Tag Archives: children

A Not-So-Distant Warning

Posted on by under 1950s, Advertising, Books, Cold War, Commerce, Communism, Culture, e-books, fallout, Fiction, flood, history, missile race, Novel, space, spies, Television

August 18, 1955 is a day that will live in infamy for people of the Northeast. That was the day the Flood of ’55 ravaged our small town. Back-to-back hurricanes Connie and Diane turned peaceful creeks into raging torrents, sweeping aside towns from Pennsylvania to Connecticut and killing hundreds, seemingly in the blink of an eye.

As a child, I don’t remember much of that time, but years later, as a journalist investigating the events of that terrible night, I was stunned by the hardship and heroism of those who survived. With the benefit of hindsight, I decided to explore their stories through a series of novels.

The first book in the trilogy, Distant Early Warning, introduces us to the Andersen family as they struggle to recover from the devastating flood. The novel, and the ones to follow—Cold Fire and Good People—portray the dreams and fears of a family, town, and country as they navigate the promise and perils of Cold War America. Distant Early Warning doesn’t only refer to the DEW Line, the system of Arctic radar stations designed to detect incoming Soviet bombers. The title serves as a metaphor for the internal system that warns us of impending danger, warnings we often ignore.

Russia, rockets, race, and repression—issues the Andersens tried to resolve in the ’50 that revisit us today. As does their struggle for mercy and hope.

Theirs is a journey from darkness to light. Follow it here. Or start with that terrible night of August 18 in this excerpt from Chapter 4.

AT TEN TO NINE, Georgia let Skippy out for a short walk, wiped the dog’s back with a dishtowel, and moved her box into the kitchen. This was Georgia’s time. Switching on the television, she settled on the couch and tried to watch Fear Strikes Out, a movie Marsh would have liked about center fielder Jimmy Piersall. But at 9:30 the lights vanished with a snap. Suddenly blind, she groped toward the telephone. It was out, too. Now there was no way to call Marsh, even if she knew where to find him. And he had taken the car.
       From the street, shouts competed with the swish of tires, then a shudder as something heavy struck the bridge, rattling the house as if the earth had broken in two. The room squeezed her heart. Inhaling through her mouth, she told herself she was responsible for the children and had to think of their welfare. Marsh said that, if the town declared an emergency, the fire chief would blow the siren, and someone would come to their rescue. She could wait for the siren, but not in this stifling dark.
       Groping through a drawer in the kitchen, she found a small flashlight, thumbed the button and, checking that Skippy was safe in her makeshift bed, traced a path upstairs. Awakened by a noise in the street, Wil emerged from his room, still dressed in his life vest and rocket pack, ready to battle whoever he imagined had attacked the house. Cradling Penny—the baby fussed but didn’t cry, the cereal settling for once—Georgia led him downstairs, where she rummaged through another drawer to find their good tapers and a box of matches. Placing the candles on the table, she opened the screen door and peered into the dark. She didn’t need a light to sense the rush of water across their yard. The town’s storm sewers were designed to handle a hard rain. Their home was not.
       Wil noticed it first. Lifting a hand to stay his questions, she listened to the tinny sound of water trickling into the house. Opening the door to the basement, she played the flashlight over a small lake, the surface foaming like root beer. The seasonal items they’d stored bumped against the bottom of the steps—boxes of clothing, Christmas decorations, a pair of lawn chairs Marsh had promised to fix. Within the time it took to identify each object, the water rose to the second step, then the third. In minutes, it would reach the kitchen, sweeping them and their possessions through the front door.
       The playpen sat a good nine inches above the living room floor. She set Penny inside and turned to her son.
       “You’re a big boy now. I need you to help Mommy move some things upstairs.”
       Slipping into her boots, assuring herself that Wil had buckled his, she tottered down the basement stairs, hanging onto the railing, calling for Wil to be careful. The water had risen so rapidly, she had to duck to see under the rafters. Playing the light over the walls, she watched as water gushed between the stones, flooding the furnace and coal bin and inching dangerously close to the fuse box. They’d used the last of their spares, and there was no way, once the power came back, she was going to wade through that water and use a penny to complete the circuit.
       Urging Wil up the stairs, she closed the door and leaned her head against it. Even with the curtains open, the windows appeared blank, the streetlamps dead. The flashlight cast a narrow cone in one direction only. There was no place to set it and see clearly enough to climb the stairs to the bedrooms. Georgia would have to hold the light and the furniture, and her hands were already slick with sweat. She and Wil were able to lift the lamps, books, and ottoman onto the dining room table. The rugs they lugged upstairs and piled into the bathtub. There would be a mess to clean before she could bathe Penny, but it was the best they could do.
       Wil hovered at her side, jittering as if he had to go to the bathroom. “Can we bring Phil upstairs?”
       Marsh had spoken to Wil about how, as people grew older, they said goodbye to their imaginary friends, but now was not the time for a sermon. Besides, the Philco had cost nearly five hundred dollars, more than a tenth of what Marsh earned at the paper, and Georgia wasn’t about to lose it. She and Wil tried to drag the television up the narrow stairwell but couldn’t shove it past the first few steps. They left it on the landing and made their way to the kitchen.
       Where was Marsh, and was he all right? And where were the firemen he was supposed to send? Wil’s bedtime prayer rang in her head.
       Now I lay me down to sleep.
       The radio had died. Rain thrummed against the roof, the sound clotting her ears. She considered leaving, but where could they go on foot? Besides, there was a house between them and the creek and a concrete retaining wall lining one side of the bank. The town must have thought it would hold the water or they wouldn’t have built it.
       I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
       Thunder rolled over the house, rattled the windows, shook the floor. Wil took her hand. Penny issued a startled cry. Lifting her from the playpen, Georgia moved to heat water for a bottle before she realized the appliances were as dead as the lights. Dumb, she thought and dutifully pushed a nipple through its plastic ring, mixed the formula with tepid water from the tap, and let it sit.
       If I should die before I ’wake.
       The fire sirens came on with the whoosh of a gas burner, the sound oscillating between panic and fear. It cut through her chest. The creek would ignore the warning. Georgia pictured it as a mythic creature rising on stout legs, beat its chest, thundering its demands. She, too, would not be moved. They would ride out the storm until help arrived.
       I pray the Lord my soul to take.
       The sound of rain intensified. It seemed to buckle the walls. Holding Penny and the flashlight, she instructed Wil to jam towels under the back door. That would keep some of the water at bay. The basement posed the real threat. The old stone walls could collapse. Before sealing the cellar, she ventured a last look. Clasping the light to the baby’s back, Georgia aimed at the door. With her free hand, she reached for the knob and hesitated, her fingers suspended in the beam, her body sensing the weight of something trapped below the stairs, the pressure on a dam ready to burst. As if watching herself, she grasped the handle and cracked the door.
       Even as she stumbled back, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake.

