered.
Several of his five sons tried the seminary, but it didn’t take and soon they all found other callings. His only daughter, one of the twins, is a teacher. Hope, just every once in a while, she passes on a few lessons from Uncle Dick. He had a legion of grandchildren, and lately great-grandchildren. Seems like there’s more of them every day.
Uncle Dick was born at the dawn of a fantastic transitional age, and he had a long, strong life through incredibly interesting times.
That was a lot of living! Much happens in 95 years. Some people yearn for the old days. Simpler times, they say. But if you’ve read this far, you know those days were anything but simple. Uncle Dick saw it all, paid attention, and somehow he would be able to cleverly summarize it all in a couple of sentences. Now that’s talent!
He will be greatly missed whenever and wherever my extended family gathers.
And - selfishly now, for just a second - he was my last uncle. Too bad. They just don’t make ‘em now like they used too.
Rest in peace, Uncle Dick. You earned it. Seems to me that you’ve been pretty busy …
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