Back in the USA...
I’m not sure I will ever be able to sing with such surety, as Chuck Berry and Linda Ronstadt do, that I’m “glad” to be back in the USA. What makes me glad? Only connect—to quote E.M. Forster.
After almost two years in Europe, I took a quick 11-day trip to the States to visit my mother in South Bend, attend a niece’s wedding in Michigan, and touch base with friends and family in Akron, Chicago, and Milwaukee. One might call it a whirlwind tour. I landed at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, more massive and sprawling than ever. It’s hard to imagine that, as teens, my friend Debbie and I used to hang out at this airport on weekend nights, have each other paged over the intercom, and create low-key chaos in the practically empty terminals and newly constructed near-by chic hotels, where we would ride the bullet-like glass elevators and push each other into the lobby fountains. Now that was fun! More about Debbie later.
After two years of the Metro, buses, and trains, I rented a car and trepidatiously pulled out of the parking ramp into the Chicago traffic. Within a few short minutes, my Chicagoland drivers’ training kicked in and I was once more a 17 year old road warrior, pedal to the floor, roaring onto the crowded expressways in my borrowed Kia Forte. And so it went for 11 days…My trajectory followed the same map as the illustration from Ruth McKenney’s Industrial Valley, which we used as a projection in NWPL’s production of Industrial Valley: The Devil’s Milk, Part 3.
The wedding was beautiful and visiting friends in Akron was pleasantly reassuring (for the most part), but it was strangely surreal to find myself back in Highland Square, getting coffee at Nervous Dog, Chinese food at Chin’s, and driving down West Market Street. At times, I felt as if the thirty plus years I lived and worked in Akron had been some kind of dream. Yes, that’s it! The second act of the play of my life had been a lengthy dream montage. But what was I doing back here? Where was Tangier’s onion dome? What happened to Annabelle’s? As I drove down Akron’s highways and byways, I realized that it’s not about the place, but the wish to connect with some of the people that dreamed that Ohio world with me. Their creative force and the wonders that we forged together in the classroom, in rehearsal, and in performance, are seared into my soul and mark each of my days as I move forward into the privileged uncertainty of the third act of my life. Thank you, Akron. But mostly thank you Justin, Jamie, Terry, Chris, Inda, Josy, Neema, Nicole, Sam, Sarah, Kix, John, Jeff, Prem, Danny, Roger, Donna, Turk, Randy, Nancy, Marci, Mark, and so many others too numerous to name or who may have been absent from Akron or moved on to another dream landscape. As I have. But we are still connected.
Besides meeting family and friends, I had a mission on this trip given to me by our grandson, Léo: to bring back to Paris a specific Ninjago Lego kit. Unfortunately, we discovered that the desired kit was no longer being produced. After some research and phone calls, I was informed by a staff member at the Crocker Park Lego store that on June 1, fourteen new Ninjago Lego kits were being released. If I got to the store by 9am that morning and stood in line, I was assured to snag one of these brand new kits to take to Paris. Crocker Park was only slightly out of my way back to South Bend. I bid farewell to the Akron dreamscape and soon arrived in a completely different dreamscape. Crocker Park is one of those new style shopping and living experiences that is designed to look like someone’s fantasy version of yesteryear’s small town America. I sipped my Starbuck’s coffee and walked through the town square where children were happily splashing in a fountain, folks were eating croissants and arepas, smiling and waving and…what is this? I felt like I was on the set of The Truman Show.
In fact, as a child, I remember believing that if our family had the good fortune to watch Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and The Donna Reed Show, then other families had the bad luck of having to watch us—the Slowiak family. I felt so bad for the kids who had to watch our family that sometimes I would manufacture more exciting episodes for them. Walking through Crocker Park was really like being on the set of some twisted American sitcom. I got in line outside the Lego store where males of various ages and a few females (mothers and girlfriends mostly) were discussing their Lego collections in great detail. The store didn’t open until 10am. It was a long wait.
When the doors finally opened, I ran inside with the others and picked out the Ninjago kit that Jairo had decided would serve as a good substitute for the now defunct one that Léo had his heart set on. When I took the item to the register, I immediately sensed some kind of crisis brewing in the store. Apparently, many of the new items had not been input. All Lego stores were experiencing the same problem. These items literally did not exist because the system didn’t yet recognize them. Even though I held it in my hands, the item could not be sold or rung up or anything until the issue was resolved. The staff put the item on hold for me and I despondently walked out into the real sunshine of the fake small town.
