US BY GREYHOUND TRIP 1963 6 of 10
SUNDAY, APRIL 14. Up early and lay around until I can't rest anymore, then up to come and loaf around and chew on fingernail ends. I can't decide what to do, and after about two hours decide I must take a shower, and in the shower decide to see "How the West Was Won." Hitchhike while waiting for the bus (which I just missed) and get a ride halfway and walk the other half past St. Louis U [Church on St. Louis University campus a perfect example of European gothic: "Dirty it up, make it dimmer, and you're in Europe."], and falling wire [Startled when walking down Lindell by something rattling and falling from above. Look up in amazement to see that a wire has broken loose and the insulation has rained down and the wood from the pole lies just behind me. Imagine if the wire had broken and showered the street with sparks? How close can death come unexpectedly?]. I had thought to get there early, but with stopping in the cathedral and then across the street at the Masonic Temple (seeing nothing), [Pass a tiny triangular lot, vacant on an intersection, and visualize an apartment building with a difference. Why have a garage and a passenger elevator and a freight elevator --- have them all in one shaft. For a small building, simply have a hole in the ground under the garage, and have, for an N-story building, N compartments one atop another: If you're going to floor K, the Kth compartment lowers to ground level and then raises to the Kth. If you have furniture, move it onto the large platform. If you have no car, block off part for storage. Saves space.] I got there at 2:10, and decided I had no time to eat. Sit and write for a bit and screen opens [Strange people that choose to come to the movies on Easter Sunday afternoon. A couple with a baby has the kid cry between crying piteously of "Baba." The large family of terrible complainers. The father insists he keeps dozing off, the daughter sits and sulks that she won't be able to see anything (she has the center seat) and repeats this complaint a dozen times while the parents futilely say these were the only seats left, then fan the fire by making snide comments like, "She's just spoiled, that's all that's wrong with her," to which she accedes with "Oh, shut up." The son sits through about five minutes when he starts getting sick. His teeth are a mass of silver (do they have braces which go BEHIND the teeth?) and his thin pale face is dwarfed by huge black glasses. He complains about the picture being too close and there're too many killings, and then the son and the father have a conversation across two daughters and a wife, until finally the girl next says, "Well, let him get out, he's gonna urp any minute," and the pale thin kid stumbles his way to the aisles, flipping the seats in the row in front. Then he comes back and sits five more minutes and feels sick again and finally moves over next to his mother. He keeps moaning and she says, "Well, don't look at it," and he rather arbitrarily exclaims, "I can't." Then all is quiet (except for the girl kicking my seat) until I hear his gentle snores behind me. At the intermission he's told Andy Devine is coming on later, and he falls asleep again mumbling abstractedly, "I'll watch Andy Devine; I'll watch Andy Devine."] [The screen seems made out of strips, which seems to make the picture strangely out of focus in one direction. It makes a texture to the picture much like it was a tapestry or painted on canvas, a soft, somehow antique effect.] [Pass a Negro trying keys in a lock. "I locked it last night, and can't open it this morning." "That a good key." I smile back "keeps things safe." "Yeah, but I gotta get things CLEAN in there by Monday." And he goes back to try to open the door.] and there's the show. [The Cinerama screen stretches out semi-circularly in front. There is no question about peripheral vision, because periphery is filled. The melon carpet slopes up to waist level all around the circle, and since I'm near the middle of the first row, the carpet becomes a sort of meadow from which I view the encircling scene. High above I have the strange idea of a circular canopy, and all the rest is filmed. However, I must constantly look up, and there's a strange incongruity looking up at an image which, in general, is taken looking DOWN. The camera in VISTAS is usually above, or from planes, except in the rapids sequence. In people sequences it's even more distracting since I must look high to see the heads, and if I stare levelly, I see only feet or dust. The stereo sound is perfect, however, since no matter where the sound is visually FROM, there is the sound.] There's a "book of ages" story that's not very good, but a slam-bang shooting sequence, log rolling, bridge falling, cactus cutting, rail splitting, spark spitting, wood rending, axle grinding sequence got a series of relieved sighs from the audience as the soundtrack crackled away into a planned silence. They served no popcorn, smart, and I had peanut butter cups, and intended to eat at the nearby Toddle House, as I was hungry by this time. [There was a bad hour or two in St. Louis. I think it was only chance it happened to be Easter Sunday; but it wasn't chance, probably, that I had it in the "Central city" of the trip, or around the 50th day, because at that time I was on the summit of the trip. Before that 50th day, my work was behind, New York was something I'd left, my trip was something "Going to be." But then, at day fifty, it was downhill, it was almost as if I had only memories of the trip (Richmond, New Orleans, Natchez, Hot Springs, Dallas, Houston, Tucson, Carlsbad, Grand Canyon, San Diego, Palo Alto, Yosemite, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, St. Louis), and almost nothing to look forward to EXCEPT New York. I started regretting the things I was missing: "Strange Interlude" and the Royal Ballet. It was as if my trip was dying. I shall TELL myself that in future I shall NOT take a trip of over six weeks. But I don't know if I'll remember the force of this conclusion the NEXT time the idea strikes me for a trip of great length. I know I didn't enjoy Paris at the end of my European trip, partly because I was so tired, partly because I was so looking forward to being back in NYC. That should have taught me to "live with the trip," not in the future of the trip. A trip is something to look forward to in the future, but not the END of it. I should try to generate more enthusiasm for the next cities, on my trip, and try not to count the days left, because then I'm tending to minimize them, to shorten them, to make them speed past. I will be INCLINED to do this, I know, but I should try to minimize it. I should look forward to ticking off the states and seeing the cities and meeting the people. I should live in the future of April and May, not of June. (The same holds true as I type this --- once I got to the Jotting section, I thought I was "nearly done," but I find I'm not, but am terribly impatient to finish. I should become more "day-to-day" oriented, difficult if you have such a time fetish as I have.)] However, on coming out of the theater I decided I wanted to see the largest cathedral west of the Mississippi and went up to the St. Louis Cathedral. The 5 pm Easter mass was in progress, and I could only stare down wide aisles and up at the nearest visibly finished and the farthest invisibly unfinished domes, out to the lobby to see the model when it's completed. I've not seen such a thorough use of mosaic since St. Mark's in Venice, and this had the advantage of being new gold, brightly lit, with light reflecting up from the basic whiteness of the church. Very pretty, but not particularly Byzantine. Out and toward the Delmar bus again, past exclusive what looked like finishing schools. Without visible effort the street changed from too posh to not posh enough and I found myself on the bus still with an empty stomach. That left one place only, and I had the ham dinner in the Y restaurant. Enough to keep hunger away, anyway. Went to the desk to reclaim my bag when I checked out about noon, and out to try to find a cab. Not one in front of the Y, and anyway the traffic is wrong (whoops, forgot that, on getting off the Delmar bus, I backtracked back a block to the Milles fountain and strolled around it slowly, avoiding the wet pavement where one nozzle was miles out of focus, and the moist areas where the wind would blow the spray. The male's hand was so placed as to negate a good profile of his penis, but further out he was goodly endowed. Rainbows, or at least the lowest 20% of one leg, came and went in spouts, and the noise was pleasant. [As I leisurely left Milles' men, the sun sank slowly and traffic's din covered the water's tumult.] Walked slowly away) way, so I walk a block. Still no cabs---not even any traffic. See a park with cars two blocks away, and get down there. Started at 6:30 for an 8 pm bus, and now it's 7. [Very much of late, fantasy seemed to take over my life. I visualized myself being "discovered" in NYC by Greta Garbo, being given the top floor of her duplex "for 99 years" in a fabulously tall building on the East River, and being introduced to her world-famous set of friends, and I become the "games leader" as I invent games for them such as "Vérité" and new two-way mirror usages and have movie contests, and I volunteer to film the plushest, sexiest film ever made, and set up offices and take interviews, and hear the stars and direct the film and purchase the silks and build the sets. And invite the dinner parties at which ONE star shines (Sutherland or Rubinstein or Callas or Picasso) and they're invited back, until the cream of the world exists under my thumb, and I get my nose fixed and take exercises and hair fixed and skin fixed and I'm gorgeous and I design my clothes and appear everywhere with Garbo, and she appears in films and becomes a greater star than ever, and we're in all the columns. I ask one person each night to invite HIMSELF a party at my fabulous flat, only one private entrance, etc. And then I'm waiting for lunch and the fantasy starts: I get earth-shattering letter from Walt, I call him and Maynard says he's dead, come for funeral. I scream out to LA, and Maynard leads me through a fabulously emotional scene, all secretly filmed, and prints it and I'm the greatest actor of all time, and I repeat the film in a printable form and all aspects win academy awards. "Because of Genius of Z" and when I get mine, I say "Thank you" so humbly everyone loves me, and I'm assured a place in American history. Omigod! Idle minds are Cecil B. DeMille's workshop. (God, Zolnerzak, you ARE sick, says I to me.)] [Again, it's amazing how much a DECISION can help. I hadn't decided what to do Sunday afternoon. Never thought of it. When I woke up Sunday I put off and put off deciding. Finally I said, "I've GOT to take a shower," and in the shower I decided, "I DON'T want to return to Shaw Gardens and I don't feel like reading and writing all afternoon. I DO want to see "How the West Was Won" but had considered putting it off until later --- but not firmly. But why, again, put off what I can do NOW? So I decided, OK, forget about some distant "tomorrow" when I'll have "nothing to do" to see HTWWW. I have nothing to do TODAY, I'll DO it today. It worked wonders.] See the main thoroughfare two blocks down and walk THERE, to get asked by two nuns where to find a newspaper (except at the YMCA): the YWCA, and still no cabs, or else the lights are lit and they're taken, or they simply are determined to turn or go straight and somehow avoid me. I pull out map and grumpily decide to walk the ten blocks. The blocks are short and the going is fast. Stagger into the station (the long way around) by 7:30 and notice the sign is up for Louisville and I get in line. [This will certainly be a chopped-up evening --- we've got about forty stops before Cincinnati.] [COULD the East be lousy? Only in St. Louis' Golden Gate have I seen such a crowd unrelieved by anything of interest. Could the East really be so bad compared to the West?] [FINALLY remembered Dave Somer's punch line: Alexander's Rag Time-Band.] [Dick Havilland at Playboy was funny and fey: Queer oyster and octopus: "My God, my pearl is gone." The new second line to "It Might as Well be Spring," "I'm as happy AS a fairy at the Y." They're investigating the YW. Found a seat up. The "dog" joke about the plastic surgeon who does wonders with a chimpanzee's ear, a lion's shoulder, and an elephant's trunk should hardly end "You should see me at a party when they pass the peanuts." It should go on to say "You should see what I DO with them?" Trunk vs. Penis, tusks vs. legs, mouth under trunk between tusks, ass under penis between legs.] The bus loads and I watch crossing the Mississippi (for about the 8th time, of which 7 were in New Orleans), and through some small southern Illinois towns, and then I'm dead asleep: the towns are hugely uninteresting except for small things like little girls doing the twist, I PRESUME to unheard music.