The Magic of Bob Dorough

Posted on by under Commerce, Creativity, Music, Television

For Bob Dorough, three is a magic number. For his legion of fans, it’s Bob himself who’s magic.

Whether he was singing times tables or scat, Bob made music and learning fun for adults and children alike. He died April 23, 2018, at his home in Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania, at the age of 94.

In the late 1970s, I wrote an article about him for DownBeat that was never published. Here it is at last, the story in his words of how he created Multiplication Rock, presented as a tribute to a most remarkable man.

* * *

It can be no accident that Bob Dorough included the song “Because We’re Kids” on his album Beginning to See the Light. The piece not only sums up his attitude toward children, which led to his job as composer of the ABC-TV series “Schoolhouse Rock!” It reflects the relaxed image he projects, the open smile that reaches you even before the soothing Southern twang of his voice.

Intoning the words of Dr. Seuss, Dorough sings, “But we’ll grow up someday, and when we do I pray we just don’t grow in size and sound and just get bigger pound by pound. I’d hate to grow like some I know who push and shove us little kids [sniff] around.”

No chance of that now. Dorough has spent the past several years scoring “Schoolhouse Rock!” in which he teaches children math, grammar and civics in a respectful and entertaining way. Listeners have long associated him with jazz, from his work as an accompanist to his own 1957 classic on Bethlehem records, Devil May Care. But that challenge met, he turned to producing popular artists like Spanky and Our Gang and writing advertising jingles.

After a decade-long hiatus from the jazz world, his career has come full-circle and he’s back to doing some of his favorite things. The veteran of swing and New York City jam sessions has returned to nightclub performing (including a recent stint at Bradley’s in New York) and has released a new album—a live performance recorded in California with longtime associate and bassist Bill Takas.

The duo recorded Beginning to See the Light on their own label, Laissez-Faire, to achieve the artistic freedom they desired. The track from which the album receives its name—a Harry James, Duke Ellington composition—finds Dorough swinging on piano around Takas’s strong walking bass lines. Throughout the rest of the recording, Dorough livens the recording with his unique voice, a reedy sound that’s soft and thin as a whisper, spiced with a drawl that echoes his West Texas roots.

Born in Arkansas, Dorough fell in love with music while in high school, to the point of going back to school another year after graduation to take advantage of playing with various bands. He picked up piano by ear after discovering he could compose and hold down more jobs by playing that instrument, then headed for North Texas State at Denton to polish his skills. “It was the first college to put jazz on the curriculum,” he says. “It was just a hotbed of jazz.”