Across Main Street, I spied an Apple store. I needed a new display for my i-phone and I had been told at the Apple store in Paris that it would be significantly cheaper in the US. Perhaps this was my chance to find out? I opened the doors of the store and entered another weirdly surreal environment. The robotic Apple technician finished dealing with the American Gothic, Ohio farm couple who couldn’t keep their phone charged and told me the store could have my phone fixed by 1pm, for much less than I would pay in Europe. I left my phone, checked in at Lego, (no go!) and went to have lunch. By 1pm the phone was working beautifully, but Lego still did not have its act together. I bid farewell to fake small town America and headed west to say goodbye to my mother.
My mother turns 90 this summer. She has good days and bad days, good moments and bad moments. While her memory remains intact, for the most part, she has almost constant auditory hallucinations, voices in her head, what she calls telepathic communications, and can quickly turn aggressive or despondent. She loves seeing her new twin great granddaughters and they can bring her into the present for a short time. Her sons have less chances to see the mother we once knew. It’s as if the disease has melted away anything that was once good or positive and only the negative remains. My mantra was: “Think good thoughts, Mom,” or “Let’s turn that into a good thought.” It didn’t work so well. My brother and his wife are doing all they can to make sure that mom is comfortable and has everything she needs. Their efforts are often greeted with hostility from her, but she is in a very good facility and under excellent care. I am grateful for all they do.
I know that many of you have experienced some version of this disease with your loved ones. It’s not easy. It makes me want to prepare even more for my own old age and death. Perhaps if one prepares and rehearses, we can go into the good night with dignity and fortitude. Is there a way to assure that our last performance is not a farce? In Ted Gioia’s recent Substack newsletter, he discusses the psychic benefits of regular meditation on one’s mortality. I would have to agree with him and with La Fontaine’s quote that begins Gioia’s discussion: “Death never takes a wise person by surprise.”
For me, Chicago is the most beautiful city in the USA and being there always thrills me. The skyline, the lakefront, the neighborhoods, and architecture all combine to make a spectacular urban landscape. I drove through the city twice this summer, once on my way to Indiana and Ohio and again on the way back. The first trip to South Bend, which should have taken about three hours from my brother Jeff’s house in the northwest suburbs, ended up taking five hours. I finally escaped from the clogged Kennedy expressway and made my way through the city on surface streets passing by Wrigley Field to Lake Shore Drive and driving past the Navy Pier Ferris wheel, Buckingham Fountain, the Field Museum, and south to Jackson Park where I was able to observe the Obama Library under construction. I finally found my way to the Chicago Skyway. The day was sunny and the lake was turbulent with waves crashing against the shore. It was a long, but lovely, drive and reinvigorated my admiration for the city. On the way back, I stopped in Wicker Park for lunch with former UA theatre students and NWPL members, Megan Elk and India Burton. Both of them are successfully working in Chicago theatre. Megan works at Lyric Opera and India just started a new job at the Court Theatre. It’s always fun to connect with Akron theatre alums making good in other parts of the country.
After another night at my brother’s house in Cary, Illinois, and more bonding with my twin great nieces, I had eaten my fill of Chicago-style hot dogs and Italian Beef sandwiches, and decided to drive to Wisconsin to visit one of the meccas of American theatre, Ten Chimneys. Any study of American theatre from the 1920’s through 1960’s must prominently feature Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, America’s king and queen of Broadway, and, since reading about their estate in Noel Coward’s diaries and Laurence Olivier’s biography, I had always wanted to visit their farm in Genesee Depot, outside of Milwaukee. My high school friend and St. Paul roommate, Janet (Sorce) Dietert, had recently retired with her husband to a loft near downtown Milwaukee after many years in Florida looking after parents, teaching, and raising a family. She wrote me a postcard last year from Ten Chimneys and her visit there renewed my interest in the Lunts and their Wisconsin retreat. I thought this might be a perfect time to visit Ten Chimneys (only an hour and a half drive from my brother’s place) and check out Janet’s retirement set-up in Milwaukee, before heading back to Paris.
