true stories

Movies in the night

commonplace book, history, true stories / /

Another image that enters my mind unbidden:

My brother and I are spending the night at Grandma & Grandpa Scott’s house. We’re pretty young … I might be 8 and my brother 6 or 7. It’s the mid-70s. At our grandparents, we go to bed pretty early … say by 10 p.m. This night, Gus and I know that the original King Kong is on TV, and we are determined to see it. We stay awake talking in bed (we’re in the guest bed together), and then we quietly sneak into the family room and turn on the TV, ever so quietly, and watch a 40-year-old (only 40 years!?) black & white movie, listening carefully for the footsteps of our grandparents. I don’t think we were caught.

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The spirit of the real Texas Rangers

commonplace book, history, overheard, true stories / /

I rather like this, even if it’s probably not true:

The story goes that Captain Jack Hayes and his men, the fabled Texas Rangers, were surrounded and vastly outnumbered during one of the many skirmishes of the Mexican War. He made the following prayer, certainly one of the most colorful ever made before battle: “Oh Lord, we are about to join battle with vastly superior numbers of the enemy, and, Heavenly Father, we would like for you to be on our side and help us; but if you can’t do it, for Christ’s sake don’t go over to the enemy, but just lie low and keep dark, and you’ll see one of the damndest fights you ever saw in all your born days. Amen.”

As I said, probably apocryphal, but a great story nonetheless.

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Amongst family and friends

commonplace book, cool stuff, true stories / /

From "The Producer" in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, an article about the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer:

His creation achieved its brilliant apotheosis a few years ago, when he reconceived Brian Grazer as a form of performance art. He started putting photographs of himself, grinning like a pixie, in dime-store frames and taking them to parties. Unobserved, he would leave his little photo among the grandly framed portraits of the host’s family and famous friends, for the host to discover, to his startled amusement, usually several weeks later. 

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The mercurial man

commonplace book, true stories / /

From "The Producer" in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, an article about the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer:

[Edgar J. Scherick, the TV producer, hired Grazer when he was young, & had this to say about him:] "One day, he told me he was dissatisfied. We talked for half an hour and I gave him a raise. The next day, he quit. Why? You tell me."

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Gershwin the prodigy

commonplace book, history, true stories / /

From Claudia Roth Pierpont’s "Jazzbo", about George Gershwin, in The New Yorker (10 January 2005):

[Gershwin] had been saved by the piano. On a fateful day in 1910, a secondhand upright was hoisted through the family’s Second Avenue window and, to general shock, scapegrace street fighting George, age twelve, sat down and tore through a popular tune like a vaudeville virtuoso. He had never studied a note. Many years later, Gershwin recalled the musical epiphanies of his early childhood: sitting transfixed outside a penny arcade as an automatic piano emitted noises that turned out to be Robinstein’s "Melody in F"; feeling a "flashing revelation of beauty" when the strains of Dvorak’s "Humoresque" reached him from the school auditorium while he was, in fact, outside playing hooky.

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He stopped in time

overheard, true stories / /

Joe Freeman & I were at a party at Jans & Sarah’s. He announced to me that his company had just decided on a new name: Iron Jelly.

"Why that name?" I asked.

Joe explained, "Well, I was looking through a list of words, and I went down the list until I saw two next to each other that I liked: ‘iron jelly’."

"It’s a good thing you didn’t go down a bit further, to ‘vaginal warts’," I said.

Joe didn’t know what to say. 

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The largest library fine … ever.

true stories / /

I was an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis from 1985-1989, and a graduate student in English Lit. from 1989-1996. During that time, I racked up my share of library fines (not hard to do when the fines were $0.10 a day, per book), a couple of times into three digits. In fact, I always said that Olin Library was one day going to name an extension room after me: the Granneman Procrastination room.

Recently I started teaching at Wash. U. Desiring a library book, I walked into Olin Library for the first time in seven years and tried to get the volume. The student behind the desk told me that there was a problem with my account, but he was puzzled as to what it actually was. He told me that he would talk to his supervisor, who would send me an email once everything was straightened out.

A couple of days later, I received this email:

From: Lisa W—
To: scott@granneman.com
Subject: Olin library Privileges
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 09:40:40

Sir,

Your record has been updated to show current status as a faculty member of UCollege. As to the fines, I looked them up in our archive and there seems to be some disagreement between our archives and your library record. We are showing fines of $714. I’ve showed this to my supervisor, letting her know that you have material you want to put on reserve for a class, and she decided to simply ignore the $714 fine and reduce the $81.60 fine to $20. If this is a bit confusing, we do have the archive printout available for you to look at. The fines seem to date from around 1989 to 1995. The $20 can be paid at the circulation desk. From that point your record will be completely current. If you do have any questions, please let me know.

Thank you.

Wow. This has to be a record!

Needless to say, I paid the $20. Gratefully.

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