MONDAY, APRIL 15. Sleep all the way through to Cincinnati, where I get jolted awake by fellows [Startlingly gay introduction to Cincinnati --- first pair I see in restaurant are indeed a pair --- typical NYC young queen, flighty airs, plucked brows, skin disorder, puff hairdo with yellow blotches sweeping from the temples, slender and feminine. The other, with a cherry love-mark on his neck, is a solid blond, muscular neck carrying proud head of curly blond hair and flawless, except for blushes, complexion, and lovely sad eyes. He's no nonsense, yet looks at his partner and ONLY him. Later joined by two girls who look "part of them."] [Pity a couple TOO young to be married --- and he's much too cute --- to be married at ALL.] I'd thought not to see outside of NYC. The blond spotted one I later see completely blond in that same terminal---he must live there. Breakfast is exasperating as I sit in one spot for a waitress who never comes until finally I move to a different section of the counter. Back on the bus to what I'd been disappointed to find as a non-Kentucky, longer-than-planned trip between St. Louis and Charleston (decided to skip Ky because I'd seen it before), and find that the trip is along the northern bank of the Ohio. Interesting to follow the patterns of high mud and the beautiful cities along the river [On Coney Island, outside Cincinnati "You don't stop playing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop playing."] [Ohio 52 is a very pleasant road --- crossing or edging rivers and streams, looking up at bluffs on the other side or down atop bluffs from this side, with the remnants of Rhenish castles piled high on the hilltops. I've followed spring through, a magnolia is just in full bloom, just as they were in Mobile. Fruit trees come out in pink and purple and white, just as the orchards in California. The trees are silver-tipped green, and the rivers have already subsided from their disastrous spring floods. Debris can be seen across roads, and the bus driver asserts that many of these roads were under water. One wonders about the houses, even the new ones set up on rock stilts, surviving that spring blow. Straight Creek twisted through the countryside. The trees, seen behind them, looked exalted and heaven-reaching. There were leaves thick enough so they looked young and alive, but thin enough to let the straight stark-reaching branches through.] [Bless the man at Aberdeen, for he got out of his large window seat on the shadyside riverside nondriverside of the bus.] [Spring seems to borrow much of autumn's beauty: partial foliation, to see the trunk and branches and twigs; and many, many shades of color, except that in autumn they circle around dead red and brown, while in spring they're shades of chartreuse and new live green. Newgreen: green with the sun shining through.] [One thing to be said about country folk: they talk as though they are SURE, and they KNOW. They talk of the crops and the weather and people, and ignore politics and aesthetics and philosophy. They're steady and sturdy, a veritable backbone. Hopefully (shudder) the bombs which hit the city will leave the country folk. Maybe the world would be better then, since the world's degeneracy certainly concentrates in the city.] [Small notebooks are good for the conscience --- they fill up fast, you get more of them finished. It's like dividing a huge task into parts, and tackling the parts, thus getting PERT and my good-for-me habit of list-making.] [Amazing the vistas some people get: Walt, John C, those that live above Cincinnati, or across the Kanawba from Charleston, W.Va.], and it's a day of pure Greyhound-conducted sightseeing. Can see where they got "Beautiful Ohio" from. Across the Ohio briefly into Ashland, Ky, then back again to Portsmouth. Down into Huntington, and a bespectacled creep sits next to me and proceeds to bend my ear about the trips he drives people on. This helps pass the quickly monotonous (but good to be off a superhighway) mountain scenery. Into Charleston to a full Y [Another sample of "Pre-determined planning." Get into Charleston having decided twice: first, that I'd get the 5:30 to Columbus, second, that I'd stay the night, firmed when I saw they were showing "The Birds." Lay down suitcase, break out map, locate the Y across double "WALK" streets, and find they're full: only one chance, that a fellow who hasn't checked out hasn't paid his rent. But even if he got in at midnight, and put down the money, he'd have the room. I got the This Week magazine and see nothing to SEE except the movie and the state museum. OK, I see the state museum and return to the Y. If they have the room, I stay; if not, I go. When I get back at 5, they don't, so I reclaim suitcase (in toto saved 20 by lugging it 4 blocks) and get back to station to call Don's wife and say "Expect a call at 11 pm." And so ANOTHER leg of my journey is determined by room availability, etc. I COULD have planned point by point, EACH trip, each hotel, but HOW could I have planned Walt in? Much better the "catch as catch can" way, I think.], grab this week's "This Week," and set out walking for the state capitol. This is a long distance down the road, and only an urge to see the only things Charleston had to offer, along with a cemetery rolling off the crest of the hill above, and a little glimpse of the structure ahead, kept me going. There was certainly nothing of note on the half-slum, half-residential, half-commercial street. Finally got within the sacred marble precincts and saw the sign directing toward the West Virginia Capitol for information. Walked up the wide marble steps completely alone, and looked back over the quiet lawns and granite blocks of buildings. Into the blue and gold dome (looking rather like the Immaculate Conception dome in Washington, except that this was done on a coarser scale---the seemingly embossed designs pushing out into the sky had ill-defined edges, as if they had been painted many times). Into the rotunda and the amazingly beautiful simplicity was instantly striking. High oblong panel windows pierced the dome between the capitol and the dome, like the spired windows of a church. Through two of these windows streaked slightly diverging rays of light. These passed on either side of the chandelier, striking the opposite wall, and this threw the potentially luminous sphere of the fragmented crystal globe into shade, and the royal blue of the dome set the glass off like a gem in a plush jeweler's case. Stark simplicity, and in the center a marble balcony, like at Grant's Tomb or Les Invalides, and in the pit an elegant circular desk in the center of a deep blue carpet, centered on the white marble floor, and in the hole in the center of the desk, off center, stood the fellow who gives out the information. I get down the steps and we exchange sentences and he gives me a useless flyer on West Virginia. I go look into the museum and am appalled by the horridness of it all. Old photographs, old dance folders, dresses again and flags and deeds and photostats of the first page of the Archives of the State. The glassware is pretty, and it's interesting to learn that the glassware (Fostoria?) that the Kennedys chose from some firm in WVA has produce that looks very much like the simple things I like and have. Good feeling. Out of history and into a war museum with Civil War and World War I uniforms and bullets and guns and discharge papers etc etc. Out quickly, glance again at the beautiful simplicity of the inside of the dome, and out by the governor's entrance to the Kanseln (??) River. Take my life in my hands getting across the freeway, but there I find a concrete set of stairs down to a mid-level walkway, and below that stairs, about 50 feet apart, down to the water's edge. I climbed down to the bottom, look around at the brown-green water, into which you can see six inches, at most, then climb up and walk along the road until it's not paved, then climb back to the top. That's the border of the capitol grounds, and what must be the governor's mansion, then the mayor of the city, then the attorney general, and so forth, down the state license plates 1, 2, 3, go the mansions along the drive. They're very pleasant, uncluttered by driveways since entrance is in the rear, on less-crowded streets. Across the river, above the set of factories, is a beautiful residential community, and a few of the houses, on crests of hills, had huge antebellum sets of columns in front, and spacious yards and views into the front windows of everyone in Charleston across the river. A long train goes by [And the train that passed below carried, as near as I could tell, 256 empty (I guess) CO coal cars. Two engines, two tenders, one freight car and a caboose. Whew.], and twice I get ferociously cruised by people passing by. Bet it's wild at night! Finally the mansions give way to more modest domiciles, then to plush apartments, then to something like waterfront industry. With a series of bridges and underpasses the walk comes to an end and I'm walking back up Capitol Street to the Y to find still no room (ignoring the fat old man who fell flat on his face as I walked up the stairs---he wasn't hurt and certainly had a wrinkled dignity) and claimed my bag, kissed the cutie at the counter goodbye, and lugged to the station. Call Don [Try four times on two phones to get long-distance operator. After washing my face I try again, and when my dime returns when she answers, I get 20 from the return slot, then spend 70 on the call.] and leave word that I'll call again at 11 when I get into the station. Onto the bus and ride through pleasant rolling WVA countryside [Outskirts of Durham, W.Va., "Don't drive by drive-in Restaurant."] and cross the Ohio again over a high tottery bridge and through Ohio countryside, which looked just like the Akron suburbs, so much so that I dozed before getting into Columbus at 11. Walk into the station to look for the phone, and Don O'Shea's beaming face comes toward me, followed quietly by his wife. She looks just like him: tall, a bit gawky, a bit shy, probably intelligent, kind, slow to smile but enthusiastic about it when she got going. NICE people. We talk for three minutes and I say, "Look. Let's not stand here. Can I stay over at your place? Got a spare sofa?" "Yes," they say, delighted, and we walk off to their Rambler and drive home. Home is squalid in the same way mine is. It's plain and small and efficient and everything needed is there, and it's comfortable and home. I feel this and feel better there than in Carl's sterile coop (except, of course, that CARL is there). She must get up at 6:30, but still we talk on and finally I say, "Let me in the bathroom for five minutes, then I'm going to bed." They do, and I do, and they're up longer talking and washing. I fall asleep quickly, but even then it's 12:30.
