Tales of the Tarantula

by Frank Terranella

  Fast forward to 1942 and Hal Wallis is producing a movie inspired by the 1938 Charles Boyer hit Algiers. It’s based on an unproduced play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison called Everyone Comes to Rick’s. The screenplay adaptation by Julius and Philip Epstein has as a key plot point, a song played by Sam, Rick’s pal and piano player, that used to be Rick and Ilsa’s favorite when they were in Paris together before World War II. Max Steiner tells Wallis that he would write a song for the movie. But Wallis feels that the song should be something old and familiar, a song that Sam would actually have played in the late ‘30s. The choice was Hupfeld’s “As Time Goes By.” And the rest is history.

  While the song became world famous, Hupfeld remained in near obscurity at his home at 259 Park Street in Montclair, a short walk from the Watchung Avenue train station. Reports say that he rarely left his hometown. He wrote many other songs with titles such as “When Yuba Plays the Rhumba On the Tuba,” “A Hut in Hoboken,” and “Let’s Put Out The Lights (And Go To Sleep).” He died in 1951 at the age of 57. He’s buried in the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Montclair, New Jersey.

  While few people remember Herman Hupfeld, his creation lives on in film history. It’s safe to say that a century after his death, people will still be echoing Ilsa’s request, “Play it Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’”

  My impending grandfatherhood

  August 2013

  My son told me recently that his new bride is pregnant and that I was going to be a grandfather for the first time early next year. My reaction was pure joy. It was surreal. And then when I saw the first sonogram picture of my grandchild it all became real.

  Bill Cosby used to say that no one is a real adult until they’ve become a parent. Well I think no one is a real senior citizen until they’ve become a grandparent. And at age 60 I am now ready to be a grandparent.

  Grandparenthood, from all reports, is one of the most marvelous things we over 50s can experience. Our friends who already have grandchildren say that it’s the best of parenthood with none of the downside. You can leave all the unpleasant things for their parents to take care and you can spoil them – letting them do all things they can’t get away with at home.

  I know this from personal experience as a parent. When we had our children, my wife would often watch her mother’s interaction with our kids and say “Who is this woman? This can’t be the strict parent I grew up with.” Things that were inviolate rules when they were parents now become mere guidelines when acting as grandparents. In fact, grandparents sometimes seem to conspire with grandchildren against their parents. It’s like they have a common enemy – that mean parent who says the kids can’t have a pet.

  From my standpoint, grandparenthood is really a do-over. You get another chance to be a parent and correct all the mistakes you made. It’s like a parenting mulligan. Now that I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t, I’m ready to do it right this time. But more to the point, I won’t be phoning it in this time, which looking back, I fear I may have done the first time more than I’d like to admit.

  I think most over-50 parents feel as I do that our children’s childhoods flew by too fast. I know that at the time it felt like an ordeal to get through. I used to joke about how on their 18th birthday my kids would get a birthday card from me with a notice that the lease on their bedrooms was up and they were now financially independent. Of course, that didn’t happen. Our daughter still lives with us and I’m glad of it. She and her boyfriend provide invaluable assistance to her aging parents.

  But I do think there’s something about being a grandparent that gives those of us over 50 a feeling of a chance at redemption. Sure, I may have delivered a mediocre performance as a parent, but I’m going to blow them away in the second act as a grandparent.

  Now, how old do my grandchildren have to be before I can introduce them to the joys of licorice and pretzel sticks?

  Unpaid interns – the 21st century slave class

  August 2013

  Back in 1974 I was an unpaid intern at a newspaper. This was an academic internship arranged by my college and for which I received college credit. Although I certainly provided valuable services for the newspaper, the primary reason I was there was to learn about the newspaper industry and see if it was something I might want to do after college. I learned a lot and found I loved the work.

  As it turned out, my internship led to my first post-college job because the managing editor of the newspaper where I applied for a job knew the managing editor at the paper where I had interned and the latter said some good things about me and I got the job.

  Because of my positive experience with unpaid internships, I encouraged my children to do them as well. They both did several unpaid internships in college. But unlike me, their college internships did not lead to paid jobs. Instead, they led to more unpaid internships. And that’s when I found out that not only are the drugs different now from when I was in college, internships are too.

  In the 21st century, American businesses have turned from being educational partners with universities to being exploiters of free student labor. Horror stories abound, particularly in the media industry, of young people forced to do menial tasks for free in the remote hope that having an internship on their resume will have some value to them. There’s no pretense of educational value other than learning how greedy and immoral American employers have become.

  The last time corporate America was this greedy was during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Workers provided services for pennies an hour and were happy to do it. But many fair-minded people in Congress were upset by the unfair bargaining position of employers over employees and they reacted with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This landmark New Deal legislation set a minimum wage and also a maximum work week of 40 hours, after which a premium overtime wage was required.

  Corporate America accepted this new burden because there was a level playing field and all businesses employing U.S. workers had the same burden. In addition, many employers saw it as simply the right thing to do.