Driving through the rolling hills of southeastern Wisconsin took me to Lake Geneva, where, when I was 17, I was arrested (with my friend, Debbie, of course) for having open intoxicants in public. My arrest occurred just days before my 18th birthday, during that brief period of time in the early 70’s when many states chose to reduce the legal drinking age to 18. Wisconsin was a magnet for teens from Illinois (where the age had been reduced to 19 for beer and wine only) and, armed with fake IDs, we often partied across the state line. Our mistake that particular night was leaving the bar with a drink in hand. The cops were on us at once. Debbie and me, that is. The rest of our friends fled like chickens. I guess this was payback for the time we all got caught TPing a friend’s house and Debbie and I hid in the bushes and the police never found us, but the others got written up. Back to Lake Geneva: Debbie’s parents were out of town and the police allowed her slightly older brother to come and get her. He wouldn’t have anything to do with me, however, and I had to call my father. The ride home at three in the morning was silent torture. The drive to Ten Chimneys was my first time back in Lake Geneva since that eventful night 51 years ago.
The Lunt’s farm is not far from Lake Geneva. The main house, cottage, and studio have been preserved exactly as they were when Lynne died in 1988. The small group tour takes the visitor through the many rooms of the estate, often named for the famous guests who stayed there—Helen Hayes, Noel Coward, Laurence Olivier, Alexander Woolcott and others. Noel Coward wrote his play, Design for Living, as a vehicle for the Lunts and him. The play reflects their special friendship: two men in love with the same woman and each other. Although there are many rumors of Alfred’s gay tendencies and Lynne’s extra-marital dalliances, the official line is that their marriage and theatrical careers demonstrated an unparalleled devotion to each other and profound love.
The Lunts spent almost every summer at Ten Chimneys. As I walked through the farm and its buildings, I imagined Katharine Hepburn and others cavorting around the swimming pool, dressing formally in the evening, partaking in one of Alfred’s gourmet dinners, and the witty, sparkling conversation around the table. Helen Hayes’ husband, Charles MacArthur, only went to Ten Chimneys once. He said everyone there only talked about theatre. Olivier said that everything he knew about acting he learned from Alfred Lunt.
My friend Janet and I have another connection to the Lunts. We once waited in line all day at the Stratford Festival in Canada to get tickets to see The Guardsman, a play that was one of the Lunts’ biggest hits and the only one of their many collaborations that was made into a movie. Of course, Janet and I did not see Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne performing The Guardsman, but rather Maggie Smith and Brian Bedford, another great acting duo. It was a memorable production.
I spent one night in Milwaukee with Janet and her husband, Terrell, in their beautiful loft in an old tannery. We walked to Lake Michigan and through the lively Brady Street neighborhood, ate dinner, and watched the Pride Festival fireworks from their windows. Janet and I have known each other since high school and shared an apartment in St. Paul, hitchhiked through Ontario and Quebec, visited each other in Atlanta, Paris, Pontedera, Akron, and now Milwaukee. I treasure our friendship.
In the morning, I left for the airport. However, first I had arranged to meet Debbie for breakfast at Lulu Belle’s Pancake House, near the airport, just a stone’s throw from my Dad’s old factory, where I had worked one summer driving truck and grinding burs off metal parts. Debbie and I had not seen each other or been in contact for a good long time, probably at least 45 years. She doesn’t do Facebook and we were put in contact with each other through the help of others. (Thank you, Norma Damiano). It was as if no time had passed. We talked non-stop for two hours before I had to return my rental car and take the plane back to Paris.
I think the theme of this trip, Back to the USA, can be found in E.M. Forster’s epigraph for Howard’s End:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
— E.M. Forster (Howards End)
Oh, the Lego kit. I finally was able to buy it at a Lego store in Woodfield Mall, another high school hang out. And Léo’s joy in receiving the gift was worth every minute of the search.
Indeed, this is a great episode. Thank you, James.
What a great episode. What a great trip. (Whew, Lego!) And how did I not know about your incredibly nefarious past?! Always great to read these missives, Jim. Can't wait to see you in person, either in Paris or Lisbon!