TUESDAY, APRIL 16. Up, laughing on the outside, at 7 for breakfast, and they give me two eggs, and they have only one (no wonder Don is small). She gets off to work and Don shows his latest revision of "The Party" to me, and it's improved a lot; still off in some things, but very good in details. Makes a good funny like Albee. We get off to his first class, and it's a poor dull group with cute one, bright eyes and nicely filled short-sleeved white pullover, in first row. Don's methods are pleasant, though students seen not to appreciate him: He says what WILL be important, which I don't remember getting---or at least I got it and took it like the students take it---oh, they ALWAYS say that. I guess it just takes experience in the world (who'd ever dream I'D be talking like this?) to show you HOW true it IS. That ends the 10 am class and we eat before the 12. The noon class is better. More students, wide awake, questions and puzzles and Don comes out on top. Great. 2 pm class is even better and lasts to the bell, while the 10 am was let out twenty minutes early. Don says he's gotten something at John's Hopkins for next year, and that's great. Also Helen's expecting. I almost begin to envy him. He shows me around campus and the central quadrangle is huge. We walk across it, talking a mileaminute, and have coffee in the old dining room and off to some historical museum which I'm frankly bored with, and Don acts as if he's seen it all before anyway (he had, while he was a guide in Akron's John Brown Home, which I'd never seen). We got out and I bought notebooks and postcards, and back to car and home. Helen was washing and cooking and sent us out for groceries and beer. We shopped and I slipped him a $10 and said, "Give me the change." He looked at me and said, "You said we should never question, so thanks." I was glad he took it, but a bit taken aback when he pocketed the change. Well, he heard me wrong. I stayed two nights, had two breakfasts, a lunch, and a dinner, as well as other services later. I couldn't complain. We got back and she said she was doing a load, could she do for me? I said yes, shirts, then gave her underwear, too. She took them with a sweaty sudsy smile, and ducked back into the basement. Don studied and I read Esquire and talked with him about the American Resistance (I'll take vitamins, but catch ME have a natural birth) and we two men loafed and smelled the cooking while Helen popped in and out to kiss Don. I DID envy him by now. She was baking bread and I had a sure-fire thing to praise (which was good, because what she did with the pound of hamburg she directed Don to take out of the freezer in the bedroom in the morning was not so spectacular), along with a little mashed potato and tiny portions of vegetable. I praised her no end, and she sorta glowed. I hope she felt repaid. We sat and gabbed and it was 10 pm. Worse than NYC. Don wanted to show me the Rathskeller, so we went off, leaving the washing and the ironing and the shining of shoes to Helen. She was TOO good. He moaned that it wasn't crowded, and I'm glad it wasn't, because I got a good dozen looks at a marvelous pair of hairy calves owned by the beer slinger. Probably as gay as Columbus got. We drank one and left, and got back to find she'd finished ironing my shirts. I contemplated kissing her hand, but didn't know what Don would say. He and I talked a bit more and I determined to go to bed. As I fell asleep at 11:30 she was shining the shoes and had yet to wash. Oh, yes, forgot that she PACKED our lunches for school, and got the breakfast table ready the night before as well as cut four brownies she'd baked and iced and wrapped them in wax paper for me to take when I left the next AM. I was tired, but I could imagine how SHE felt that night. I almost hope that the "other" wifely duties worked out pleasantly. Sometimes they're nice while you're working hard, sometimes they're nice when they're not done at all.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17. Up again at ungodly hour for breakfast and even Helen is late. My underwear is folded nicely on my suitcase. I pack and Don drives me to the station at 8 for the 8:45 train. I thank him profusely and get on a REAL local bus [City names by natives: Gallipolis rhymes with "shall a police?" Albuquerque is said "Albekirk." Cincinnati as if it were Cincinnata, New Orleans as New ORElins.] [How provincial, driver between Columbus and Dayton had never before seen a $99 ticket.] [Two signs standing alone by highway: "5000 items at " and "10 mi. to " In same style: "Over the "] [Photograph: Clean white billboard, with distinct shadow of light board above, cast down by the sun.] [Radio ad: "Welcome home, we entertained your wife while you were gone."] [Dayton from Columbus via London, Rome, and Venice.] See many city halls and Main Streets, all as provincial as the others. Into Dayton about 11 and call Barry at the wrong number and he says "catch bus and come out." Ann's moved, but answers from Telford and tells me Edward's number. I ring twenty times, expecting operator to cut in to leave message, and Edward answers, panting. We fumble and he says "Eat and I'll pick you up at 12." So I eat, plus two brownies, good, and call Barry and say I'll call him later. Ed (gone is Edward after Ann and her folks' Ed) drives up in his crumpled Morris Minor and we both laugh embarrassed and he shows me plane being stressed for tests, gets me a pass, indicates the two sloping runways which wrecked their test planes on the corner of 13th and M, and points out a large containment shield: that's his. Turns out they'd allocated funds for research for a "vehicular reactor" in 1955 for a plane in 1958. Then the plane was cancelled and they continued for "a vehicle." They had $14M to spend. But they were doing it by hand: had to machine special railroad wheels for the small curved track in the basement for wheeling the experiments into the hot box. Ed was fiddling with a modified altimeter for leakage tests of the huge shell. They had to patch the aluminum coolant tank for a month before leaks stopped. He pulled up a thermometer, said "Hey, that'll rust" and threw it back. Told of clogging atmosphere tube, leading into the environment part of the reactor---heat of velocity, freeze of space, pressures of depth and altitude, etc. The walls of the hot box were not parallel so he mapped their sides. The air-lock slab was double, but had a fault between the two. A workman ladled gunk out of a hole. They had plans for in-water experiments on a sliding ramp, close-in pressure and temperature apertures, an air-lock for when it was on, a deep pool to drop the used fuel elements, but then they could be used for certain experiments. He showed a sample fuel element, explained how the poisons worked, showed the control panel, talked of the wing tank that almost hit the tower, showed the map of prevailing winds, the special room for the telephone lines, and talked of the plans of the two hundred foot laboratory that would house the researchers gathered around his reactor, and the pneumatic tubes to send short half-life samples from the reactor to the lab in no time. He indicated the reserve batteries for the quadruply duplicated set of generators, and safety devices, took me down to the basement for the air conditioners and a tour through by Air Force cadets. Then he figures, at 2:30, that he'd leave for the day, and he called Ann as I read his book that predicted a mega-war in the next 37 years. We drove into Oaklawn, a smart residential district, as he enumerated their benefits. "The Becks are staying, too," he said, "but don't worry, there's room for everybody." We remembered each other vaguely, and the dumb brother sat glumly at the dining room table working on some sort of child's plastic construction set. I could hardly wax as enthusiastic about the house as Mrs. Beck, who'd seen it before they hacked down the jungle from around it, or at least reroofed the front porch. Two full floors, full basement, immense closets, two stairways up, it WAS a favored house. He showed it off, and ticked off what he'd done and what he plans to do. Lorene, Danny, and David came home from school and dutifully disappear upstairs. All this while my nose is dripping and I'm wondering WHERE I got my FIERCE cold. Don and I both were sneezing as he took me to the station, and when I got to WPAFB, it started in earnest. I kept dripping and having to blow my nose, and about this time Edward started off too---he's HAD a cold, and recommended 4000 units of vitamin C. Later in the afternoon I got out to the car and TOOK 17 of them (250 for good measure). It was embarrassing to be talking to the Becks and then have to sneeze or choke up. I suggested to Ann that I eat alone, but she said the children ate alone anyway, so that's OK. Ed tried to ply me with drinks and I ended up with orange juice till it ran out, then grape juice. He kept urging me to drink alcohol, but I saw no reason for it. They found I didn't smoke, that I was making a good living, and they came up with the line that I had no vices. I did NOT counter with "No MINOR vices." I called Barry, and he was taking a friend of his to meet a plane. Ed was going bowling and I said, "Fine, pick me up at 7, and I'll go with you" we got to the table and the brother was shoveling food sullenly into his mouth. If he WAS capable of rational thought, I could see his sour frame of mind. (Mom later said he WAS intelligent, simply couldn't talk---and that---ugh---he liked me from the wedding, when I'd talked to him.) Everyone simply ignored him. He seemed on the point of giving out with a nasty scream and attacking someone. Poor guy. The point came up about Grandma living alone, and Mrs. Beck said that if Mr. went, she and Louis (?) would move into an apartment. OK, what happens to him when SHE dies. It was a praisable, though not praiseworthy, meal. Turned out that Ed cooks much better than Ann. He left and I felt like a third thumb and went out on the lawn with the kids playing. They made a game of looking for the car that lasted until 7:30, when Barry pulled in, late, and we roared off. On the way to the airport I repeated the gory details of the Duckett plane mishap in Seattle, and the fellow groaned in the back seat. We got there AT takeoff time, to find that the flight had been delayed ten minutes. He climbed aboard. We tried to get a paper and couldn't, so out to the car. We somehow decided to do whatever was in the paper. We finally found one and there was "The Birds" at the Loews. Where was the Loews? Barry got out of the car to look in the phonebook in the trunk, but came back to point to the electric sign a few blocks ahead. We walked up. Barry had 75, I had $1.75, and the admission was $1.25, so we didn't even get popcorn. Stupid cashier refused to take a traveler's check. "The Birds" had a few good sequences---the finding of the man with his eyes out, the strangely Lesbian scenes between the girls, Rod Taylor, but the end, fading off into a bird-filled sunset, was nothing at all. Out of the show and he drove me home, and Louis was still in the kitchen. I crept upstairs, found my bed, and stumbled into the closet to try to get my clothes hung up. Louis came upstairs and turned on the hall light, which helped, and I undressed and crawled into bed about 12:30. He was last heard splashing in the bathroom. Does he sleep?