  Over the years, some businesses have become greedier and have tried repeatedly to work around the minimum wage laws. They have exploited every loophole (such as unpaid internships) and in recent years have even tried to have the FLSA repealed. My daughter worked for over a year for a large multinational corporation as essentially an employee without pay. It was called an internship, but there was absolutely no educational value and no connection with any educational institution. Clearly, she should have been paid at least the minimum wage.

  Being over 50 gives you the ability to see trends over long time periods and the trends for employees are not good. Ever since Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers’ union in 1981, the balance of power has been flowing to employers. The minimum wage has stagnated, and the number of unpaid interns has skyrocketed. Meanwhile corporate profits are at record highs.

  It will take decades to reverse this trend, but there’s something we need to do right away. We need to pay people in their 20s a fair wage for valuable work done for a business. We need to ostracize businesses that steal from young people by asking them to work for free. We need to have state and federal labor departments that vigorously enforce the state and federal minimum wage laws. We need to stop looking the other way and pretending these internships are bona fide. It’s the least we can do as parents and as moral Americans.

  On the road? Try a B&B

  August 2013

  Staying at a bed and breakfast is not for everyone. It takes a bit of a leap of faith and more than a little effort to be sociable. So, if you’re really not a morning person and just want to be left alone while you eat breakfast, you’re better off staying at the Hilton, Holiday Inn or any of the other cookie cutter hotel room providers. But if you are up for a bit of adventure, and just love meeting new, interesting people, there’s nothing like a B&B.

  Recently I was reading that in the 19th century many inns did not provide private r
ooms. Strangers shared rooms and even in some cases shared beds. Meals were, of course, communal. Well 21st century B&Bs have maintained the shared meals and shared living rooms, but the rooms in most B&Bs are now private and come with private bathrooms. Yet it is the communal part of the B&B experience that makes it special.

  My wife and I were in our 50s when we tried our first B&B. It was a wonderful home in Bennington, Vermont called The Four Chimneys. We had some trepidation about how communal an experience this would be. We quickly found out that at a B&B you can be as social or unsocial as you want. Those who want to keep to themselves can do so. But the real fun is sitting around the communal living room and meeting the other guests. Invariably we have met fascinating people and had a great time.

  Some B&Bs are just large, old houses that the owner sets up for guests. You stay in a guest bedroom; you eat in the dining room; you hang out in the living room of what was once a normal house. Newer B&Bs are built almost like a hotel with all the modern amenities except that care is taken not to get larger than a large house. So typically there are five or fewer bedrooms. One B&B we stayed at in Mendocino, California, the MacCallum House, had both the old-fashioned house guest rooms as well as a newly-constructed annex. Mendocino is one of those places that are full of B&Bs.

  Most recently, we stayed at a new B&B in Williamstown, Massachusetts, up near the Vermont border. It was called Journey’s End and I hesitate to mention it because I fear I may never be able to get a reservation again once people discover it. Journey’s End is a beautiful new construction B&B. It’s a log cabin on a hill with a gorgeous view of the Berkshires. The people we met there were mostly over-50 travelers and so we had a lot in common. But probably the best thing at Journey’s End is the food that Carlos feeds his guests for breakfast. That’s something that’s common to all B&Bs. You get a real home-cooked meal every morning.

  B&Bs are perfect for making you feel like you’re at home while you’re on the road. I recommend them to all over-50 travelers who may be looking for a cross between a motel and the youth hostels we stayed in while backpacking 40 years ago. A B&B provides a great communal traveling experience but with private rooms. It’s the best of both worlds.

  The call of the telephone

  August 2013

  It’s vacation season and I’m amazed at how reachable my vacationing clients are. The 21st century electronic leash is a long one. People can be reached no matter the time, the place or the importance of the call.

  Those of us over 50 know that this is a very recent phenomenon. Back in the 1960s (when some of us still had party lines) if someone left their home, they were truly out of touch. This was OK with most of us. Of course, there were exceptions.

  You may remember the scene from Woody Allen’s film Play It Again, Sam in which Tony Roberts plays a frantic businessman who is on the phone constantly. As he’s leaving to go to dinner, he says into the phone “I am leaving 555-1234 now, but I’ll be at 555-4321 in 20 minutes.” Woody Allen’s character is put off by this constant need to be in touch and says “Hold on, there’s a phone booth we’ll be passing along the way. Let me get the number for you just in case.”

  Well in 2013, most people are like the Tony Roberts character. We have a need to be in touch at all times. Sure this need is stronger among our children, but the truth is that few people today of any age travel without a cell phone. I am not going to say that it’s wrong either. Certainly, some moderation is called for – like not taking calls in public restrooms. But all in all, being reachable by friends and family is (as Martha Stewart might say) a good thing.