His salesman father had other ideas for his son. “I was a natural mathematician. My father said, ‘You could be an engineer ‘cause your math grades are so good.’”

But New York City beckoned. “I played in different bands and combos and mostly we jammed. We were always playing. It was a way of learning. And I also liked singing. I got into my own style of singing. I guess I pretty much formulated my own style at a fairly young age, although I had what I thought was a late start in music. I was interested in serious music, too. Composition was my major.”

Dorough’s late start may account for his affinity for children and his long life in the business. “I always endeavored to think young, act young and live young, and take care of myself. As I say, I felt I got a late start in music. I was drafted and was in the Army. All that threw me way behind schedule. I dropped out when I was 28 or so, working on a master’s degree I never got at Columbia. And I’m probably one of the few American boys who took a high school post-grad course.”

When jobs in his field ran thin, he turned to producing popular artists—Chad Mitchell, Roberta Flack, Spanky and Our Gang. He tried advertising work. That move gave him an exciting job and a whole new audience—children. “It’s like anything else. You make a contact and get a job, and if it’s good, you get another one,” he says of his introduction to “Schoolhouse Rock!” and its creator.

David McCall, president of the McCaffrey and McCall advertising agency in New York, faced a problem that Dorough was soon to solve with twelve songs later released as Multiplication Rock. “His idea was to set the multiplication tables to music. He got it from his own child, who couldn’t memorize the tables but he could sing along with Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles and memorize all the words. So my partner, Ben Tucker, claimed I was the man to do the job.

“Apparently they’d tried other New York City composers and they had gotten a kind of result they weren’t looking for, sort of a simplistic writing-down-to-the-children insipid approach. So I went to see them about it and that was it. Even though they were in the advertising business, they seemed prepared to develop this idea, which was nothing new, actually. It was a little bit new in that he [McCall] wanted the multiplication tables set to rock music. Everything was rock music in that year.”

Dorough calls the assignment “a rare opportunity, one of the most exciting commissions I’ve ever had, a chance to communicate with the younger generation. I didn’t know if it would be on record; I didn’t dream it would be on TV.

“I sort of laid back a couple of months. I didn’t want to go popping out obvious rhythmical tunes. So I just studied my math books. It’s strange. I’m a collector of mathematics books. I’m a mail-order freak. I’d see Fun with Games and Numbers and Mathematics for the Millions, well I would order the book. Maybe I wouldn’t even read it. When I got this assignment, I just came home and started cracking all these books. I was prepared for the job.”

He also received some help from his daughter, Aralee. “My daughter was just entering the grades where they studied math. It gave me a chance to try some things on her.”

While the outcome was supposed to be rock, Dorough found he had created a gentler sound. “Some of my friends said, ‘That’s not rock, that’s jazz. You snuck it in on them.’ I don’t know. It’s neither rock nor jazz.”

The advertising agency originally tried to market Multiplication Rock as a record and a book, but the agency’s animation department worked up a better deal for another client, ABC-TV. To date, the network has produced 25 3-minute films. Dorough makes several a year and works as the show’s musical producer and arranger.

Until now, Dorough has concentrated on writing and recording for some of the legends of jazz. His 1957 release, Devil May Care, featured himself and Miles Davis. The trumpeter later invited Dorough to compose and sing a number for The Sorcerer. Mel Torme and others have recorded Dorough’s “Comin’ Home Baby,” and the Fifth Dimension covered his “Winds of Heaven.”

Now he takes life easy on his 3-acre farm in the foothills of Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, playing piano and flute duets with his daughter, lounging in flannel shirt and wool socks in his sparsely furnished home, an easy hour from the studios in New York. “I sort of fell in love with this part of the country. This reminds me a little of my boyhood in Arkansas. It’s similar terrain. Matter of fact, my grandfather used to be this far from the river there,” he says, pointing to the Delaware River.

As for the future, Dorough is enthused about the rerelease of Devil May Care, out of print until it was reissued as Yardbird Suite. His plans include performing, finishing the TV series, composing and working on a grander scale with an orchestra. He will continue to compose along traditional lines, even though he embraces jazz-rock fusion

“I think it was inevitable jazz and rock would gravitate toward each other.” The musicians in both camps, he says, were using improvisation. “I think music is just coming together. It’s like the whole culture has been fused by communications. I myself was always in love with exotic music of all kinds. I liked Indian music from India and I liked African music. And naturally I liked some classical music, too, what you would call modern classical or modern contemporary.

“Culturally, I can see this fantastic blooming of all elements and styles. I’m definitely all ears.”

Jeff Widmer is the author of the CW McCoy and the Brinker series of crime novels.

Bob Dorough entertaining children in March of 1979 (photo courtesy of Donna S. Fisher; used with permission)