THURSDAY, APRIL 18. Wake to find the fanatic Mr. Beck at early Mass and at 7 Ed came in to say, "It's 7." I somehow didn't THINK that he had to leave at 7:30, loafed to 7:15, got downstairs at 7:30. Breakfast was ready, except that I scrambled my eggs, dashed up to shave and pack, and down at 7:45. Ed was agitated and we got off. He told me he'd talked about my trip with Mom and Helen and Henry. Henry was for, Helen against, and Ed thought it was great. He reminded me that he and Henry took off on a wild Uranium hunt to the West, and they felt they had to get it out of their system. Ed got married at 28. Got to the main gate and called Barry, and Ed said goodbye and I waited till 8:30 to get to the gate. The Exit gate. Fifteen minutes later Barry strolls over and says he's been waiting a half hour. His secretary called his house and he came direct. Oh, well. We walked to his car at the Entrance gate and drove to SBC. It was in a brick factory-type building, but the offices were nice. The people were NOT up to New York's standard of nuts. I saw what I could see, and Barry suggested he take me to the Wright-Patterson Museum until noon. Fine. They had a good display on the beginnings of flight: both lighter and heavier than air, and many old planes and paintings of battles [Air Force Museum, Wright Patterson AFB: 4300-lb Mark I demolition bomb was world's largest aerial bomb produced. Discarded in 1926-27 because its destructive forces were considered too great for any manmade target, and the US had no airplanes then capable of carrying the bomb. "The German observer had stopped firing. Puzzled, the American flyer flew his Nieuport 28 in closer to the Rumpler for a good look. He saw the observer standing up, arms folded and empty ammunition belt flapping from the cockpit. Could the American shoot down an unarmed enemy? He hesitated. Then, in a moment of decision, Lt. Douglas Campbell became an American ace. The Rumpler was his fifth victory."] [Where is the emphasis in the YMCA? Not on the M, CERTAINLY not the C. But the Y. I'm going to the Y. Would it sound HALF so appealing as the MCA?]. Outside to look over their morgue, including the B-25 that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, and a B-36, big as all get out. Barry rolls up at 12 in the back of a red convertible with two girls in front, and we get, finally, to Frisch's, where I have a Big Boy, rather flat, and a piece of strawberry pie. Shades of Manners. Laugh back to the office and we end up taking that car back into Dayton. We have about an hour, so we get to the Dayton Art Institute, a nice red-block building on a hill-top, see their Oriental collection and a few paintings and some fairly horrid things to rent, out to look at his pleasant efficiency, with his collection of eight pottery pieces displayed on a three-shelf bookcase, and he takes me to the station. He parks and walks in with me, then says goodbye. Cruise a few fine young things, and get onto the bus to Cincinnati. I must have separated my Cincinnati maps at Ed's and then forgotten to take them because I had nothing. I cursed the luck and traced the bus's trip through town when I saw it was passing the Y, and ended up at Greyhound fifteen blocks away. Went to Greyhound tour guide for a map, who sent me to Travelers Air for a "This Week." I found this week pretty good, and the map helpful. Took cab to the Y and unpacked and took stock. It was about 6. In for a shower, got a bus map from the desk and figured I'd take the 49 to Eden Park for the off-off-Broadway production of "The Lady's Not for Burning." Phone to make sure and it's OK. Walking down to 5th for the bus when I recollect George Austino, find a phone, call him; he has plans, but I'm to call him at 5:30 tomorrow. Laird hadn't mentioned me to him. I hear sonic boom [Heard my first sonic boom officially recorded. Walking on 5th, and a ka-room! which flexed the plate glass window of the mail order house across the street so that the red neon reflection oscillated feet up and down.], and catch bus at 7:50 and get to park after bus gives a mountain-top view of Cincinnati. I begin to like the place. Buy tickets for general admission at $3.50, and wander to hear the string quartet, find they have no food, and question a native couple about the lights on various places on the horizon. Play is quite good, acting is very good, particularly by the witch and the sexy brother, and the Hallelujah Chorus will ring in my mind for some time to come. The crowd was cruisy, so after it was over I ran back down the long flight of concrete steps to the road and thumbed. No takers. When the bus finally came, I was going the wrong way (no WONDER, no takers), but he let me off at "Peebles Corners" and I got a transfer to another bus. I asked for Chestnut, but the driver didn't know it, then checked phone booth for the real address of the Blue Angel and it was at Walnut. Fine. Stop into a Sixty Second Shop for chicken to fill the stomach, cursed the cop who laughed about how rough he was on his job, and out to the Blue Angel. I opened the door and the combo and woman's voice hit me and I said, "Oh, no." Even when the three cute collegiates who were following me went in, I still walked back to the Y. Bed about 1.