  I think we over-50s can provide some wisdom on this issue to our children by describing to them a time when not only were there no cell phones, there were no answering machines. Back then, if you missed a call, you really missed it. You had no idea that anyone had called you, much less what they were calling about. This often led to bad consequences if the caller had an urgent message.

  I remember one night I was out late because of evening law school classes and didn’t get home until after midnight. I was also working full time at The Journal News in Nyack, New York. My boss had been calling me all night to tell me that we were starting work two hours early the next day because of a big local news story. Since I wasn’t home and I didn’t have an answering machine, I never got the message. It was embarrassing to walk into work the next day two hours late. Soon after that, I bought one of the first answering machines on the market.

  Our children cannot imagine such a scenario. Their bosses can always reach them. Oh, sure they can pretend that their battery died, but that’s about as believable as “the dog ate my homework.” Our modern world demands that we be reachable.

  I have always found this electronic leash to be obnoxious. I was one of the last people I know to buy a cell phone and for many years I used it only to make calls and immediately turned it off afterwards. I enjoyed going into the subway – a cell phone free zone. Now it seems a little dangerous to be in an area with no service. We have become so used to being able to reach out and touch our friends and family that it’s a bit uncomfortable when we can’t.

  A few summers ago, my wife and I were staying at Glacier National Park in Montana. There was a beautiful hotel, but no cell phone service. The over-50s quickly adapted back to pre-1980 mode when vacations were telephone-free. But the younger people could be seen hiking to a remote hill where someone said you could get one bar of service. They couldn’t help themselves. They were just answering the call of the dial tone.

  In praise of songs that tell a story

  August 2013

  I have always loved songs that tell a story. Many songs over the years have told simple stories. Thinking back to my childhood, “Silhouettes,” “Leader of the Pack,” and “Society’s Child” come to mind. But I’m not talking here about songs that tell simple stories. I’m talking about songs that could qualify as bona fide short stories. Harry Chapin was the master of this genre with songs like “Taxi” and “A Better Place to Be,” and many others.

  One of my favorite story songs is one that was a hit for the Dixie Chicks in 2003. It’s a song by Bruce Robison called “Travelin’ Soldier.” Although written in the 1990s, the song is set during the Vietnam War. It’s about a boy “two days past eighteen” waiting in his army uniform for a bus that will take him off to war. He walks into a café and is waited on by “a girl with a bow in her hair” who takes his order and smiles at him because she can see he’s shy and all alone. This encourages him enough to ask her to sit and talk because he’s “feeling a little low.”

  She tells him that she gets off in an hour and she knows a place where they can go and talk. So they go down and sit on the pier. There the young soldier asks if he can write to her because “I got no one to send a letter to.” She agrees and the young man catches his bus.

  Soon the letters start to come from an army camp in California and then from Vietnam. The young soldier pours out his heart to the young girl. He says that he may be in love with her. He also tells her of the things that scare him. He lets her know that when things get “kinda rough over here” he thinks of that day sitting on the pier with her. Then one day, he tells her “Don’t worry but I won’t be able to write for a while.”

  Of course, the last verse of the song is the most poignant:

  One Friday night at a football game

  The Lord’s Prayer said and the Anthem sang

  A man said folks would you bow your heads

  For a list of local Vietnam dead

  Crying all alone under the stands

  Was a piccolo player in the marching band

  And one name read but nobody really cared

  But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair.

  I have to admit that I get a tear in my eye every time I hear the song.

  “Travelin’ Soldier” was the last hit the Dixie Chicks ever had. While they were introducing the song at a concert in London on March 10, 200
3, lead singer Natalie Maines said that they were ashamed that George Bush was from Texas. Country music stations immediately stopped playing the song and it dropped from the charts. The Dixie Chicks never recovered from their shunning in the country music community. But their recording of “Travelin’ Soldier” remains a musical masterpiece.

  The beauty of slow travel

  September 2013

  We over-50s came of age just at the time when air travel was becoming dominant. We saw the decline and fall of the dominance of rail and steamship travel.

  I can remember when I was a kid, we went to bon voyage parties aboard the cruise ships my grandparents were taking to Italy. I can remember my school friends taking the train to Miami. But by the end of the 1960s, it was all air travel.

  Back in those pre-terrorism mentality days, people who were meeting a flight could go right to the gate. Needless to say, there was no searching of passengers and their carry-ons, although simple metal detectors were brought in after people began hijacking planes to Cuba.

  Anyway, people our age grew up with air travel. It wasn’t special like it was for our parents. It was just transportation, faster than the train or steamship. And that speed meant that getting there quickly took a priority over enjoying the sights along the way. While trains had big, glass-enclosed touring cars so that you could see the countryside, airliners climbed to 40,000 feet and showed you the tops of clouds.

  But air travel doesn’t have to be this “get-there quick with the shades drawn while we watch a movie and eat” experience. It’s possible for air travel to be just as leisurely and scenic as train travel. You just have to know someone who has their own plane.