FRIDAY, APRIL 19. Up early, loaf, and out at 10:30 to GET THINGS DONE. Buy ticket for $2 to Nilsson---price reasonable, pick up five manila envelopes because I'm about to mail the last one to Bill, full, and decide to eat in the Woolworth's. The colored waitress is pleasant, the meal is small, good enough, and cheap. She points to the balloons and asks, "Want a banana split?" "No." "For a penny?" and I look at the 1 to 39 range, and her smile, so I say yes. I choose the small one containing a good price and get 15. The split is good, and VERY filling, and I'm feeling so good I give her a 25 tip. 25 + 14 = 39, so the only one who profited from the bargain is HER, and she deserved it. Mailed the package and walked to the Taft Museum and the enamelware and paintings are very good, and the exhibit of school drawings are interesting and the foreign ones are most enlightening. [Cincinnati --- Taft Museum comparable to Frick in quality and superior to Frick in looking like a comfortable HOME. Excellent painted enamels. Art museum has fabulous EARLY collection 2800 BC sculpture, etc. Didn't know Assyrian sculpture was on ALABASTER plates rafted down the Tigris from the highlands of Asia Minor. Sumptuous gold cups and armlets from first millennium Persia. Painted bowl from 13th century AD from Ravy, Persia, uses circular shapes around heads "Not as might be supposed halos, but a simple way of distinguishing the head from the decorated background."] [Cincinnati Carpet --- "North China or Mongolia, late 11th century AD. 17th century Turkish miniature shows it in the Sultan's throne in Constantinople. Pattern did not survive the T'ang dynasty in any known instance, which would make it TENTH century "which seems impossibly early."] [George Romney comes up with another BEAUTIFUL girl in Elizabeth, Duchess-Countess of Sutherland 1782, when she was 17.] Caught bus to institute and walked around hilltop. They were in the process of adding a huge wing. Will be nice when finished. They also had a flower show THAT ONE day, and I crawled up the stairs to the cards and prints before finding the antiquities. Started by ignoring the flowers, then picked up a program, and followed them through. The huge displays were beautiful, but then you can hardly go wrong with a lot of flowers. Miniatures were cute and interesting, too, but the forty different species of daffodil interested me none. Rains came and let up while I was in the museum, and the redbudded inner court I'd sat and relaxed in minutes before was drenched. Back to same bus stop and write a bit and find that it drops me only two blocks from Y. Very handy, now that I'm leaving. Fuss around and call George and HE lives right around the corner, so I shower and shave and such ["I'll be there as soon as I shave and shower and such." "Oh, how long does it take you to such?"], and I go over. He's tiny and agile and awfully cute, and I figure he'll be OK, but I do something wrong because he never seems more than politely interested in me. He's a decent painter, something in yellow and ochre and brown I like very much ("I always do well in earth colors"). But a faded aqua Madonna is too much. We gab and I wince on my Manhattan---WHY didn't he have vodka for a martini? He suggests place to eat and I suggest we hurry out. Walk quickly, gabbing away, to the-----, obviously French, which is right above the Maisonette, as mentioned in Holiday. He kowtows to his waitress, Lenore, and we get salty onion soup, interesting chicken specialty (ham on toast on cheese), and forgo dessert and act stupidly: Take $3 out and give it to him---I'm glad I have six singles. Then take OTHER three out and lay them on table, and thirty seconds later, insist he hadn't taken mine. He argued, but took it. [George Austino recommends Du Midi in NYC.] Later I checked and found myself singleless---but he never brought it up again, and I didn't feel like it. We walked quickly back to the Y, and he said auditorium was just down the block. It was now 8:05, and I ran the rest of the way, hopped up three flights, and sat in the middle of Harlem Heaven sweating like a musk ox, at 8:15 when she paraded on in a bright red flame. She started out low and easy, remained low and easy, hit maybe two high loud notes, and that was that. She did three encores easily---I waited for the reported fifth where she did Hojotoho, but the stupid plebian audience walked out and she firmly shut the door on more songs. The intermission was fairly fun. I hadn't gotten to the main entrance, and the central lobby was football shaped and sized like the field. Acoustics were perfect, and so the babbling brook became the uniform roar of a waterfall in which no separate trickle could be discerned. I felt much better looking down on it from above. Shades of the Snake Pit, with hissing, too. Worked my way around and through the enormous wooden door (maybe biggest I've ever seen) to the tar-roof balcony, lit by glare of distant lightning filtered through clouds, but still "lightening." The noise slowly, uniformly subsided, until I could hear the click of bottles as empty cartons were moved around, and I went back to my solitary seat to which I'd moved at the first break---middle of the second section from the stage, highest balcony, first row. If she looked UP when she came out of the door, she saw only me. At the end I wondered why the crowd was so slow down the stairs: it was raining sheets. Moseyed around to the back, and lo, found the crowd waiting to go backstage. Since I couldn't phony a Swedish accent, I had to wait with the peons. Left in, grabbed a fresh, unbent, unwritten in-program (can't clutter up MY souvenir with HER autograph), and coasted up to her, saying, rather stupidly, "Brava, Aida." She looked at me blankly, and I grinned and said, "I liked your Aida in New York very much at the Metropolitan." She may have caught the key words, but not the sense. In a second her mouth smiled, her eyes closed a bit, and she said, "Thank you." She looked tired and forced, but strong and big as a horse---or a cow. Out the back door and stood in the crowds dashing for the car until it settled into a sort of heavy mist, then ran for the Y, down Central to x to y to Central. Complex. Grabbed my raincoat and hat and down to Zimmie's Rathskellar, where George said he'd meet me after. It was only 10:30, since Birgit Nilsson was through at 10, but at 11:15 he wasn't there and I decided I was ONLY staying for the chance at $3. He came with someone else, who was slightly drunk, and any idea of MINE about interest in ME by HIM vanished, and I left after one beer. Walked the now familiar road back to the Y, left a call for 8, and got into bed and fell asleep immediately at 12:45.
SATURDAY, APRIL 20. Wake up early, at 7:30, shower, pack and find that some bus should stop one block away and go to the Greyhound. I check out, checking in the very off-chance I have a note to call George, and get to the corner just as the #8 is pulling up. Ask to verify, and it does. At terminal that same crazy kid has his entire head phony blond and not a few turn to gaze at him. Get on bus in fine time and roll through Ohio and Indiana to Indianapolis. It's a very local bus and some of these little towns sure have cute kids wandering their streets. [This will announce the safe return of Mr. Robert Zolnerzak from his unparalleled trip across the United States. We wish to thank those who helped us, sneer at those who "said it couldn't be done," and notify that General Delivery is no longer a valid address.] [Whole string of people, happy and cavorting like a Pepsi-Cola ad, danced over a bridge over the highway, and waved to the two old maids in the front seat of the bus playing whatever card game it is that any unmatched points are held against you, aces counting as one.] [Indiana's roads were "in process," some new and nice and double-divided, others old and ready for replacement, and long strings of cars waited for the one lane of traffic to move on a road being retarred.] As bus gets near Indianapolis I see that it too has two imposing apartment towers. The War Memorial is dwarfed by a couple of buildings near City Center. The bus station is in that perfect location between the Memorial and the state capitol and I check bag in locker, buy newspaper, to find there's absolutely nothing in town that night. OK, so I go on to Chicago that PM. Buy popcorn to assuage the hunger, and it's fresh, highly yellow, properly salted, and only 10 for a large box. So much for lunch. Breakfast was a frank and orange at the coffee shop just a few moments before. Out to pass the State Capitol, a falling down dump that looks like it's made out of tin and Plexiglass. Hardly pretty, and the new annex is hidden away in the back. Walk down, feeling a bit cool in the morning shade, to see the "huge Union Station" it's noted for, but the station is very old, and as I stand on the steps and see the tobacco strewn for dust compound and the ancient beer-bottle tone to the glass windows, I simply wander down to the end to see the tracks stretching off and figure it's possibly noted for size, but hardly for beauty. Well, that's one of the five, and I have till 2 pm to kill the first three, and it's now noon. Walk up the main drag to the War Memorial, which is certainly very visible, being in the center of the central circle. Streets are busy and stores look prosperous, here's not a dead downtown. To the base of the shaft and am amazed at the quantity of bronze and concrete sculpture scattered about on walls, lamp pediments, fountains, balustrades, and up the shaft itself. Ships and angels and rifles, and cannon and bears and bison heads and helmets and ship's keels and flags and struggling troops. This is for the Revolutionary, the Civil and the Spanish Civil War, before either Great War, as is obvious from the style. A good fountain fills the tennis-court-size pool, and I walk till I get the sun shaded by the shaft, and the figure at the top glows with a solar halo. Walk around the side and enter the building. See the sign for the picture gallery and I'm about to descend when the fellow grumpily points to the sign "25 for elevator, 10 to walk." I guess the museum comes after. Pay the quarter (who'll climb 25 stories on a day of heavy sightseeing?), and get carried to the top by fellow in fatigue cap and army shirt. They still have these? Left with two or three flights to climb and there's the city. City is nicely laid out, four cardinal streets leading to the square, and one block out four more streets start diagonally at the points. JC Penny and some new insurance building dominate one half the square and a flock of small shops and theaters the other. Get the idea of the rest of the Memorial Park, see the Scottish Rite Cathedral and the new towers, and that's it. Cute kids on top---nice filled sport shirts. Down and there's a back exit to the gallery. Down the steps under the six-foot thick walls---they BUILT back then, and sift through 100 plates full of Matthew Brady's shots of the Civil War and turn the corner to find 100 more that I ignore. He WAS pretty good. Great number of old soldiers' gatherings and mementoes, but in the far room they outdo themselves. In huge glass cases, attached to the walls and on rollers on the floor, covering three or four WALLS of space, are the battle flags of the units during the Civil War. Blue and red battle flags, one for each unit, hundreds of them, along with much detail about Andersonville Prison (they DID feed them), and then much about the Spanish American War. Had enough of war, and left to walk up past the post office and the park and get to the archives building of World War I. See people come out and the "in" door is the last I try. They have a nice auditorium, and in the basement, with missiles stretched out in the lobby, is the series from World War I. This again goes on for rooms: rifles and discharge papers and bullets and uniforms and captured Nazi flags (some very pretty), and more battle flags and old newspapers and war posters. A rather impressive gallery of all killed from Indiana during WWI, and a surprise, fact of HOW they died [Amazing causes of death from Adams County in World War I: Died of emphysema 1, pneumonia 8, influenza 5, suicide by hanging 1, action 2, accidentally drowned 1, wounds 1, WOW.] [Soldiers and Sailors Monument built for 1905, for Spanish American War in 1898 --- 7 years. Shrine for war ending 1918 in 1927 --- 9 years. Where is World War Two shrine??]. The photo albums go on and on, and the roto sections from each Sunday paper are spread, yellowing, under glass. Machine guns and rooms sacred to the memory of the 45th company of the 5th Division, with full uniforms and drawings and mess kits and war medals, and a few details (but very few) to show that war is still hell, and not all display and bravery and courage. Getting close to 2, and I leave to cross the street for the Scottish Rites tour, that takes place on Saturday only. I'm ALWAYS so lucky---except this time they greet me at the door with fixed smiles and say the tour doesn't take place today because they're initiating 450 new members. Take the bad with the good. I cut across Memorial Park and its tomb and ground plate exhorting that we honor this ground, and follow a cute red sweater from the library. He walks fast and manages to keep ahead, and only when I catch up do I see that his left arm is somehow caught at the elbow and is angled out from his body. The street is uninteresting and finally 16th comes up, and with it the John Herron Institute of Art. For a second time I was asked to admire 13th century Spanish church frescos (first at Cincinnati where I could barely recall the altar area they'd built in), and couldn't. They may be valuable, but I'm not impressed. They have an incredible melange in the basement hall, some good Chinese jades and vases, a horrible special exhibit by Jon Mess, and some fairly typical paintings in the upper Dutch and English rooms. I get so tired of small art galleries which try to show everything. [Whatever dev-o-lac is, it makes the oil surface "wet-bright."] [Standing female figure, wood, from the African Bauda tribe, has SPLIT deeply, precisely from the center of the crotch hump between the legs to just below the right breast.] [An odd "Ecce Homo" by Jan Van Wechlen, Flemish 1540-1560, showing Christ in a Flemish town square.] [Cartoon: VW at a crossroads, and a hand points straight UP out of the lowered top.] They have a fabulous little Thorne room which impresses much, and a few days later I write myself silly about the rest of them in Chicago. Out at 3:30, there simply isn't more to see. Try walking back on one of the other side streets, but find it's nothing but slum and used-car row and new motels, so I'm back to the main drag. Nothing of interest and I'm back in the station to get stares from drunks who feel sure I'm writing about them, and half-cruises from cute kids and full cruises from lousy addicts who infect the men's room. Write a bit and look around, especially at long lanky fellow dressed in trousers with enough material to make two pairs for him. He tosses a kid (one of three) at the plump pregnant mother when it starts to howl, and they scoop them all up when the bus to Kentucky is announced. Dear Jim Roark. Then they announce the early, long bus to Chicago and I take it for reasons mentioned [For diverse, mainly crazy, reasons, I take the bus pulling out "Express" for Chicago at 4:20. First, what if the 6 pm is full, I don't want to wait till 7:30 for the next. Then I don't particularly FEEL like waiting, which is what I SHOULD do if I didn't catch the bus. Then, I ride longer during daylight. Also, the TIGHT schedule is bound to be late, but the loose schedule might get in EARLIER, and all the extra time I get for calling Laird's friend or Warren's friend might be for the better. No use checking into the Y (which I fear will be full) until I make sure I can't stay somewhere else. Look where it got me with Walt. Then, there'll be a dinner STOP and I won't run the risk (slight) of not eating. Then, too, the lobby is a bit of a drag. And MAINLY, because they ANNOUNCE it, and I say YES, and get bag out of locker and get out to bus. REASONS, like those above, come AFTER the affirmation --- and on that YES is the action usually based.], and mainly because I feel like it. Get good seat (may not have on the other) and we pull through the Indiana countryside. Have good meal when we stop, even if I do eat with a spoon, and ride on into the night through the stubble fields and rows of new green and freshly-plowed earth. Here the emphasis is certainly on the productivity of the soil. Darkness comes on and I doze and finally, as I doze, we pull into Chicago about 9 pm. Search for a phone other than the raft of new ones they've almost but not quite installed, and search book for Laird's number and Warren's number. No luck with Ted Schneider and no answer on another and no listing on a third. Decide to risk a dime on a call to the Lawson and find there's only a few rooms left. "$4 or $5.50?" "Save me a $4 to be sure." OK. I'm glad I did. Grab cab and to Y, getting two dimes back. I say I wanted to give him 15 and he's quite surprised, thanks me, and I leave, feeling I might like Chicago. I remember the second floor lobby and get room 1801, a rather exclusive room on the top floor of the regular section, right off the elevator, no adjoining rooms, and two windows. Unpack and feel like doing absolutely nothing. Write a bit and get to bed, exhausted and ready to enjoy one town for awhile.
SUNDAY, APRIL 21. Up at 10 and get breakfast just as it's being put away, a hearty one with juice and eggs and cereal and milk, and I feel good. Got on the telephone and the other Ted Schneider is no good and Laird's friend is out of town, and the roommate doesn't seem interested. OK, so I stay at the Y, alone. Scrounge up the Sunday paper, and there are no items of real interest except the Illinois Ballet at the Athenaeum at 2:30, Sundays and Cybele, and some dance group at 8:30. [Illinois Ballet --- Athenaeum Theater --- 2:30. Chicago Contemporary Dance Theater --- Eleventh St. Theater --- 8:30. Sunday's and Cybele --- Surf, Dearborn and Division.] [Smart and Golee, Realtors.] Look for the Athenaeum, try operator, and end up with the Chicago Tribune talking and telling me it's at 2900 Lincoln. Lincoln is vaguely in walking distance and so at 1:30 I'm off on the street and THERE'S Marina City, twin towers right on the horizon, visible from about anywhere. [Smart and Golee, Realtors.] Walk north on State and it changes from honky-tonk to village to rather nice to posh apartments to small homes and ends in one of the parks. Chicago believes in extreme high rise, over 30 floors, a lot more than NYC, and the building boom is tremendous. North to Lincoln and find where the other museums in Lincoln Park are. As time goes by, again it's the "numbers get further apart as you go out," and I swear the distance between 2000 and 2900 was twice that between 1000 and 1900. The street goes from decaying residential to downright slum to Negro, and I begin to suspect the quality of performances and fantasize Erik Bruhn and Maria Tallchief getting up from the audience and taking over. I see the program on a billboard, Les Sylphides, some new thing called Transformation of the Owls, and the 3rd act from Coppelia, so it can't be ALL bad. Get to the 2936 address and the theater's not there, and I begin to lament. Ask un-American and get black look. Go to church tower I'd been keeping an eye on all along, and there is a sign for an event at the Athenaeum. There, next door, people are filing in and sure enough it's St. Alphonse's Episcopal Athenaeum, or something. It's now 2:25 and I'm finally warm from walking fast to keep warm in the frigid Chicago weather. The lady at the ticket window gives endless service, and I end up fifth seat off center in second row, for $2. Not bad. Music is recorded, which I never scoff at, but male dancer is a complete queen, and bad, and the two lesser dancers are mopers, only the lead is fairly good. Well, the music is nice, and the stage is good so I see the feet and don't hear them. The two moppets in front of me bounce around, and in the middle of the second set I point a hopefully frightening finger and command "Sit still." I think she was on the verge of bursting into a wail, but she sat still. I think I later heard "I don't like that man." OK, feeling mutual. Long intermission with blatant staring, but no real cruising---everyone there KNEW [Again, in the Illinois Ballet Theater lobby during intermission, comes the thought of everybody acting the WAY they see people acting in movies or on TV. Dramatic, outgoing, self-aware, and certainly acting and phony. How much better would people act if they didn't pattern themselves on Bette Davis or Charleton Heston.] everyone else. Second number was interesting, Orejudas has some talent, but too short for a good dancer. As third dance proves, his tights look like stretched balloons, and the squats look seat-bursting. Just like tightly stuffed sausage skins, and he's too short to partner, and can lift only briefly, but with that "throw-catch" that the Bolshoi excels in. The second one has good costumes: a tee shirt doubled up folds down to reveal sequined feathers, and silks dangle from the arms and the bird beak folds down to a golden face. Effective. The music is interesting, but hardly will its vaunted therapeutic effect be any greater than, say, Hindemith's. The producers dance in the third, and it's academically interesting. The third act music is not overly familiar. Out at 4:45 and decide to walk over to the park and down through there. It's even colder now and I walk ever faster. See people exiting from zoo, and cars roaring past on freeway and get very acquainted with bridle trails and bicycle paths, and good skylines of Chicago. Break all laws crossing streets, and get to Surf Theater in time for chocolate patties and "Happy Anniversary" by that French nut a la Chaplin [Jacques Tati?], and "Sundays and Cybele," where she gives him the PERFECT Christmas present, her name, and it's done so simply you hate the "normal" people who talk about them and try to break them up. The ending is too abrupt---WAS he trying to kiss her? And WHY, after her proper wail, did they come up with that incredible "Miserere Nobis?" Must remember to see if I can record some of the blast-boom Tibetan music. Out at 8 and walk quickly down to the Y and grab coat and pay bill and out to catch cab down Michigan, where I locate the towers as ON the river, to the 11th Street Theater and some fairly good dancing and a wonderfully long girl (see program). The audience is perfectly from NYC, but much of the dancing was awfully pretentious. Walk back up Wabash and State, and stop in for potato pancakes (greasy) and milkshake (watery) for dinner at midnight, and get to Y at 1. Fall into bed and immediately asleep, even with head lower than rest of body on that curious high mattress, AND the noise of the elevator through the door and the shower through the wall. I was tired, that's all.
MONDAY APRIL 22. Up and decide I'm not really going to get any sex any "legitimate" way, so I take the mirror down from the wall the move the chairs around and tease myself up good and come with gusto. Down to breakfast and then walk down Clark to the post office. [Sign on a place selling andirons: Everything the hearth desires.] Streets are busy and people fly past. Walk through little Jewland on Van Buren and Steinowitz's Lunch Room and Berger's tailors and loud voices talking at people. Cross river to post office, after
bringing back memories of the City Hall smokestack, and find nothing for me at General Delivery. I'm crushed. Call SBC DPC and Bob gives rather cold welcome and I decide then and there I won't be back to the PO and give a forwarding address of New York --- I'm tired of chasing PO's. Walk under el as he tells me and descend into station. Ask, for a lark, for a map, and he gives me one! I'll finally know how to get around! Catch the train down to the rather cruddy section of town that SBC is in, except for the Illinois Institute of Technology buildings, where he is. Get in, feeling safe for having told Bob I wasn't in uniform, but I still suspect they looked askance. Shoot bull with Bob Fredericks and Jerry O'Reilly about my trip and SBC and the office sizes, then Bob takes me on a tour --- everyone with own office, large supervisor's office, nice meeting room, well-spaced. Across street to computer and it's a bit cramped, and I get to see the UNIVAC, reminding very much of ORDVAC, too. Starts to rain, and as I turn in my badge I realize I've spent less than an hour with Bob, and to question if I'm going to join the crew, Bob says, "No, he's not one of the crazy ones, like us." And the barb bites deep. He talks with pride of having cut down Burns and McDonald to $45 a frame from $250, and how he'll cut each TMI search by about 1/4. He said Berget exploded (I'm sure), but that he could do it in 2 months. He's same as ever, loud, self-assured, hands on facts --- the perfect SBC executive. It begins to rain as I leave and we shake hands and I take off for station. As I look at map I decide I want to see what the end of the line looks like. The central stations are neat in that they are connected underground, the outer stations much of the way up look like the nothing that I saw along Lincoln. I get the impression Chicago has no suburbs, only continuations of middle-class apartments. Not even industry to break the monotony. See one stadium out SBC's back window, and this shows me the other. Too bad I'm not a fan. Out to end of line [Strange how you never know which hunches will pay off. Something tells me "Don't wait till the last station on the Evanston Express track in Willamette, Ill. Get off earlier, even by one stop, and wait on the platform to catch the same train coming back. Maybe it won't be like in NYC where all you have to do is sit tight on the train arriving at the end of the line, and eventually it moves out, back to town. But I should have suspected foul play after I got off the Howard line and had to pay 15 to a money changer at the door of the Evanston train. Anyway, I didn't get off, but rode to the last station: Linden, and they said all off, and when I got into the train across the way, I noticed the sign "Pay for trains," and end up paying another 40 and getting a souvenir of an unusual transfer.], and back to Chicago, leave station to find the Y looming up ahead of me. Pick up laundry at 5:30 (after getting back at 4 and moping and writing) and have clean white shirts for the first time in weeks. Feels good. Down to dinner after trying to write and am too hungry, then to the lounge to read Life and Time and a few others and watch scrabble and chess [The Y lounge had all the vivacity of an old folk's home after the youngest member has just passed away. An inept game of chess, one person four pawns ahead of the other (how can such things be?), an equally inept game of scrabble (fellow got rid of the Z by putting down zo, and the other fellow let it go by). Simply a barrel of fun.] and finally, amazing, find myself asking this other scrabble onlooker if he'd like to play. He doesn't know rules, thus doesn't know game, thus makes silly moves and probably passes up good words and loses. That takes until 9:30 and I feel hopeless and silly in the lounge; there's no one good at ALL around, nor is there on the floor, and I feel very low. Get upstairs to rifle through folders and make a list of places I want to see (my last recourse) and go to bed in sheer disgust about 10. I'd been forced to get up the last two mornings on awakening, because I'd clear my throat, start coughing, and cough till I got up. My nose was never as much trouble as it was in Dayton --- it was even OK in Cincinnati, but the cough hung on. Maybe I just needed more sleep, so might as well get it.
TUESDAY, APRIL 23. Up early, this time without coughing, and after breakfast walk down LaSalle to see the bulk of the Merchandise Mart, and it IS big, and walk to the Union Pennsylvania Station, across another bridge, and this terminal is impressive, a barrel big and vaulted, and through a room under the street to an even larger, darker and more impressive waiting room. Sit for a bit, scoffing at the phony Greek architecture and even more at the modernizations done to it, gleaming plaster and aluminum and glass which makes the possibly attractive stone above dirty by contrast --- as it probably is, hasn't been cleaned since they put it up. Out to street and cross a third bridge and head for the Lake Transit elevated line. Find that there's an inner and outer loop, and Lake is the inner. Look around corners close to buildings whose corners have had to be tapered, and get a real feeling of vertigo as the railings drop away and it appears that the train is floating across the cross streets. The train does make the loop and crosses the Chicago River on a rail bridge that gives a great view of the Merchandise Mart, Marina City, and other skyscrapers of note. Then into an industrial area that I think is only on the river bank, but it isn't, as it continues, into the west, factories of shapeless brick matched by tenements with falling wooden back porches and laundry and partly demolished slum blocks. Some areas are cleared through urban renewal, but they sure have a lot to go in this section. Much will be impossible unless they move much of the industry out, and that I suspect may take some hundred years. The stops go by very quickly. They're widely spaced, and not every train stops at every one, so without having a system of express and locals (and two sets of tracks) the Chicago system is exceedingly fast and efficient, and quiet, no minor point. The Garfield Park Conservatory appears to be in a Negro area, and I get out just as a fuddled black kid walks into the grating by turning the spoked turnstile the wrong way. Down to the dirty street and cracked pavement, and walk beside a well-kept park to the intersection, quite a distance, and there is the opaque glass conservatory, looking small from this angle, but large inside. They don't have a coat-check facility and the guard seems almost proud of it. Somewhere in there I lose my sunglasses (can hardly pick them out, and they choose to fall out) while I have my raincoat AND jacket thrown over my arm and even the sweater, too warm in the 75, 100% humidity hot room for the tropical plants. They have seven large rooms and are preparing an eighth. The labels are informative [Garfield Park Conservatory: Fittonia Verschaffelti Acanthaceae (S. America) would make a beautiful lawn, background for garden, or painting with its close clusters and carpeting of intense green leaf particulated with white to pink to red to purple thick veins throughout. Best Panama hats are made of a single leaf from the Panama Hat Palm --- the stalk-end forming the center of the crown. Cultivation of the banana has caused the seed to disappear and it must now be propagated by planting the suckers that grow up around the base of an old plant. Each plant fruits but once, usually between 1 and 2 years of age, and the tree dies as soon as the fruit ripens. Lady finger banana "sweet as honey when it ripens on the tree, only six inches long and is not popular commercially. FV Argyroncura Acanthedae (Silvernerve) is the same green leaf broken by white to green veins, but never as dark as the leaf. Oyster plant, obviously so named because the flowers, growing from pods nestled deep in the stalk at the base of the leaves, look like oysters in their shells. A conservatory is pretty, but is it only my recent depression that causes me to believe it's a sterile kind of pretty? It may be because there are few people around --- though I usually don't appreciate them when they are around, since they're always noisy, quarrelsome, and inhumane. And admittedly a group of six ogling children do add a bit of color and jollity. But maybe also, the corny Lester Lanin music piped in adds to the general effect of triteness. Also the camera bugs with their openings and distances and the proper angle don't help any. Add to that the fact that the showroom is cool and almost devoid of smell, with no sunlight to speak of. The light is not an intense sun-bright so brilliant for flowers, but a pallid overcast gray, light enough to see and read and write, but the colors from the flowers are flat, not the air-coloring brilliance given by bright sunlight, when the outlines of the plants themselves become dim as the eye struggles to define the boundary between the brilliant blossom and a neutral background. No, people definitely don't help. Gardeners walk past, a trio of girls, one making rooster calls from a blade of grass she pulled somewhere, two colored fellows (surprised there's not more, since the Conservatory is smack in the middle of an industrial-slum-colored area. A Gray Line tour plods dutifully through (I hope wishing it could stay) and elderly couples talk quietly and point with long arms. The Easter cross has faded after the holiday, and some of the white has frozen into a brownish coat over the ivory. From the Cordyline Terminalis, variety, Pink Superba, Liliaceae, from the East Indies, I can see where the Madras colors come from, one leaf contains the dirty green, the dried blood red, the butterscotch yellow of good shirts, with the outlines properly faded. Cineraria looks best half dead, when the eye-aching intensity of unbroken fields of deep violet is relieved by petals of off-white, the color of the backs of leaves which drop, on the vertical blossoms, over the violet-gold heart, and produce a "two plants in one" color effect. The same effect is present in foxglove, which shades from the lightest of greens above to the lightest of violets below, without ever hitting a color not green or violet, but never varying in change from bloom to bloom --- it seems that the bloom ON the border is green outside, on top, and violet inside, on the bottom --- but it may be a matter of shade. Bush calceolaria seem half between snapdragons and orchids in their pursed fullness. The photographers finally left the scene after they chased me off the bench at the foot of the falls, and I felt like retorting "Let me know when you've finished monopolizing public property," but was afraid her agent (?) might hit me. Near the waterfall was the only place to sit and listen to a sound which dimmed the cruddy piped-in music. I hope they at least had the goodness to use religious music during holy week, when I'm sure all the lilies forming the cross were out in glory. The lilies looked dirty where the water had dripped on them and left brownish rings. I still wonder how conservatories are kept. Though the plants are in pots, and kept warm and moist, I'm sure the blossoms can't last more than a week, or even two at the most. But all rooms are ablaze with flowers --- does that mean the rooms are replaced every two weeks? Do they keep a supply of marigolds and amaryllis and cineraria and calceolaria and bleeding hearts in stock, to bloom every two weeks? They had an exceptionally nice collection of small cacti and succulents, ranged neatly in wire-screened wooden cases along the walks at waist level. These were neatly labeled and the tiniest ones looked ready for viewing. The labels were obviously placed, and there was enough room for large lava-like rocks and even for a bit of horseplay with one species growing down over a pile of rocks into a mass of others growing from the ground, topped by a third type, growing upward FROM the rocks. A kind of cactus sandwich with rocks on the inside. They also had a small saguarro, which I wondered about. If so, it's foot height was about the smallest I'd seen. Hope they didn't get a baby barrel cactus by mistake.] [May be possible to see where the Indians got their architectural towers from; they're shaped precisely like the fruit in the center tops of the Crozier Cycad, from India.] [What a beautiful little fern is Baby's Train, Helzine Soleiroli Urticaceae, from Corsica, Sardinia.] [The fern room particularly good with brick paths, curving through gardens built up on rocks to above the head, laden with greens and in the center a lily pond and scum pool, fed by two waterfalls, one visible and loud, the other secluded, damp, mysterious, shadowy and trickly.] and the visit is pleasant. I retrace much of the ground to try to find my glasses, but no luck. The attendant suggests I check back, but for an hour, and 50, I can buy a new set (and end up buying two pairs, when the first I buy turns out to completely remove the color green) for essentially $3. Expensive lack of coat rack. The wrong train passes first, but still quickly and efficiently the train takes me back around the loop and I get off closest to the Museum of Natural History. I'm sure I was there before, but I feel I must go back to prove it. The walk is long, past the Buckingham Fountain (being repaired) and the long beach walk (no boats moored) to the museum, and break laws getting across the almost impossible circle. The center does not look familiar, because they've added a space exhibit and a speaker-phone booth. I also don't remember the 25 admission fee. Rent a speaker phone and tour many of the galleries, picking up interesting facts [Natural History Museum: Malvina Hoffman did all figures in Hall of Man and studied under Rodin. His love for the beautiful male body was passed on to her, also. Tahopia Indian mound in Illinois covers more area than the Great Pyramid. Porcupines EAT moose antlers for minerals. Granulated sugar used as SNOW. Peking Man's remains LOST during War. Thought that the Neanderthal man is not ANCESTRAL, but became extinct. 35,000 years ago man in France traced his hand on a cave wall. Paintings were in darkest and deepest caves, where people didn't LIVE. They thus painted not to be seen, but to be done. They were even done on top of each other, by the Aurignacian men --- cave of Gorgus in SW France. Carnac in Brittany had ten aisles of rock like Stonehenge. WHY was Carnac so similar to Karnak, Egypt??] [The Museum of Natural History filled all good requirements: there were too many exhibits to possibly see in one day, each room looks toward a vista of other rooms, many with items completely unconnected with the one you're in; the map is hardly adequate to show the exhibits, because the smallest rooms shown on the map are divided into even smaller rooms in actuality. I knew I'd been in before, and vaguely recollected correctly the almost endless corridors and the really staggering amounts of material on display. But this time they added the Guidephone, and I got it and tuned into as many short lectures as I could. This very easily took up the time between 2:30 and 5.] and I wish they had photos (clear) of Hoffman's Hall of Man --- spectacular! At 3:30, famished, I head for the lunch room or cafeteria, and find them both closed; stomach churning I return to the exhibits. The closing time and the short (long only for the Pre-History of Man, which could have been longer) lectures coincide rather well, and I leave just at 5. Walk over a pedestrian bridge, a scenic walkway, and a bridge over the tracks to get back to the streets of town. None of the bus lines seem to serve, and I'm back to the Howard, and again get off at Chicago. Write, planning to write till 8, thinking the meal was till 8:30, but get down at 7:15 and find the hour is 7:30. Another bit of fool luck. Sort through things to see and will surely stay another day. Write more and shower and decide to get out to Playboy Club and bars. Mark up map and out I go in suit, surprised to find the Velvet Swing and the other posh places east of Rush crowded very elegantly. The Playboy is in a very nice neighborhood, but the lobby is completely jammed. Check coat and look at bar, but it's coupling. Walk upstairs and they're converting the novelty counter, the rest rooms and the library to the VIP room. Good business permits them to be more mercenary, I guess. Up to the Penthouse, quite small, and ABOVE that (another afterthought) to the Playroom, and both rooms are turning people away. (And the angels lit the candles --- and the cat peed on the matches.) I look my fill and back downstairs to get shoved around by people saying, "Why don't they sell more keys." "Go into the garden and make sounds like a carrot." "Let's go to the Gaslight." And "Everyone's leaving, we planned it well." I didn't spend a cent, they only recorded my key number. Wonder if I get a bill? Walk uptown to the Shoreline 7. Get through door to bar, and there's a fellow outside pushing it to let me in. Inside there's another at the door, but beyond there's only dim drab emptiness --- maybe three people at the bar. I look for a second and a huge German shepherd comes over and starts barking. I mumble "Looks like I'm not wanted," and leave. Walk further along Division to Clark, and look around for Sam's, but don't see it. Walk down to next block and see the corner is vacant. Maybe they tore it down? Then see, up on Clark, a dark little place with no sign and possible people going in and out. I get in and it's the place OK. Wander to back and stand for a bit until it becomes clear that the best ones are in the back, then sit down in back. Beer leads to the john, and as I stand outside waiting for entrance, an old gray aunt motions me over. I refuse, and he begs so hard that I smile and shake my head. "Well, you smile, anyway," he laughed back, and I went in and urinated on the yellow porcelain. The bartenders camp it up fine and a large handsome overweight one grabs a leather jacket, slips his arms into the sleeves backwards, and begins to camp and swish about. About this time two cops enter and the news slops down the bar faster than spilled beer. The waiter quiets down, but still minces about handing out drinks in his black leather doctor's smock. An old man starts bitching in a loud voice, and louder the sole girl in the bar raises her voice in an effort to give the place SOME sort of straight touch. Long lanky fellow sits next to me and starts tearing at his fingernails and slicing at the beer bottle label. He looks well set up (big thumbs) and I start talking with him, tell him I'm stranger and looking for bars, that I toured the country, and it turns out that he just got back from Mexico, so we compare notes a bit, and in a few weeks he's taking off to New York, and then to Europe for the summer. We find lots to talk about and he asks if I want to see the Back Door and I say "sure." We go out to his Fury and drive down to it, parking on a slum street under the raised highway of Michigan Avenue, and in the back door and down the stairs. A hard-faced woman checks coats and inside, two queens are spinning together to the Bossa Nova, and there are two of the tallest broads, hair fiberglassed up on their heads, eyes made up by the ounce, décolletage showing pounds of flesh, tight skirts, diabolical heels, and sucking cigarettes in long sparkling holders. Their voices are as charming as their lacquered hair, and they bob across the floor on too-small feet. We watch the dancing for awhile, but the whole place is so sick there's little contrast, and I quickly suggest we leave. "Do you want to have sex with me tonight?" he asks straight (?) out, and I say yes. Into car and look for hotel along street after Clark, where they took all the buildings down for the Walt Whitman Towers. The first one we try is empty, and we walk across to the Mark Twain. He looks like he obviously knows what the score is and asks for $8 for twin beds. So we take it and sour bellman takes us into the cruddy elevator up to the room, unlocks the door, turns the light on in the bathroom, fusses around and accepts a quarter from Jim. He leaves. Jim leaks, I partly undress, I leak, and come out to find Jim nude. Naught like suspense and "leading up to it" for added pleasure. I get down to shorts and his long member is getting hard and though it's marred by an awful pot draped down above it, it's long and thick and shapely. His kisses are the inside-out-wide-open, all-out type, and soon I deviate all the attention to his cock. He'd said before that he didn't like to fuck or be fucked, so the layout was clear; we fumbled around for 69. I played and dawdled and his touch was all wrong. "Are you ready to come?" "Oh, I could go on like this for hours." That pricked him. He sucked on for a few minutes, then swung around and started doing himself. He came and I did myself and came. We wiped off and I drank water and wanted to get to bed, but he said lay by me. I didn't want to, but he finally coaxed me, and in a few minutes, perversely, I guess I do like sex, I got hard again, as he wanted, and we did ourselves by hand again; this time I had to thrash back and forth quite a bit for the second shot, and ended up sore. At that point, 3, I wanted to leave, but he begged me to stay, so I slept in the other bed. We woke at 7:30 and I dressed very quickly and he told me how to get the subway to the center of town. It dawned on me I hadn't even said I was staying at the Y. That's OK, he probably fibbed when he signed the register and said he was from Milwaukee. For some odd reason I put down my right name. Oh, well, heaven knows I've done it before -- New Orleans and the hustler, New York and Mario, and now Chicago. Old stuff.